The Podcast is Better: A Short Review of Scriptnotes

Should I Read This: Yes, if you are interested in writing.

Book Seller Link (non-affiliate, but I do know the owner): Scriptnotes a book by John August and Craig Mazin - Bookshop.org US

Author’s Website: Scriptnotes

Scriptnotes by John August and Graig Mazin, two accomplished screenwriters and show runners, is a good book but I cannot help but think that it suffers from my having listened to the podcast. It simply is not as good as the podcast, but I still think if you have an interest in writing, the book is worthwhile.

The Scriptnotes podcast is one of the best podcasts, never mind writing podcasts, around. Not so much for the quality of the advice (though the quality of the advice is not lacking), but for the relationship between August and Mazin. They play off each other very well, their obvious friendship tempered by their disagreements about issues and their different outlooks on life. The back and forth is both entertaining and enlightening, and listening to them, even when they agree, talk through an issue and arrive at a conclusion is much more enlightening than the advice by itself. The combination also results in excellent interviews, with each person seemingly knitting disparate threads until a complete tapestry has emerged between them and their guests. Unfortunately, that voice is largely missing from the book.

I have developed an odd relationship with craft books. As I have done more and more writing, I find most advice unsatisfying. Now, as I am an absolute failure as a writer, that probably means little to nothing. But I do find that a lot of craft books insist on doing things a specific way and only that way. The problem is that the things I enjoy the most do not do things in that way, whatever that ay may be. Now, we have rules so that we understand why we break them, but any book that thinks Memento is a poorly written script is not a book I want to be taking advice from, for example. And what I do not find unreasoningly prescriptive, I tend to find repetitive or simplistic. The Scriptnotes podcast suffers very little from this problem while the Scriptnotes book suffers from it more.

I suspect this is in part because the book is marketed as an advice book for screenwriters. As such, the process of turning the podcast into a book likely involved highlighting much of the more basic advice in order to serve the likely market better. But, to me, a lot of the advice feels repetitive of things I have seen elsewhere, or not especially helpful. I feel more and more that the best advice is relatively simple — build tension, write in a voice people find compelling. This book doesn’t have that voice, even when it is offering good advice.

And it does offer good advice. Two sections in particular — a discussion about Die Hard and a lecture about writing that Mazin gave — are very good examples of discussing how to build the tension a story needs. The fact that those are two of the few sections where the voice of the podcast comes through highlights how much that voice contributes to the value of the podcast. They made the choice to largely ignore that voice, to take their back and forth in the podcast and synthesize it into a set of advice delivered by both of them. In doing so, I think a lot of what makes them so good at giving advice was lost. When you cannot follow them as they discuss an issues, when you only get the conclusion, I think you lose something important.

This is not, I stress, a bad book. Far from it. I suspect that everyone will find some advice that is useful, depending on what they need at the time they read it. And they deliver that advice not as tablets from on high, but as the perspective of people who have made their way through the writing trenches, with authority but also with the understanding that writing, like all advice, is not always appropriate in all situations. They are not preaching a method to you, they are chatting with you about what’s worked for them, what they see in the industry, and what might work for you. And it is well written, especially when they allow their own voices to shine through the pages. The fault in the book is that such shining is not as present as it should be.

So buy the book if you are interested in good writing advice from professionals. But make sure you listen to the podcast as well. At the risk of having my library card revoked, the podcast is better than the book.

Cross posted at Bookstack.