How To Write High Structure, High Concept Movies

About the Book

“Show it, don’t say it.”

  -- major tenet of good screenwriting

“If brevity be the soul of wit, then tonight we shall be very witty.”

  -- Billy Crystal, MCing the Academy Awards

This book is exactly what the title implies: a step-by-step manual on how to write structurally sound, high-concept screenplays.  It is a relatively short manual, because the point of this book is to get you writing as quickly as possible, by using the formulas that have been used to write nearly every successful movie in Hollywood history.  In fact, I invite you to skip the introduction and go right to Chapter One, so that you can start learning and applying the tools of your trade immediately.  In the meantime, in the spirit of Billy Crystal, let’s get witty, and let’s get down to business.

     -- Rob Tobin

         Malibu, California

         August, 1998

About the Author

Rob Tobin has read more than 5,000 scripts as a script reader, development exec and script doctor for some of the biggest names in Hollywood, from Freddie Fields (“Glory”) and Stephen Cannell (“The A-Team”) to Joe Singer (“Dr. Doolittle”) and Bill Carraro (“Frequency”). He is also former writing coach and VP of development for The Writers’ Boot Camp, the largest national screenwriting school in America. This experience forms the basis of “How to Write High-Concept, High-Structure Movies.” Born in Northern Canada in a gold mining town that boasts “8 months of the year snow flies, 4 months of the year blackflies,” Rob fully appreciates his Malibu, California life, shared with wife Leslie Coogan (child star Jackie Coogan’s daughter). Rob’s war cry is: “No more lousy movies! The price of tickets go up, the quality of movies goes down. We must teach a new generation of writers to create powerful, moving stories with solid structure and exciting concepts.” Rob is available for writing seminars, one-on-one coaching, script doctoring and book editing. He can be e-mailed at: scripts@earthlink.net.