Television and Screenwriting: From Concept to Contract

Television and Screen Writing, Third Edition explains specific, proven techniques for writing marketable scripts and reveals the secret of how to create the driving force that is the cure of all commercially successful TV and motion picture scripts. Updated appendices include listings of screenwriting festivals and professional workshops, film/video commissions and arts agencies, major studios and production companies, TV networks, Cable and Pay TV, and professional unions and associations.

Television and Screen Writing reveals how to write successful scripts for television and motion pictures, and how to effectively market them. To be successful, screenwriters must learn techniques to guide them from the germination of an idea to the revision of the final draft. Episodic television, long-form television, and motion pictures all share certain needs; the development of producible stories, appealing and castable characters, credible dialogue, expert structure, and skillful visualization.
Dr. Richard Blum is Professor of Screenwriting at the University of Central Florida in Orlando. He served as head of filmwriting at the University of Maryland, and is an internationally recognized authority in the field. Dr. Blum has been a consultant for Warner Bros. TV's prestigious comedy writers' workshop and for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences' Nicholl Screenwriting Fellowships. He is a former executive for Columbia Pictures-TV, working on shows like "I Dream of Jeannie," "Bewitched," and "The Flying Nun." He was a consultant for Columbia Pictures, and served as senior program officer for the National Endowment for the Humanities, overseeing many award-winning productions.