Top 3 screenwriting books ?

azharrison said:
Where is a good site to find screenplays? I like your method.
Click to expand...

See my post here.

And I can't recommend Brian McDonald's book Invisible Ink (and his blog) enough. It's an easy recommendation to follow, too, since you can read both—yes, including the book—for absolutely free at the links. (Though a donation to his website, or purchasing the book through Amazon, certainly wouldn't be turned down.)

Don't—do not—spend much time reading how-to-write-a-screenplay books. Reading scripts is the best way to go. Some say you should read bad scripts to learn what not to do. Personally that never worked for me. I've done better reading great scripts and trying to make sure my scripts read like those.

The only other books I can suggest reading are books on directing and acting craft, just to get a better understanding for how directors and actors approach a script. What are they looking for your scenes, your characters, to do? The two books I chose have been more helpful to me than most of the screenwriting books I've read: Directing Actors by Weston, and Film Directing Fundamentals by Proferes.
 
texvanwinkle said:
See my post here.

And I can't recommend Brian McDonald's book Invisible Ink (and his blog) enough. .... <snip>

Don't—do not—spend much time reading how-to-write-a-screenplay books. Reading scripts is the best way to go.
Click to expand...

Don't get me wrong, I AM currently reading a couple of books (Story & Screenwriters Bible), Have also read a couple books on novels, writing funny, etc... but I would like to read scripts as well. I am very shakey on script formatting.

While I won't go so far as to call McKee a pompus windbag, I do find his book a bit discouraging at my level (ABSOLUTE Beginner). He does more to say that 'its all been done and that everything is a copy of everything else'... but then he throw you a bone of "film industry is STARVING for good screenplays"... so, I keep reading.

I love PIXAR for superb stories, therefore I am very excited to read McDonald's book!
 
hey, azharrison.

it's good that you're learning. i'm doing that too now. i find it interesting.

one thing though: the format of a script is pretty easy to learn quick. i'm sure you'll have a complete grasp of it in a matter of a few hours. script writing isn't hard, or creative. story writing is the hard thing, the creative thing. i highly suggest you read a lot of good literature. books, i find, offer more inspiration for writing a story than a screen writing book offers. yes, there are a few things unique to screenwriting (i.e. 'show dont' tell', 'dramatize', etc.), but once you understand those simple concepts, i find good literature very inspiring, definitely more so than reading scripts. a script is the result of the story it wants to convey on-screen; scripts are not the story.

my $0.02
 
azharrison said:
Don't get me wrong, I AM currently reading a couple of books (Story & Screenwriters Bible), Have also read a couple books on novels, writing funny, etc... but I would like to read scripts as well. I am very shakey on script formatting.

While I won't go so far as to call McKee a pompus windbag, I do find his book a bit discouraging at my level (ABSOLUTE Beginner). He does more to say that 'its all been done and that everything is a copy of everything else'... but then he throw you a bone of "film industry is STARVING for good screenplays"... so, I keep reading.

I love PIXAR for superb stories, therefore I am very excited to read McDonald's book!
Click to expand...

I finally broke down and bought Story after it had been out for a few years, and while I appreciated it, I didn't find it especially helpful. What I found most useful was the section on genres at the beginning, and on what he calls the controlling idea. And I commend him for insisting that a writer learn the rules first before breaking them. But that was about it.

I have Field's original Screenplay, some Seger books, Story, and two or three others I've picked up over the years. I kept picking them up because none of them really helped me with what I needed to learn, which was how best to think about story, how to generate the questions that would best help me flesh out and structure my initial ideas.

Fifteen years in, the only two books I've found genuinely helpful in that regard I've found in the last few years—Invisible Ink (now) and Sheila Gallien's So Your Mama Loves It. You know about McDonald. Gallien was the personal story assistant to Bill Broyles Jr. (Apollo 13, Cast Away, Entrapment) for several years. She helped him create the stories and was part of the whole development process—meetings, notes, rewrites, etc. Her experience shows. The book's not in publication anymore, but you can buy it as an e-book on her website.

