Books for the Serious Screenwriter
The following list comprises the screenwriting books Scott most often recommends. All are focused on the art and craft of film storytelling, not on the formulaic, complete-the-following-checklist, cookie-cutter approach to screenwriting whose authors and instructors have rooms already booked in their own private layer of Hell. If you consider yourself a serious student of the art of writing film, these titles are where you want to start.
Story: Substance, Stucture, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting
A detailed, thoughtful and downright visceral approach to storytelling in general and the screenplay form in particular from Hollywood script guru and noted egomaniac Robert McKee. Of the many and varied books weighing in on the traditional structuralist paradigm of screenwriting, this is the best by an order of magnitude.
The Screenplay: A Blend of Film Form & Content
Former director of the Filmic Writing Progam at USC's School of Cinema-Television, the late Margaret Mehring united the role of the screenwriter with the artistic foundations of motion pictures, providing an integrated visual and aesthetic approach to the screenwriting art. Largely overlooked as a text, and worth its weight in gold.
Writing Great Screenplays For Film & TV
The American Film Institute's Dona Cooper adopts a refreshingly simple rollercoaster approach to storytelling, and provides a fresh point of entry to the screenplay form and the emotional imperatives of filmmaking.
Expanding on the ground-breaking work of dramatist Edward Mabley, screenwriter and USC instructor David Howard establishes and explores the fundamental principles of dramatic storytelling as they relate to the craft and form of the filmmaker's art.
For any writer who's ever wondered what's so hard about just saying the goddamn lines like they were written, spend some time inside the actors' process with Stanislavski, the modern master of the art.
Wild Mind: Living the Writer's Life
Natalie Goldberg's much-respected manual for creative living, emotional risk-taking, and the ongoing process of staying sane in a life built on words.
Independent Feature Film Production
Gregory Goodell takes an in-depth look at the specific functions of the film producer, and in doing so provides a ground-level overview of the amazing range of technical arts that your words and your vision will someday be entrusted to.
For those who maintain that the screenplay form is incapable of standing on its own as literary art, Bruce Robinson's Withnail and I is a well-deserved 2 x 4 across the frontal lobes. Rich, nuanced and frenetically funny, Robinson's original screenplay is an incomparable example of the film as rendered in words. This volume goes in and out of print with great regularity, so grab it if you can.
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Its place at the center of contemporary culture, combined with its legendary (as in: they mostly don't really exist) paydays, make screenwriting the single most overly-analyzed form of communication in human history. If you're serious about screenwriting, you owe it to yourself to study the creative theory behind it. However, it can be tough sometimes to figure out which of the several thousand "Write a High Six-Figure Blockbuster Script in a Weekend!" screenwriting books are worth your time and which are absolute crap. (Hint: Any screenwriting book with more than two of those words in its title is absolute crap.)