What Screenplay/Story-Telling book to buy?

[jon erwin]

I enjoyed the audio book of STORY and it really helped shape my writing.

 

[Gavin Greenwalt]

Two more votes for Aristotle's Poetics for Screenwriters and The Writer's Journey.

Those are the two best books available to cover narrative structure.

The Screenwriter's Bible is an excellent formatting reference. Final Draft is invaluable. And the simple question "How do you show that?"

Combine those two books with "Bare Bones Camera Course for Film and Video" and you pretty much have a 4 year film program in about 3 nights of reading.

 

[Roberto Lequeux]

3 nights of reading? Sounds like you are really into this "thing".

 

[Kemalettin Sert]

is there any ''what cinematography book to buy?'' version of this thread ?

 

[Justyn Rowe]

Save the Cat by Blake Snyder. Fabulous book.

 

[Erich Ocean]

Well, my wife is a screenwriter, but I handle the story stuff and then we get into the craft. For storytelling in the screenwriters medium, the "Story" book is a must read. I find the concepts in the book particularly effective and helping figure out why a script doesn't work, and then going about fixing it. It's the Bible at Pixar and one of the main reasons they've had 11 hits in a row, IMO.

I also learned *a lot* from Terry Rossio & Ted Eliot at http://www.wordplayer.com/. There's 40 or so essays on screenwriting that are awesome, and they also discuss how to pitch scripts, which – sadly – most writers are not good at. There's lots of nuts and bolts stuff there on actually getting to that blessed state described in the Story book (it ain't easy).

For writing, I really recommend finding a writing partner, ideally one who complements what you bring to the table. Or you can do what I did and marry one. ;-)

 

[Ken Waller]

The Complete Book of Scriptwriting by J Michael Straczynski was a fun read with some good tips and real world lessons.

 

[Jeff Coatney]

Since, as a filmmaker, you are probably subliminally more aware of story structure than you may be aware, I'd definitely study structure so that you can see it objectively. Movies are structured precisely. One of the best books I've bought (and I've bought this book as a gift for friends about a dozen times) is "500 Ways to Beat The Hollywood Script Reader" by Jennifer Lerch. I highly recommend it.

http://www.amazon.com/Ways-Beat-Hol...=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1281414508&sr=1-1