Between those two books—McDonald's and hers; a couple on directing and acting; and a shelf full of classic screenplays, I genuinely believe a new screenwriter could call his library done. There's so much more to be learned from reading great scripts and writing—and rewriting—your own.


Add: Terry Rossio's columns are also required reading, particularly on situation-based writing. 50+ columns (and so much more) from half of one of the most successful writing teams ever. (Aladdin, The Mask of Zorro, Shrek, POTC 1-4)
 
Thanks for the advice. I'm finding screenwriting is an overwhelming process! It is a what-comes-first? process! I don't know where to start... I have notes, scattered from my iPhone, to index cards, to scraps of paper and notebooks, to the 70 pages I lost on a crashed computer (I LEARNED THE LESSON OF BACK-UP copies!!!) I THINK I have a decent premise and have much of the screenplay thought out, I just don't know how to organize it into a script...

For now, I am focused on reading, and learning. :huh:
 
azharrison said:
Thanks for the advice. I'm finding screenwriting is an overwhelming process! It is a what-comes-first? process! I don't know where to start... I have notes, scattered from my iPhone, to index cards, to scraps of paper and notebooks, to the 70 pages I lost on a crashed computer (I LEARNED THE LESSON OF BACK-UP copies!!!) I THINK I have a decent premise and have much of the screenplay thought out, I just don't know how to organize it into a script...

For now, I am focused on reading, and learning. :huh:
Click to expand...

The way I start you can find here. Check out the entire thread for more processes. You just have to find the one that works best for you.
 
azharrison said:
... 70 pages I lost on a crashed computer (I LEARNED THE LESSON OF BACK-UP copies!!!)...
Click to expand...

I recently discovered a free open source program called Clonezilla that is marvelous; does imaged backups and restores of drives; for example, I can do an imaged backup of my Windows 7 "C:" drive, imaging the 130GB on that drive (the drive is much bigger capacity, but only has 130GB of stuff on it) to compressed 80GB clonezilla image on my D: data drive and also copied to an external 1TB drive. Can do the same for my data on my data drive. Then if a system crashes or is stolen you use clonezilla to restore that imaged drive or partition to what it was. Magical, a thing of beauty, I highly recommend clonezilla, and a couple of 1TB or whatever external backup drives. Future optical discs will be coming out that will hold 1TB+ of data to easily burn system drives with the OS and data.

And of course there is Google Docs which I love, and that now allows uploading any file type, multiple files or folders at a time now, to easily upload screenplays for backup.
 
I liked The Scriptwriters Bible, How NOT to Write a Screenplay was pretty good I thought, The 101 Habits of Highly Successful Screenwriters I found very useful, mainly because it told me that some of the things I was doing and wondering about were actually pretty common for successful screenwriters. That kind of freed me to do them and not worry. Other things, I picked up and incorporated into my routine or writing, etc.

I thought Save the Cat! was very good, of course, it's a classic. It wasn't a be-all, end-all to me but it's a good one, you should read it if you're a screenwriter. I've also read books like Screenwriting from the Soul, Screenplay, Writing Scripts Hollywood Will Love, and quite a few others...
 
texvanwinkle said:
See my post here.

And I can't recommend Brian McDonald's book Invisible Ink (and his blog) enough. It's an easy recommendation to follow, too, since you can read both—yes, including the book—for absolutely free at the links. (Though a donation to his website, or purchasing the book through Amazon, certainly wouldn't be turned down.)

Don't—do not—spend much time reading how-to-write-a-screenplay books. Reading scripts is the best way to go. Some say you should read bad scripts to learn what not to do. Personally that never worked for me. I've done better reading great scripts and trying to make sure my scripts read like those.

The only other books I can suggest reading are books on directing and acting craft, just to get a better understanding for how directors and actors approach a script. What are they looking for your scenes, your characters, to do? The two books I chose have been more helpful to me than most of the screenwriting books I've read: Directing Actors by Weston, and Film Directing Fundamentals by Proferes.
Click to expand...

Can anybody else get Invisible Ink to display properly? I'm seeing a bunch of weird characters when I try to read the book. It was fine a few weeks ago.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top