Life: On History, "The Screenwriter's Bible"

When I was younger, like some pre-teens and teens, I was a bookworm. I read a wide variety of genres, both fiction and non-fiction. Around 11, in an age-appropriate manner, I started reading a bunch of war histories. Starting from WWII, which is a general favorite of boys, I read Japanese and Chinese historical war stories, including The Three Kingdoms, The Art of War, The Zhan Guo Ce, The Taiheiki, and The Tale of the Heike. The Japanese stories tended to be more focused on the characters, whereas the Chinese stories tended to focus on the actions and strategies, and ended with morals.

The format of historical stories boils down to what they did, and what followed or happened as a result. A good thing about historical stories is that they can tell us what worked and what didn't. 

Although we need to acknowledge that the context and environment of a historical story may be different from now and then, the "data" can remain valid for planning our future actions/ experiments, or determining our future strategies. We know where Nazism led Hitler-Germany, and the historical knowledge still creates a strong barrier in the public mind against Nazism's resurgence.

Studying history can be quite useful to avoid bad outcomes in the future.

Since I came to the US, my book-reading habits have changed somewhat. I started reading a lot more how-to books. Good how-to books can give us an overview of the art and the industry, and can give a glimpse of how they think of doing the art. 

Among the recent hits is "The Screenwriter's Bible" by David Trottier.

The book is a how-to book (or a "six books-in-one" book according to the author) for writing a screen script, formatting it, editing it, and selling it as a working professional screenwriter. There are many how-to books in the bookstore (mine included), but few are thorough enough to take you to professionalism. This book may be among the few.

A fresh point of view for me from the book is that a screen script is about storytelling in a visual (and in part, auditory) manner. He emphasizes the importance of writing the script with visual actions, because the script is eventually for TV or a movie, the audio and visual media.

A how-to book is a series of instructions. It will tell you "do this, do that," sometimes with reasoning ("we do this because.."), so we can think like the artist and do the art by ourselves.

We do something, and we get the results or consequences of our actions. For a how-to book, the consequences are specific; be able to become a working professional script writer, for example.

Now I come back to the historical stories.  The result of an action has been shown in history in many cases. 

We were born knowing nothing about this world, and we learn through instructions as we grow up. The instructions are everywhere. But we want to know which ones to follow, if we want to act smart.  The result you achieve is a very good indicator for sorting the instructions out. For example, I would rather listen to financial advice given by the rich rather than the poor. If I listen to the poor, I predict I'd be poor as well. The reverse may not be true (i.e. I follow advice by the rich and I get rich...I don't think it's guaranteed), but the general direction may be more likely (probably following the advice by the rich is better than following one by the poor). Advice from people who have proven their success will usually be more valuable and help you be successful. 

In summary, think about the consequences when you choose your actions.

Another summary is that I liked the book "The Screenwriter's Bible" very much for being very specific and actionable.