Friday 13 August 2010

Screenwriting magazines (cheap digital subscriptions)


When Jane and I started to go to the States semi-regularly (around 2000), one of the little things I'd look forward to was picking up copies of screenwriting magazines that weren't readily available over here.

My fave was Scenario ('The Magazine of Screenwriting Art'), a hefty squarebound chunk of a thing that used to include two or three classic full-length screenplays (reformatted), plus in-depth interviews with the screenwriters, short scripts and other articles. Sadly it folded a while ago. 

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The other two, which are still going strong, are Script and Creative Screenwriting. They both come out bimonthly and cover similar territory - interviews, craft features, analysis, market information, etc. Here's what's in the current copies of Script and CS.

While you can now pick them up in a few places over here, they're not cheap: at the BFI Filmstore in London, Script is £3.50 while Creative Screenwriting will set you back a whopping £6.95.

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Anyway, thanks to the wonder of electrickery, you can now pick up (relatively) cheap subscriptions to both of the mags: six issues of Creative Screenwriting - plus access to the back issue archive - costs $11.95 (c£7.60), while a year's worth of Script is slightly more expensive at $12.95 (c£8.30).

I know there's a lot of stuff available online these days and the magazines may be slightly redundant, but that isn't a lot of cash to lay down for a regular fix of info and insight. 

Even if you don't subscribe, it's probably worth at least checking the mags' sites, where they publish quite a bit of stuff, links to podcasts etc.

Subscription links:
(Even cheaper, at $0.00 (£0.00), are the online versions of the WGA West magazine Written By and the WGA East magazine On Writing, recent issues of which are downloadable as a PDF)

(And while we're at it, the articles from the first issue of Intellect's academic Journal of Screenwriting are also available free online.)

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