Book excerpt: Ready! Action! Write! A student's writing skill is the single best predictor of success in the first year of college - better than math, vocabulary, grammar, or reading prowess. Unfortunately, while high schools teach students the mechanics of writing, they don't address issues such as getting unstuck, writing a first draft, brainstorming, finding the thesis that's hiding in an essay, soliciting useful feedback, or telling a story in pictures. This unique guide does, by capitalizing on what students know a lot about: the movies. Students read inside stories about their favorite films online. They watch behind-the-scenes bonus material on DVDs. They know how films work. What they don't know is that the writing and filmmaking processes are remarkably similar. In this book, they'll learn to shift their focus from word counts to process as they move from pre-production, preparing to write, "shooting" their first draft in the production phase, and then running their results through post-production to perfect their work.