Petre Pan

Poetry can be a hard sell on Audible.

Revisado: 03-23-20

The narrator is a bit robotic to my ears and doesn't do the title and the poems justice. She enunciates clearly but her singsong is too much for me. I think some people will find her relaxing for rest however.

Production quality, grammar, etc are professional and clean.

Within its category, uplifting poetry is rare these days, so it is sweet and refreshing to enjoy the very simple celebration of life, love, and even praise from the poet's heart. I was given a free credit chance to read this, and actually think I would like to see the words on the page more than to hear this narrator read. Might also be nice to hear these with some music or asmr. Some people prefer raw shock value poems, but every now and then it is nice for the emotions to rest. You will be encouraged or at least calmed by the simple language.

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Cost-Effective and Encouraging

Revisado: 01-13-15

Would you listen to Automatic Pilot again? Why?

Yes. Next to Sid Meier's Screenwriting textbook, I'd say Bill Taub's Automatic Pilot ranks as one of the best beginning screenwriting resources I've yet encountered.

“Well, stranger, what have you encountered? What does that even mean?”

Good question. I'm not an expert screenwriter, but I am an expert “screenwriter-resources” purveyor, if such a pitiful occupation exists. From college classes to online classes to online resources to books to at least three or four different “screenwriting resource companies”--eh, I've actually spent a few hundred bucks studying screenwriting. (Shivers in shame)

A number of those resources tend to repeat the same basics over again, so I really liked that while Automatic Pilot included the most important fundamentals of screenwriting for beginners, it also delved into TV-industry-niche specifics, a wide variety of structure techniques and suggestions, and Taub's own positive writing philosophy. The strong motivational tone of the book makes you feel like you've got people on your side—because when you're writing for yourself you've got you on your side, Taub might say—and as someone who used to write for a living I found that incredibly empowering. In med school you don't get a lot of time to read, so I bought the audiobook to play while I ate or whatever. Taub's encouragement was, for me, the writerly equivalent of blasting rap music on the highway, or rocking out when you're pumping iron: I got pumped up! There's something to be said for that.

For those of you who prefer more concrete definitions of value, we should probably talk about $$$. Automatic Pilot is actually a compilation of all the resources and reading material from a University class Taub taught/teaches on writing good pilot episodes for television. As you may know, it usually costs more than twenty bucks to access a University-level screenwriting class. Even cheap professional classes online bill as much as $90—I got a discount on a decent “Third Act” class for $45 once, but generally comparable screenwriting classes enter the ring weighing in nearer the hundreds mark.

To give you a more detailed cost-analysis, Hal Croasmun from ScreenwritingU charges $90 for a class that involves about thirty pages of reading material and no feedback from the professor. I'm not downing on Croasmun—apparently he's pumping out writers who make deals left and right—but pointing out, to you, that for $20 or less I can get nearly 200 pages from Taub, all new and unique information pertaining specifically to the TV industry. That's pretty good math.

Automatic Pilot is heavy with repetition, though. That's probably less of an issue in the hardcopy (which I also bought to keep as a skim-able resource), and for some folks repetition's essential to enhance learning, so it's not necessarily a drawback. I found it a bit much sometimes, but on the other hand a lot of the repetition was also a lot of the motivational cheerleading I enjoyed. If you're looking for new plotting tricks and tools to amp up your game; if you're unfamiliar with a lot of TV-writing terminology and structural customs; and if you'd like to tap the brains of multiple TV-writing experts before you start writing yourself into a crash-and-burn, a little repetition and two Red Robin meals is a fair price to pay.

I think, anyway.

What was one of the most memorable moments of Automatic Pilot?

I found the breakdown of A, B, and C plots particularly helpful, too.

Which scene was your favorite?

Some of the anecdotes are particularly good. The character design advice Taub received from other WGA writers was cool.

Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?

Yes, actually. I enjoyed being told to "write what you want to see." There's a healthy laissez-faire attitude about throwing caution to the wind, and worrying about sales later.

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