Buy the book:

http://www.amazon.com/Creative-Screenwriting-Understanding-Emotional-Structure/dp/0230221416

The university libraries which hold it:

Endorsements

“Smart. Thorough. Insightful. Kallas has an authoritative understanding of creative issues, historical issues, and the intellectual issues about screenwriting and covers them with a sense of the head and the heart of the subject…the book is an important addition for anyone wanting to learn more and write with more emotional depth.” 

— Linda Seger, script consultant and author of Making A Good Script Great 

“Creative Screenwriting is at once practical and erudite.  Bringing the best of the art’s greatest teachers together, both past and present, into one compelling ‘dialogue,’ Kallas delivers an excellent insight into our craft with the warmth and passion of a truly gifted writer and teacher. Of the many fine books on screenwriting one might have in their library… this is among the best.” 

— David N. Weiss, co-writer, Shrek 2, Vice President, WGA, West

“…a great place for any screenwriter to mine for treasure. It’s filled with insights, alternatives, stimulating exercises and springboards for your imagination.” 

— David Howard, Founding Director of the Graduate Screenwriting Program at USC and author ofTools of Screenwriting

 

“This book is long overdue — it finally exposes the emperor’s new clothes of narrative screenwriting…Christina Kallas’ insightful book provides a rare glimpse into the real stuff - the viewer’s emotional journey and the way for the writer to provide for it.” 

— Milcho Manchevski, writer-director of Golden Lion winner, Academy-Award-nominated Before the Rain

Amazon Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars 

Not for Beginners, but fabulous, October 24, 2010

By J. L. Henley - See all my reviews

This review is from: Creative Screenwriting: Understanding Emotional Structure (Paperback)

This isn’t a book for beginners. You need to know a lot about the subject, the Poetics, Aristotle and Plato, and a random assortment of odd facts—but, if you do? This book will blow you away. Although I need to back that up. This book will blow you away if you have an open mind and are willing to explore new ground. Kallas isn’t easy to understand, and is occasionally almost “too” academic, but her work on emotional structure goes way beyond what is currently out there in the field. 

It is “not” the right fit for someone still working through structure by the minute or believes turning points are set in stone. It’s a tour de force of original thought by a master in her field. This book is front and center on my keeper shelf. Nice job!

5.0 out of 5 stars

Remarkable breadth and depth, November 3, 2010

By Buyemonline (NYC) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Creative Screenwriting: Understanding Emotional Structure (Paperback)

Kallas offers a way to rethink narrative structure and film theory, and to create unique and compelling screenplays. She has a scholar’s understanding of all of the main schools of thought, academic and otherwise. She has a writer’s perspective on the creative process. Highly recommended

5.0 out of 5 stars

A review, November 2, 2010

By brandonscottkeller - See all my reviews

This review is from: Creative Screenwriting: Understanding Emotional Structure (Paperback)

I have read several screenwriting books and I found this book to be particularly easy to read as well as effective. It talks about a vital and difficult part of the screenplay but does so in an easy to understand way. Applying the techniques talked about in this book have really helped my characters and therefore my story come to life. I highly recommend this to anyone serious about screenwriting. 

 

5.0 out of 5 stars

Well worth the price of entry, January 10, 2011

By J. Sexton - See all my reviews

This review is from: Creative Screenwriting: Understanding Emotional Structure (Paperback)

I’m only half-way through the book, but so far it reminds me very much of Colleen Mariah Rae’s Movies in the Mind, How to Build a Short Story, except this book focuses on screenwriting rather than short stories, and Christina Kallas comes off as far more steeped in the scholarship of dramaturgy and poetics.

All in all, an exceptional hybrid of a book on story structure and a helpful how-to guide of writing exercises. As I said, I’ve only completed the first half of the book and I already feel that I’ve gotten way more than my money’s worth, though I do have to echo the comment of a previous reviewer, that this is probably not the best book for beginning students of story structure. If you are just getting started with story structure or narrative theory, let me recommend Save The Cat! The Last Book on Screenwriting You’ll Ever Need, or Invisible Ink: A Practical Guide to Building Stories that Resonate, or even Robert McKee’s Story: Substance, Structure, Style and The Principles of Screenwriting.

But if you’re a serious student, this is a must-have book.

