Others say...

"Good to read, you will not waste time."
This was my second book about screenwriting. thats mean I had a good background of screenwriting when i decided to buy and read it.

For starters this is an excellent book to know every detail. some informations repeated in other chapters but u can skip if u understood them.

Too detailed and direct too! just as the title said.

the most thing i liked in this book is the "Formatting a Screenply". the book well organized.the only thing i didn't like is some informations repeated in other chapters.

if this is the style of for dummies series, you can ignore my words about repeating.

"A smooth, decent guide"
If you're just starting out, this is a decent guide. There are other books which cover the basics like The Bare Bones Book of Screenwriting that are more simple, clear and precise. Overall Screenwriting for Dummies does its job.

"Same ol' song and dance"
A friend of mine bought this book and shouldn't have. Laura Schellhardt isn't a seasoned pro at screenwriting, she is a TEACHER. Not a good one at that.

Yes, the book is informative, but it doesn't say anything different that any other book does, other than the Screenwriter's Bible by David Trottier. Trottier is a professional writer with numerous credits under his belt. So my advice is to "Schell" out an extra dollar so you can buy the Screenwriter's Bible and just leave Screenwriting for Dummies alone.

"good book. too much information in one book."
I bought it 1 month ago and I haven't finished it yet. it's more of a reference book. I refer to it quite a bit. her writing has flow and easy to understand. I personally don't like "dummies" series but this one is good.

I wish she had a CD with it for search and indexing. this book has lots of information, I orginally planned to finish it in a week and I am still reading it.

I haven't bought it for actually writing a script but for a project I am working on.

probably the best I've seen so for.

cheers

"A lot of academic theory but nothing practical."
First, I would like to make clear, or to put it more aptly, this book was written by an academic and not someone who is in the actual business. In other words, lots of theory but nothing practical to back it up. If I'm not mistaken, the author has never, ever actually written a screenplay and have it produced.
Those are strikes one and two against this book. Strike three is that, yes there is some valuable information contained between the covers but it's SO disjointed, you have to constantly go back and forth throughout it in order to try to make any sense out it. My advice? Buy something written by people who ARE in the movie business and NOT from the "Joe College" types who live off of tenure so they really don't have to prove anything to anyone. It's one thing to talk about writing and quite another to sell something for a six figure amount to a production company.