Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I have never before posted a review of anything on Amazon. But after reading the first 1/3 of this book, I feel compelled to offer a perspective on this book's Amazon page that differs from all the other written reviews, many of which I suspect to be written by friends of this book's author. First I want to say that I am a writer (working one in Hollywood) that is immensely appreciative of any material out there that seeks to help and inspire others who have recognized the burning desire in themselves to get their voice heard through the most powerful mediums of modern storytelling, TV and Film. I'm not one of those screenwriters who walks around town talking down on writing gurus and instructors. If you can manage to carve out an enjoyable life that is related to your passion, more power to you. Everyone should be so lucky. However. This book has the power to obstruct one's growth as a writer. I feel if you read this book, and take its theories, and minute-by-minute movie analysis (literally -- this book posits that each minute i.e. individual page of a screenplay has a specific and different goal than the page behind and in front of it) you are doing yourself a huge disservice as a writer. It's really bizarre, and if wasn't so bizarre, I probably would have stopped reading well before reaching the 1/3 mark. Here's an example: Minute 23 - Something Scary Happens. The author then references many different movies, citing instances at Minute 23 where one character aims a gun at another, where a patient tells a doctor he cannot be fixed, where a love interest experiences an inconvenience at work... on and on... with an absurdly broad interpretation of the word "scary." There are dozens of examples. Really the only thing these scenes have in common is that they all have conflict. Guess what? Every scene in a screenplay has conflict. Most screenwriting books save a writer a little bit of time in the whole discovery process... maybe shave a half-year off the learning curve by illuminating mistakes and weaknesses that they have not identified yet in their writing. This book will do the opposite. If you pay attention to its theories you are going down a road that will send you the wrong direction... it will have you looking for and steering your story towards nebulous, ambiguous emotional marks (albeit on very specific page numbers!) that simply do not exist. I'm really not trying to slam this guy. Read Save the Cat. This one, in addition to being a waste of a few bucks, is just going to cloud your head with bogus and arbitrary rules.