screenwriting made painless

Writing in Pictures: Screenwriting Made (Mostly) Painless

By Joseph McBride

Ditch the Formulas. Find Your Voice. Learn to Think Cinematically.

Most screenwriting guides promise quick riches and mechanical formulas, teaching you how to write by numbers. Writing in Pictures is different. Written by veteran screenwriter, renowned film historian, and professor Joseph McBride, this refreshingly practical guide strips away the industry “mumbo-jumbo” to help you write a screenplay that comes from the heart, not just the pocketbook.

Born out of McBride’s frustration with rigid, cookie-cutter manuals, this book delivers a methodical, step-by-step process that demystifies the craft. By uniquely focusing on literary adaptation as the ultimate training ground, McBride frees beginners from the burden of inventing a plot from scratch, allowing them to master the pure mechanics of visual storytelling.

“A real contribution to a much-abused genre… A straightforward, considered, and lucid meditation on the arts and crafts of storytelling for the screen.” — Howard A. Rodman, Screenwriter & Former VP of the Writers Guild of America West

Inside this definitive guide, you will master the 5 core steps of script development:

The Story Outline: Condensing a narrative into a tight, workable prose summary.
The Adaptation Outline: Learning how to alter settings, timelines, and characters for the screen.
The Character Biography: Building deep, complex, and “playable” roles that actors will fight to play.
The Treatment: Fleshing out your outline into a vivid, scene-by-scene structural roadmap.
The Step Outline & Final Script: Mastering professional formatting, visual style, and subtext-rich dialogue.

Richly illustrated with examples from classic and contemporary cinema, and seasoned with colorful anecdotes from McBride’s own career—including his work with Orson Welles—Writing in Pictures is more than a manual. It is a masterclass in cinematic thinking, essential for any writer who wants to master the craft and protect their creative vision in the real world of filmmaking.