The Complete Book of Scriptwriting

The creator of the television science-fiction series Babylon 5 presents a guide to writing and selling screenplays, television plays, theatrical plays, radio scripts and animation scripts. He explains how to structure and lay out the scripts, provides a guide to terminology used by the industry, and offers advice on getting work seen by the right people. The book also includes the complete script of a Babylon 5 episode, The Coming of Shadows, for which Straczynski won the Hugo Award.

Working writer/producer Straczynski has revised his 1981 text -- a standard in many institutions -- and brought it into the '90s, with updates on fluctuating markets, speculation about opportunities in CD-ROMs and anecdotage about Writers' Guild strikes that have occurred in the interval. A handy tome for the novice, since Straczynski covers much basic ground in key areas of writing for film, television, radio, animation and stage. Strongest in the movie/TV areas and also valuable for animation scribes, playwrights might note that their chapter is the thinnest; perhaps it was all apportioned according to what the various disciplines pay?