Beat By Beat: A Cheat Sheet for Screenwriters

This is by far the best screenwriting book I had ever read. Thank you so much for creating this book Todd, You are a genius! It has been so helpful to me as a writer, director, and producer. Truly amazing and functional book. The graphic design and typography is also beautifully laid out which makes it very easy to read, understand and comprehend. Thank you!!!

I love this book, i've been studying screenplay as you can see but this takes it to another level. All the knowledge plus this book makes it incredible to write my screenplay plus the addition of The Artist by Donovan Henry has made my music album touch hearts like Tupac Shakur.

Overall, I liked the book. It will be handy as a reference to hook the viewers and keep them engaged.The book does have a few lacking qualities. The photos are black and white. Some are small and/or the copy quality is so bad, you can't make out the details (see attached example photo and disregard my scribbles). Also, some of the comparisons, by the minute, are a stretch and seem contrived to make his point. At the same time, most others are excellent and ones I would have never thought of on my own.I believe the greatest benefit is, it reminds us that we have a job to do. It keeps us from going longer than we need and to write each scene with concise discipline and purpose.On a side note, I asked Todd Klick a question on twitter to see how he "interacts" with his reader customers and to see if he would answer. He doesn't. Deleted. Also, when I read a reference book, I'm always curious about the writer's credentials. Not much about Todd on IMDb.

I've read countless books on screenwriting and can honestly say this presents the best formula for writing a commercial script.

While this was an interesting read, I can't really see how you would put it into practice.The author says that in a 120 minute movie there are 120 beats and with one minute being one screen page I just don't see how you would fit all these beats into a screenplay. The constant switches and changes would make something so manic that it might be unwatchable.I also didn't find the examples all that convincing. For example, Beat 15 'Whew that was close', the example for The Hangover is that Stu wraps up a phone call and for A Beautiful Mind that John may not get a placement but he might. How is this a close call? I didn't find these and other examples very convincing.And for every beat described in this book the author includes a photo from each of the six movies he's pulling apart so that's about 720 photos that are not needed to illustrate the point and which take up space that could be used to explain the concept better for the reader. And I think more explanation is needed for these concepts.Instead, or maybe as well as, pulling apart six movies to fit the author's beat sequence I would have liked to see how the author uses this method to construct a screenplay. To see the screenplay built beat by beat would have shown that this method works and shown the reader exactly how it works. It's much easier to force existing scripts into a theory than to build something new from the ground up to prove the theory works.So while I found the theory interesting I think there are other books out there that give a more useful bare bones structure and explain their structure more convincingly for screenwriters and novelists to easily utilize.

Google “screenwriting books,” and you’ll receive 782,000 results in 0.67 seconds. These titles offer advice from how to write your script in 90 days to plotting a screenplay using index cards. But nobody has time to read three-quarters of a million titles! What’s an up-and-coming screenwriter to do?Get a cheat sheet!Enter Todd Klick’s Beat by Beat, a unique and illustrative approach to penning a movie script, a screenwriting guide is so engaging you’ll want to eat popcorn with it! Using films from six genres (Skyfall—action, The Avengers—adventure, The Hangover—comedy, A Beautiful Mind—drama, The Conjuring—horror, and Gone Girl—thriller), Klick breaks down movies by the minute. From “At Tension!” to “Powder Keg” the process of movie making is spelled out in, well, minute detail.Movies are, after all, a visual medium, and Klick uses visuals to enhance his lessons with finesse. Brief paragraphs describe what should happen during each minute to move the film forward. For instance, in minute 68, “Ally Aid,” Klick states, “The ally took a beating from the bad guy a few minutes back, but the ally is there for the hero, supposedly, through thick and thin.” Each page provides a snapshot of what creates a blockbuster film.The movie stills help screenwriters to fully understand each of Klick’s concepts. Using shots of Loki, Klick explains the “Anxiety Amp.” This concept (used at minute 32) is when a truth is discovered that causes worry. In The Avengers, Loki realizes that he can’t fail or S.H.I.E.L.D will capture him. At minute 84 (“gap subtract”), Klick uses a shot of James Bond in Skyfall to demonstrate how the distance between the hero and the villain decreases.Readers might not expect to find that six different genres can be summed up in the same way, but Klick demonstrates that the genres are more similar than one might think. In Minute 30, “A need is shown or expressed.” In Skyfall, Bond looks at his watch because he needs to meet M. In The Conjuring, Christine expresses concern about what pulled her leg. In A Beautiful Mind, the students need to open the windows. Each film, though wildly different, follows the same formula.Klick’s inventive “Beat by Beat” will undoubtedly help screenwriters to formulate their thoughts and create scripts that are destined to succeed. This is a cheat sheet all up-and-coming moviemakers should have up their sleeves.

This entire series is a must have for anyone in the storytelling bussiness. Beat by Beat goes into the gritty deatils of tempo and pacing through framing and reveals. I just got my copy and it's already paid for itself.

What a great book!