5.0 out of 5 stars

A Marriage of Reason and the Imagination, February 12, 2011

By thomas i phelan jr “Tom Phelan” - See all my reviews

This review is from: Creative Screenwriting: Understanding Emotional Structure (Paperback)

This is a wonderful manual, but it isn’t a manual, because a manual is what you need when you want to fly an airplane not write a screenplay. Instead, it’s a springboard for your imagination. While synthesizing the best ideas of Frank Daniel and Linda Seger, among others, Ms. Kallas launches a novel writing approach that centers on emotion. Many screenwriting books are overly prescriptive, treating European art-house and American independent films—when they aren’t ignoring them altogether—like failed Hollywood films. It’s an upside-down world where the model supersedes the art object, but it’s where we often find ourselves, in meetings and manuals, as if the reason we once built cathedrals was that we could then get our hands on some really great blueprints for cathedrals. Ms. Kallas corrects the balance by focusing on the creative process itself: she reintegrates emotion, which leads to an honest and engaging story, with reason, which helps us structure the narrative as we go along.

Emotional structure is less a formula than a beacon to guide you through the mists of complex narrative, past the Hollywood Scylla of cat-saving and the indie Charybdis of navel-gazing. Ms. Kallas shifts the emphasis from a film’s plot points to its emotional development, which in an effective film remains coherent regardless of whether the narrative is single-protagonist and linear (Classical Hollywood structure), or multi-protagonist and non-linear (alternative structures). She grounds her approach in close readings of the right films (the book’s subplot, as she calls it; most illuminating are her analyses of La Notte and The Celebration) and in practical exercises, the best of which are inspired by theatrical work, the kind actors do to better inhabit a character.

It’s a difficult thing to talk about the emotional component of a film without slipping into sentiment, but Ms. Kallas pulls it off. She advocates a whole-brained approach. Free-form writing in the beginning shoos the inner critic out of the room and keeps the early drafts vital. Later, you can allow the critic back inside to play architect during the rewrites. There are some unexpectedly useful methods here for sparking the process, ways to generate a writing flow to blast through all the logjams. The exercises encourage careful observation of the world and of your own thoughts, helping you develop an honest story with an organic structure. Emotion, in the sense developed here, proves to be a flexible and effective organizing principle.

The book’s most winning quality is Ms. Kallas’s passion, humming beneath the scholarship. Already something of a marvel in being both an academic and a screenwriter—sadly, the industry and the academy rarely correspond, and when they do it’s like Nixon in China, but without the interpreters—she impresses too with her commitment to improving the screenwriter’s lot in the industry. She calls for a re-evaluation of the writer’s contribution, and she persuades us in an epilogue that the auteur theory, which served a particular place and time, is mostly bollocks. If you want a balanced approach to structuring screenplays, a reminder of why you want to write in the first place, and a set of spurs for your imagination, then buy this book.

Do you want to read about emotional structure theory and improvisation for writers in German?

KREATIVES DREHBUCHSCHREIBEN

Buy the book here:

http://www.amazon.de/Kreatives-Drehbuchschreiben-Praxis-Christina-Kallas/dp/3896696785/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1326237421&sr=1-1

Do you want to read about emotional structure theory and improvisation for writers in Greek?

ΣΕΝΑΡΙΟ. Η ΤΕΧΝΗ ΤΗΣ ΕΠΙΝΟΗΣΗΣ ΚΑΙ ΤΗΣ ΑΦΗΓΗΣΗΣ ΣΤΟΝ ΚΙΝΗΜΑΤΟΓΡΑΦΟ

Buy the book here:

http://www.greekbooks.gr/books/tehnes/kinimatografos/senario-2.product

More books by Christina Kallas:

BIO/PIC Η ΟΙ ΖΩΕΣ ΤΩΝ ΛΙΓΩΝ

To buy the book and read reviews go to:

http://www.patakis.gr/viewshopproduct.aspx?id=576832

EUROPÄISCHE FILM- UND FERNSEHKOPRODUKTIONEN

Buy the book here:

http://www.nomos-shop.de/Kallas-Europäische-Film-Fernsehkoproduktionen/productview.aspx?product=3958

DREHBUCHAUTOREN-BEKENNTNISSE

Buy the book here:

http://www.amazon.de/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?__mk_de_DE=%C5M%C5Z%D5%D1&url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=DREHBUCHAUTORENBEKENNTNISSE&x=0&y=0