Screenwriting : Screenplays as teaching tools by Jim Ramsbottom

I only read a few so not much.

None that I recall. It behoves you to know, understand and apply the basic industry standard format to your script. Your writing style will evolve as you write - there is no need to try to copy someone else's style. Again, story weaving structure is a personal matter that will evolve with writing experience. All the best.

Probably “Chinatown” because it was used as an example in Syd Field’s screenwriting book, a popular how-to book from the 1980s.

Thanks for the input. It stands to reason that one would study the form and content of "the classics" in the industry. It's done in every other field- medicine, law, manufacturing ... Of course, speak in your own voice and write your own story but stories are constructed and stylized. Read on. Write on.

Dan--I've read every "how to" book on screenwriting and had to spend years forgetting the stupid crap the "gurus" preach.

All of them. Every single screenplay that I have read has taught me something. ;)

And I’ve read hundreds.

Hi Jim, I like WHIPLASH as a great example of contemporary writing. It's absolutely lean in style, beautifully structured, it has an inciting incident for both the external goal and the inner need with the EG inciting incident coming in the very first scene (something I see more and more in recent successful films... builds incredible story momentum right through the set up), every conflict and relationship builds around the primary theme, surprising choices throughout and a beautifully realized final act. I guess I like that one.:)

I had posted this a few weeks ago in a forum topic by Stage32 member Cherie Grant, who asked the same question:

Kinda hard to narrow down to one, because the first handful of scripts I read - The Exorcist, Blazing Saddles, As Good As It Gets, Jaws, All the President's Men - all taught me/inspired me in different ways, but two scripts that I tend to go back to a bit are:

Angel Heart by Alan Parker. It's such a profound and poetic script, and combines so much - noir, horror, mystery, romance, comedy, magic realism. It showed me how differently and expansively a story could incorporate reality/memory/trauma in a fantasy film that suspends disbelief so easily and naturally in the world of a film.

Magnolia by Paul Thomas Anderson, which is a profound and poetic script, too, and showed me how human intimacy and the sometimes hidden desperations of life on a personal scale for a bunch of individuals just trying to survive their pasts can be greater than having some super-big type of goals with a happy ending. It kinda blew me away, as original scripts go. Short Cuts by Robert Altman and Frank Barhydt does that, too.

Best fortunes in your creative endeavors, Jim!

RIP DICK DALE (May 4, 1937 - March 16, 2019)

Jim, a paperback copy of the script to "American Graffiti" whetted my appetite for writing my own screenplays...but since joining Stage 32 a couple of months ago, I've tried to learn from every single script I've read here on the site...as well as one I found through one of Phillip Hardy's links: "Whiplash."

I'm with Beth Fox Heisinger Every script I read, I learn and take away something from it. I can't say one exact one where I learnt something because all help me in developing my craft