Do you have a gerbil with a little spinning wheel in its cage that it likes to run on, going nowhere for hours and hours at a time?  Study him very hard.

Okay, just a bit of cycnicism there.  Screenwriting training, hmmm . . .Watching and absorbing as many movies as possible is always a good starting place.  Not just once, but several times.  The first time through, enjoy the experience of the movie as pure audience member; it's very important to retain that perspective as you begin creating your own movie stories.  You want to be able to recreate the kinds of experiences that greatly affect you.  Then watch them again, this time with a more critcical eye, observing what made the moments you either liked or didn't like work or didn't work.  A great tool for this is to turn off the sound.  Yes, you won't be able to hear the dialogue, but you also won't be caught up in it, the music and sound effects and will be able to watch the film as a purely visual story.  When it's all said and done, movies are called movies because that become short hand for "moving pictures."  Pictures that move.  Too much focus is put upon dialogue as being the main contribution of the screenwriter to a movie.  The truth is that dialogue is the most expendable and malleable component of a script there is; it is the first to be changed, the element most changed during production, then changed again in post production dubbing in a process known as ADR -- Automated Dialogue Re-Recording -- either for clearer sound or to change entire meanings of edited scenes.  And that doesn't count the changes that will come later when it's translated for foreign countries and chopped up for broadcast TV.  Is it important?  Yes.  Is it all-important?  No.  So watch movies without the sound and study how the scenes are constructed and flow into one another and see how much you can follow a movie purely visually.

Okay, so you're watching movies; now read them.  Find the scripts to movies you really admire and enjoy and see how they were written and constructed.  There are many sources these days for scripts: in published books, Applause Books does a great job because they publish the scripts in the correct format, page-for-page as the author wrote them, plus has interviews with the authors.  Some of their books are: THE FISHER KING: The Book of the Film by Richard LaGravenese, JACOB'S LADDER by Bruce Joel Rubin and TERMINATOR 2, JUDGEMENT DAY: THE BOOK OF THE FILM by James Cameron & William Wisher. Faber & Faber publish many good screenplays, but beware: they are NOT in the right format.  Read for content, not format style. [Editor's note: We interrupt Bill for this plug: you'll find a large selection of published screenplays in the E-script Bookstore. Now, back to our regular programming.]

The new quarterly magazine SCENARIO is an excellent source of scripts; again the format is all wrong, but the scripts are great and they have in-depth interviews with the authors.

There are places in LA, such as Script City, that have mail order services selling real scripts, scripts hot off the Xerox machines at studios and agencies.  What I like about these catalogue services is you can order scripts that were never made into films, such as William Gibson's version of ALIEN 3.  You can find these places advertised in the back of most movie magazines like PREMIERE.

And also, the Web contains some scripts that can be downloaded for your private use; it used to contain more sources for scripts, but copyright questions raised their hydra heads and closed several sites.  One spot still running is Drew's Script-O-Rama.   The selection is very diverse and though it does veer more toward genre material, there are some real gems here.  Plus Drew has a wide selection of Television scripts for those of you who are multiplex-ly challenged.

IMPORTANT CAVEAT!

Beware of Transcripts Posing as Real Screenplays!!  What's the difference?  A transcript is just what it implies: someone sat down with a VCR and painstakingly wrote down every single line of dialogue and lightly sketched out all the scenes' main actions.  What it doesn't do is tell you what the writer originally wrote -- none of the scene description, not the original order of the scenes as they were written nor any of the writer's style and syntax used to make mere black words on white paper come to life and persuade someone to finance a movie.

I admire people's tenacity and resolve for undertaking such a project, because I believe it may have some merit as an exercise for themselves (it forces the transcriber to focus on what exactly is taking place on screen), but I think it is useless as a resource for people looking to read scripts to learn from.

It also underscores the common misconception I spoke of above: that dialogue is the most important element in a movie.  While good dialogue is always savored, without the proper structure, characters and pacing, whatever the characters say will be meaningless.

Now you've watched and read movies and scripts; what to do next?  Hmmm . . .oh, I know -- WRITE THEM!  Some great author called it the "Seat of the Pants" method of learning writing: apply the seat of your pants (or skirt, kilt, etc.) to a chair and begin writing and don't move it from there until you have done so.  Write, write, write!  Then get feedback, not just from friends and family, but people who actually know scripts: professional authors, teachers . . . anyone you can get a hold of that knows the medium can give you constructive criticism.  Because you know what you have to do next?  RE-write!!  Writing is re-writing, so get used to it now and get going!!
Back to the questions

Can you recommend some good books for a beginning screenwriter?

Sure can!

FOUR SCREENPLAYS by Syd Field

Forget his landmark book, SCREENPLAY, the first mass published book on screenwriting.  Some have found it helpful and it does lay out the fundamental principles that almost all other books preach, but subsequent books have done it better.  This book, however, takes four scripts, including THELMA & LOUISE and DANCES WITH WOLVES and looks at them, their authors and the stories behind the creation of the stories in-depth.  It takes some of the technical screenwriting philosophy of his first books and applies it to real-life scripts, making both more understandable.

SCREENWRITING 434 by Lew Hunter (Perigee Books, Putnam)

As a screenwriting teacher, I greatly appreciate this book because it was written by a screenwriting teacher from UCLA; it's laid out in a very usable and reasonable manner.  Also, he's the only author to put his pen where his mouth is -- he writes a full length script, going through all the steps he asks you to do.  And the real . . . well, I'm going to give him the benefit of the doubt and say genius of this plan is that the script he's writing is so bad that it inspires you to feel you can certainly do better!

