The Coffee Break Screenwriter: Writing Your Script Ten Minutes at a Time by Pilar Alessandra

You do have time to write your screenplay! Write a screenplay without quitting your job or leaving your family. Packed with more than sixty ten-minute writing tools, The Coffee Break Screenwriter keeps it focused and simple. Writers — from novice to professional — benefit at every stage of the writing process with a relaxed, “ten minutes at a time” method.

“Ten-Minute Lectures” and “Take Ten” writing templates distill and demystify old-school theory, helping writers unblock, outline, finish pages, and move forward. Plus, advice from twenty working writers on how to use time more efficiently.

Purchase “The Coffee Break Screenwriter” from this site and you’ll receive a copy signed by the author and an additional CD of the key templates and worksheets within the book (includes outlining, scene-writing and pitching).

"Open this book to any page right now and read one of the lessons... If you tell me you didn’t have at least a minor epiphany about how to make your script better, you’re lying.”
– Carl Ellsworth, writer – Red Eye, Disturbia, Red Dawn (2010)

"This is the book I needed when I first moved out to Hollywood — a nuts and bolts approach to screenwriting and the world around it. It will take you from talking about writing a screenplay to actually doing it."
– Garrett Donovan, writer/executive producer – Community, Scrubs

"As close as you can get to taking a screenwriting class. For busy people juggling career and a home life and putting off writing a script — you have no more excuses. This is the help you’ve been waiting for!"
- Andrea McCall, Head of Story, DreamWorks SKG


PILAR ALESSANDRA is the director of the Los Angeles writing program "On the Page, Inc.®." She's worked as Senior Story Analyst for DreamWorks and Radar Pictures and covered additional projects at ImageMovers, Saturday Night Live Studios and The Robert Evans Company. She's trained writers at ABC/Disney, MTV/Nickelodeon, the National Screen Institute, the Los Angeles Film School, The UCLA Writers Program and at writing organizations around the country. Her book "The Coffee Break Screenwriter" was released in September and her On the Page Podcast was featured in MovieMaker Magazine's list of "Ten Podcasts Worth a Listen."