Our magazine review section deals
specifically with magazines for writers. These are not those which feature
writers’ work, but the ones that are directed at writers themselves, to help
them improve their writing and get published. We hope this series might help
you decide which one might suit you, before you opt for a year’s
subscription.
ScriptWriter magazine has been going for over four years and
appears to be steadily building its subscription base. It comes out
six times a year but carries relatively little advertising. The editor is
Julian Friedmann, who is well-known in the London publishing world as the
co-founder of the Blake Friedmann literary agency
ScriptWriter takes a serious approach to developing and
refining your script-writing techniques, providing a series of substantial
articles to help you work on this. In the May 2006 issue there was a
thoughtful opening piece entitled Who are you writing for? followed
by a light-hearted article on procrastination.
Julian Friedmann interviewed the highly successful British novelist and
screenwriter Deborah Moggach, who had some very interesting things to say
about the process of turning books, her own and other people’s, into
scripts. Her insights into the difference between scriptwriting and writing
fiction was particularly interesting: ‘Scriptwriting is about the unsaid…
I have to allow the characters to live and breathe and allow the actors to
do their jobs rather than be prescriptive and tell them what they’re
supposed to say.’
Other articles covered voiceover, showing how subtle use of it could
enhance a film; what playwrights can teach scriptwriters; and acting for
writers, on whether acting experience will make a good writer into a better
one. Some articles, such as one on the lyrical intention in cinema and
another on the horror genre, take something of a ‘film studies’ approach to
scriptwriting. Others take a pragmatic angle in providing workmanlike
guidelines for how scriptwriters can improve their work.
A new series on BAFTA’s (British Academy of Film and Television Arts)
award-winning scripts of the last five years has just started with the
French hit Amelie as its first subject.
But the articles which seemed most immediately useful to writers were
a comprehensive look at film budgets and an excellent pointer on how to get
your work taken on. Jim Clarken explained that ideas, not
scripts, are what sells. Aspiring scriptwriters need to focus on coming up
with a good log line – the two sentences encapsulating the idea which will
sell your script.
ScriptWriter is at the serious end of the spectrum and does not offer
short market-oriented snippets of news, or indeed much news at all. It does
however provide a great deal of useful information for the aspiring writer
on the art of scriptwriting. So if you’re serious about writing scripts
and want a thoughtful magazine which will help you achieve your goal -
whilst providing food for thought and some wide-ranging and
interesting articles - this magazine could be the one for you.
ScriptWriter website
Review of Writers' Forum
Review of Writer's Digest
Review of Writers' News
Review of Mslexia
Magazine review index