THE SCREENWRITER'S BIBLE by David Trottier

A good, solid all-around screenwriting tome, from soup-to-nuts.

WRITING SCREENPLAYS THAT SELL by Michael Hauge (Harper Perennial)

I hate the title and I'm not sold on a lot of his screenwriting ideas, but it does contain the very best pratical hands-on section on what to do after you have written and rewritten your script, especially in regards to trying to get an agent.

MAKING A GOOD SCRIPT GREAT by Linda Seger (Samuel French Trade)

A very good book, although as the title suggests, better for rewriting a script.  It makes more sense and is more useful once you have finished the first draft and taken a step back to look at, well, how to make it better.

STANDARD SCRIPT FORMATS - PART I (SCREENPLAY) by Cole/Haag (CMC Publishing)

Got a question on format?  Here's the bible.  But do be careful: it addresses both feature film format and taped TV shows.  Make sure you read the opening section that explains how the book is laid out.

THE CRAFT OF THE SCREENWRITER by John Brady (Simon and Schuster)

A classic compilation of interviews with some of the masters of screenwriting: William Goldman, Paul Schrader, et al.

THE NEW SCREENWRITER LOOKS AT THE NEW SCREENWRITER by William Froug (Silman-James Press, distributed Samuel French Trade)

A compilation of interviews with contemporary screenwriters working to become masters.
Back to the questions

I know Syd Fields' three-act paradigm is very popular, but do you have to write screenplays that way?

No...but I have to ask, what is your goal with your script?  Do you want to be a rich, fat-cat studio writer?  Then the answer is YES!  Just look at the overwhelming majority of studio releases and you'll see that they are constructed in three-act structures.  But then, 99% of ALL movies are based on a three-act structure, even independent and off-beat movies. All the three-act paradigm really comes down to is this:

ACT 1: Setting up characters, character relationships, basic plot elements and something that gets the main character or characters off on a journey or exploration for something they want.

ACT 2: The main character or characters come up against obstacles in the pursuit of this thing or things they want.  They try to deal with these obstacles and in doing so reveal themsleves more fully to us.

ACT 3: The main character or characters move toward and -- usually past -- the greatest obstacle in the way and reach the opportunity to achieve what is it they want.  Most of the time they get it, but sometimes the experience of getting there has changed them so much that they no longer wish to have what they originally thought they want. (Michael J. Fox's semi-recent DOC HOLLYWOOD is an example of this: he wants to be a Beverly Hills plastic surgeon, gets stuck in a small Georgia town, has to spend most of the movie getting out of there, finally arrives in Beverly Hills and obtains the opportunity to achieve his goal of being a plastic surgeon, but because of his experience in the Georgia town, no longer wants to that.  But the goal of becoming a plastic surgeon in Beverly Hills provides the narrative engine of the story.)

And that's all the three act paradigm really is: Beginning, Middle and End.  My questionable analogy is this: 99% of all cars have four wheels, an engine and a space for occupants.  From those three "restrictions," we have everything from Volkswagen beetles to Porsches, Edsels to Rolls Royces, a redneck truck to a family passenger van, etc., etc., etc. Most vehicles have the engine up front, some have it in the rear and some sports cars even have it in the "middle," right behind the passenger area but in front of the rear axle.  What I'm trying to say, there are LOTSA ways to tell a story and still have a semblance of a 3 Act paradigm. STAR WARS uses it obviously; PULP FICTION uses it very slyly, but there still are three acts at work there, fulfilling the functions of the different acts.

Now if you wish to make truly experimental and avante-garde pictures where style or tonality or whatever is what you're really going for, then no, you don't need a stereotypical 3 Act paradigm.  An audience, maybe, but not a 3 Act paradigm.  ;->
Back to the questions

Do I have to have a complete spec script written to interest a producer? Or is a treatment or even just an idea enough?

The only way to sell just a treatment or idea is to have direct access to the people who do the buying of "pitches."  Unless that person is your uncle or neighbor, then 99% of the time you're going to have to go through an agent to get to that buyer, but you CAN'T get an agent until you write a full length, complete script.  An agent will not send you into such a buyer unless they know you can deliver on a pitch with a well-written script, and they can't tell that until you write one.  A friend of mine in LA who works in development says they're not so much looking for ideas as people who can execute ideas well.

So, sorry, the bad news is you have to write the whole damn thing!  ;->
Back to the questions

Do I have to have an agent to sell my screenplay? How do I get one?

No you don't HAVE to have one . . .but unless you are a real hustler-dealer, you will find it very, VERY helpful.  NOT the end-all, be-all of your problems in becoming a working writer, trust me, but very helpful indeed.  What it takes to sell a script is knowing the people who buy them, and that's what an agent's job is -- to know who's buying what.  Without an agent, you can still sell a script, but you will find all of your time taken up with doing that and nothing else.  Plus, you'll have trouble submitting scripts to entities who will not look at material that doesn't come through a recognized representative such as an agent or entertainment attorney.  I don't want to say that having an agent is the ONLY way to sell a script, because it surely isn't, but for most people, it is the best way.

Now, how do you get one?  That's a long and sordid story, best told I think on SCRNWRiT's website.  SCRNWRiT's the screenwriter's email listserv administered by Jack Stanley from The University of Tex-Pan American and they have an excellent Agent FAQ there that goes into good detail about the process of getting one.  Use the link above to go to their website, or visit it at <http://www.panam.edu/scrnwrit>, and look for the Agent FAQ.