Rating: 
Summary: Good starting point for the clueless
Review: This is an appropriate primer if you've never attempted to write anything resembling a screenplay, or if you realize the efforts you've made are nothing like what you want your script to be.
Make no mistake - this is a beginner's book. It's certainly not the only reference you'll ever want, and if you've taken film or writing courses you may find little you don't already know.
However, the clueless who have a story inside bursting to get out should start with the basics. You don't have to stick with them! This is a bit of a cookie-cutter approach, granted, but guess what - Ya ain't gonna pull the next 'Pulp Fiction' outta yer a** on the first try. Learn how to do the old-school way before you start recreating the artform. This is as good a book to help you do that as I've seen.
Rating: 
Summary: waste of time and money
Review: This will only leave you dazed and confused. Writing by the numbers is the worst way to write anything. I'd like to see a screnplay that this guy has written (if he is even capable of it) before I take his advice. Do you see what I'm getting here? He can't write a screenplay, but he can give others advice on how to do it. Huh? Run that by me again. Actually, it's not that difficult to figure out: since he can't write a screenplay he has, however, devised a way to make money writing these how-to books--and lots of it. Fine, for him--but not so good for you, because this is advice coming from someone without credentials. If Sam Fuller or John Huston were giving advice on screenwriting (or, say , Akira Kurosawa,) that would be well and good. But no, it's this guy who hasn't got the talent to do it.
Rating:
Summary: What has Syd Field written? Has he ever had a showbiz job?
Review: Syd Field is big with pontification about screenplay structure, and his formula is famous. But what does he actually know about writing a screenplay? Has he ever sold one? Has he ever bought one? No? Then why is he an "expert" on it?
Rating: 
Summary: A moderately useful but misleading book
Review: Syd Field's book is useful for those who are just starting to study Hollywood film structure. If you have no grasp of what an "act" is or the "steps" that take place in a typical studio production, this book might help you understand them. You might want to consider Screenwriting Updated: New (and Conventional) Ways of Writing for the Screen, by Linda Aronson, which has more practical advice than Field's book, and also goes into detail about the plot structures of innovative films such as Magnolia and Pulp Fiction. Robert McKee's book Story is also very good. Field, at times, is a truly horrible writer. He makes junior high level mistakes in basic English. Nevertheless, his unflagging enthusiasm and wholehearted faith in the ability of a simple formula to produce workable results might be of short-term benefit to a writer who has no idea how to even begin structuring a screenplay. It's probably worth noting that none of the screenplay gurus seems to have actually managed to get a screenplay produced; log on to [the website]and do a search for Syd Field; you'll find nothing. Aronson, by contrast, does have three credits, and McKee one (from TV). Linda Seger, another guru with some useful things to say, has one credit, for Der Strand von Trouville (yes, you read that right). Now, a word to those who hate field and his formulas: It's simply not true that these formulas are inherently harmful to the development of a workable screenplay. I've read dozens of execrably bad screenplays ..., and there's not one that couldn't have been at least *improved* by some attention to the Field formula. Beginning writers don't need to be told to "break the mold"; they need to master the mold. Field's formula has a hold on some parts of the industry not because of his genius at persuasion but because he described the rough general pattern of a lot of hits. Don't want to write a hit? Don't want to follow Hollywood dicta? Great. Good luck in financing your million-dollar art film.
Rating:
Summary: ...
Review: Quite simply, the book that ruined Hollywood movies. If you want to know how NOT to do it, then read this guide and file it under useless. Read Aristotle's Poetics instead. He got it right. Field, who doesn't have a single film credit to his name, does not.
Rating: 
Summary: Good, but formulaic
Review: The good stuff:
1. Covers all the basics (story, character, dialogue), and well
2. Covers all the principles (get in late, out early; less is more, etc. and does this well
3. repeats the key points, and is clear enough to get the right message across The bad stuff:
1. Writes more from a story editor point of view, not a writer point of view. I have a better sense of why a screenplay is good (ie. do i think it follows the principles). But i don't know that i could go write a screenplay by following those principles. Other books do a much better job of helping me implement. 2. There is not much in the way of example to show success. There is not much in the way of exercises to help get started, not much in way of illustration to bring to life princples 3. Is very formulaic. Every story must have 3 acts, must have plot point one, must be at page 30, must have midpoint, etc. This leads to uncreative, stilted, predictable movies. Maybe you could get away with this 20 years ago when Field wrote this, but i doubt it today. Even if this is the right structure, i agree with others books who've said "that formula is generally true, but not so set in stone"
So overall, a good book, but others do it better these days and are more geared for helping me actually write a screenplay, not just understand it.
