Prewriting your Screenplay
by Michael B. Tabb
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if there were a book that taught screenwriters how to develop a script idea from nothing at all?
What if that process offered a permanent solution to writer’s block?
Prewriting Your Screenplay is that book.
Buy the book
WHY YOU NEED THIS BOOK!
My step-by-step process starts well before structures, outlines, and beat sheets. Every chapter is filled with questions for the reader and ends with clear and concise exercises, walking writers through that chapter's material to guarantee maximum absorption and professional-level execution. It’s how I build the spinal column of any script, beginning with the very first bone, and then, piece by piece, construct a full skeletal structure from ground zero.
Each chapter of Prewriting Your Screenplay ends with an exercise that adds to the big picture, one concept at a time. The fact that none of the seminal screenwriting textbooks features any kind of chapter-ending exercises to help writers build a new script speaks volumes about how special Prewriting is in terms of what it offers writing educators.
Prewriting Your Screenplay teaches everyone how to get from zero to story.
Why This Author?
- 15+ years as a WGA screenwriter
- Co-creator of the WGA Mentor Program
- Has been paid to write in every major genre
- Serves on the WGA’s Writers Education Committee
- Multiple years of award-winning online instruction in screenwriting
- Writer for Universal Studios, Walt Disney Feature Animation, Sony, etc.
- Winner of Best Screenplay at the New Mexico International Film Festival
- Worked 3 years in development as a script analyst for Alcon Entertainment (deal at Warner Brothers)
- Read all the mind-blowing endorsements from the best in the business!!!
"With Michael´s tips, writer´s block is a thing of the past!" - STAN LEE
READ THE BIG ENDORSEMENTS
Top Hollywood Screenwriters and brilliant professors from the best film Schools in America recommend Michael's book. Click below to see them....
"I have purchased and sent your 'Prewriting Your Screenplay' book to members of the RKO development staff and some of our contract writers. It is going to be the reference book for development projects at RKO."
Ted Hartley
CEO RKO Pictures
COMING IN WINTER 2026
BOOK 2!
EDITING YOUR SCREENPLAY is the follow-up textbook from professional Hollywood WGA screenwriter Michael Tabb, whose projects have been written for and released by Universal Pictures, Walt Disney Studios, Sony Pictures, companies with deals at Warner Bros., and more.
His first book, PREWRITING YOUR SCREENPLAY, earned widespread praise from working screenwriters, showrunners, and top film-school educators for its clear, step-by-step approach to building a bulletproof screenplay foundation—premise, genre, character, plot, and structure—before the first draft ever begins.
Now, Michael tackles the other end of the process: what happens after the script is written. Drawing directly from real-world studio and development experience, this book breaks down the advanced editing tools used by professionals to transform a first draft into a production-worthy screenplay.
Michael takes you through his three stages of screenplay editing: rewrites, revisions, and polishing. With those skills, you are ready to make the leap...
FROM DRAFT ONE TO DRAFT DONE
This book is an exhaustive list of every way in which I have edited a completed screenplay to make it better.
