Veteran script consultant Jill Chamberlain discovered in her work that an astounding 99 percent of first-time screenwriters don't know how to tell a story. These writers may know how to format a script, write snappy dialogue, and set a scene. They may have interesting characters and perhaps some clever plot devices. But, invariably, while they may have the kernel of a good idea for a screenplay, they fail to tell a story. What the 99 percent do instead is present a situation. In order to explain the difference, Chamberlain created the Nutshell Technique, a method whereby writers identify eight dynamic, interconnected elements that are required to successfully tell a story.
Now, for the first time, Chamberlain presents her unique method in book form with The Nutshell Technique: Crack the Secret of Successful Screenwriting. Using easy-to-follow diagrams ("nutshells"), she thoroughly explains how the Nutshell Technique can make or break a film script. Chamberlain takes readers step-by-step through thirty classic and contemporary movies, showing how such dissimilar screenplays as Casablanca, Chinatown, Pulp Fiction, The Usual Suspects, Little Miss Sunshine, Juno, Silver Linings Playbook, and Argo all have the same system working behind the scenes, and she teaches readers exactly how to apply these principles to their own screenwriting. Learn the Nutshell Technique, and you'll discover how to turn a mere situation into a truly compelling screenplay story.

Jill Chamberlain is a sought-after script doctor, story consultant, and screenwriting coach who founded The Screenplay Workshop (www.thescreenplayworkshop.org). She has taught the Nutshell Technique to more than a thousand screenwriters around the globe, and many of her students have achieved success in Hollywood, having their screenplays optioned, sold, and made into award-winning feature films.

“Just over a century after the invention of the moving picture, Jill Chamberlain may be the one to have finally cracked cinema’s genetic code. The Nutshell Technique is a truly great method for understanding the dramatic mechanisms needed for an excellent film. As screenwriters, we need better tools to help us develop more resonant stories. As educators, we need tools that help our students understand the mechanisms at work in great storytelling. In these pages, Chamberlain has put together a fantastic tool set.”—Patrick Wright, Director of the MFA in Filmmaking at Maryland Institute College of Art and codirector of the JHU-MICA Film Centre in Baltimore, Maryland. An editor and producer, he has worked on such films as Oyler: One School, One Year, See You Soon Again, and the Academy Award–winning Music by Prudence

“As a longtime teacher of screenwriting and occasional screenwriter, I find Jill Chamberlain’s Nutshell Technique to be a useful way to structure a long narrative, and her approach to be universal enough to successfully compete with other systems of archetypal story structure or story beats. This is also a book that people who love movies or are interested in how movies work might find interesting.”—Greg Garrett, Professor of English, Baylor University, and author of One Fine Potion: The Literary Magic of Harry Potter