Rating:
Summary: Useful but paradigm overdone
Review: This is a thin, fast-paced book covering the essentials of writing screenplays. Field covers his paradigm for screenplays: setup-plot point-confrontation-plot point-resolution. In fact, he does it over and over again, until you desperately want to find an exception to the rule just to prove him wrong. (My Dinner With Andre, perhaps?) Well, he does make some good points, but he also interprets the paradigm so flexibly that it's hard to contradict it. He also goes into character and scene-setting and provides a number of examples, from the beginning of Chinatown to the first love scene in Silver Streak (a personal favorite, so I approved).
Beyond that, he also goes into the mechanical details of how to preserve your copyright and how to get the screenplay out. All in all, a seemingly useful book.
Rating: 
Summary: "Foundations"
Review: What everyone has forgotten is this book is a book for the person who has yet to write a screenplay. To all those persons: Buy the book it is a great place to start. It helped me greatly. I have applied my own styles, but I could not do it without Syd's structure. Field is a great teacher.
Rating:
Summary: WORST Screenwriting book by Industry's biggest HACK!
Review: If I could give ZERO STARS, I would have. In fact, If negative ratings were possible, even better. Syd Field's books are awful, do not teach anything at all about screenwriting or writing in general, are not at all creative, and aren't even well-written! I first read this awful book 10 years ago, during my undergrad film days, and it almost singlehandedly turned me off to the film industry. If filmmaking & screenwriting are really as robotic and soul-less as you're made to feel it is after reading this book, then there's no point in being in the business except to earn a simple paycheck. But that's not even the worst of it. I find it appaling that, as a supposed coach of (any form of) writing, his own writing should be so rambling and unfocused. This book reads like an unedited transcript of class discussions in a Screenwriting 101 seminar at a local junior college. The focus, ideas, the examples explored in this "class" are stretched this way, that way, twisted and contorted until they bear the faintest resemblance to an actual story. Sure, he gets something at the end, but it's all random trial & error that anyone can accomplish: "let's try this, no let's make the character a woman, let's make her a cripple, no an amputee, no no wait . . ." This guy is groping in the dark without any understanding of the principles of drama. What you get instead of principles are a bunch of rules. There's a huge difference. Principles are guidelines that exist for a reason - to explain, justify, illuminate. Rules are arbitrary conventions that are supposed to be followed, not because of the insight they provide (into the structural underpinnings of drama), but because everyone's bludgeoned into thinking that's simply how it is done. No explanation, no exploration, on understanding. "Get that action going by the middle of page two!"
"Yes, sir!"
"Get the first plot point in by page 27!"
"Yes, sir!"
"Get the second plot point in by page 89!"
"Yes, sir!"
"Show, don't tell! Show don't tell! We musn't actually have characters TALK unless absolutely necessary! Show don't tell!" "Show-Don't-Tell" is a classic example of a principle gone awry. The principle behind this is that in order for a reader or viewer of a work to be moved by something, s/he needs to have sufficient information about a character or scene to understand what's going on. When we see an actor showing anger, frustration, sadness, loneliness, regret, or anything else, we feel the impact because we've been made aware of the events leading up to a particular moment - the hopes & dreams of a character. When this principle mutates into the tyrannical "show, don't tell" RULE, we end up with films that simply SHOW actors showing tears, declaring unending love, accompanied by awful music. This guy is useless. His book is appalling. Do a search for screenwriting or screenplay and purchase just about ANY OTHER book instead.
Rating:
Summary: You'll swear because of it, not by it
Review: There's at least one screenwriting agency listed in Writer's Digest's WRITER'S MARKET that won't even open anything you mail them unless you've read everything Syd Field has written on the craft. I fail to understand why, since it appears that Syd is to screenwriting what Freud is to modern psychiatry: someone only referred to on an academic level, not a practial one. I used this book to help me write my first screenplay, which was rejected by a screenwriting contest and later a major agency. It spends too much time glorifiying the Jack Nicholson film CHINATOWN than providing any practical information on such important things as formatting or maximum number of pages or even what font to use. It's also quite dated, since it mentions that you can register a script with the Writer's Guild for as much as $3.
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