Best Book for Learning? [Playwriting]

Taylor Harbin

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I grew up acting in the local town theatre and loved it. With the publication of the latest HP story and reflection on John Stienbeck (who wrote several plays), I've been thinking of trying my hand at a script or two. Does anyone have book suggestions for learning how to write one, especially for someone who isn't used to\has very little experience with the form?
 

zmethos

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Hi Taylor! I have a screenwriting degree, and the thing they tell us when learning is to read screenplays. You'll pick up the sense of form, etc. from there. Of course there are tons of screenwriting books, too, but you'll learn more from just reading scripts themselves. Plenty of places to read them online if you Google. The key will be to know when you're reading a shooting script versus what the actual screenwriter wrote--when writing a script you don't include direction/camera angles unless it's somehow key to the story (that is, you need a close-up of a phone or something like that).

That said, my favorite books are the ones by William Goldman, if only because I find them highly entertaining. There's also a book called The Screenwriter's Bible that many rely on, and then the whole fight over whether Save The Cat is useful or actually killing creativity. Robert McKee's book is also fairly well known in the industry.
 

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I found there was no one book that works for everyone. So I went to the library and checked out all the how to write books on the shelf and went home to go through them, then keeping only one or two checked out at a time.

I ended up buying, Wired for Story, as one of the best for me. How Not to Write a Novel is good, but better as a source after you have a handle on the basics.

The other thing I did was join a critique group. I've been taking in ~1500 words every two weeks for more than four years. When they'd tell me what a piece needed, I'd go through the books for that topic and peruse the writer's blogs.

Some books that didn't work for me were Orson Scott Card's and Steven King's but other people rave about those.

I would think you can do something similar for writing screenplays.
 
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Taylor Harbin

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Thanks guys. I read the entire Cursed Child book today and it was a good refresher. I noticed that everything seemed rush because of the necessities of the medium, but it was still enjoyable.
 
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dinky_dau

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That said, my favorite books are the ones by William Goldman, if only because I find them highly entertaining. There's also a book called The Screenwriter's Bible that many rely on, and then the whole fight over whether Save The Cat is useful or actually killing creativity. Robert McKee's book is also fairly well known in the industry.

I agree. 'Save the Cat' (though highly debatable as to whether it actually generates good movies) is nevertheless, very commonly referenced in the industry right now. What that says about the industry may not be very flattering.

I personally dislike 'Cat' (connect-the-dots type of writing) and I also dislike 'McKee'. McKee is far too 'general'; its a book for absolute beginners who apparently woke up one day and wondered if they could write any kind of story at all. That's my take on it.

The problem is, most struggling writers already know they want to write, they just need nuts'n'bolts tips on how to actually get coherent content down on the page. I've actually never seen a book on writing which really, truly, does this.

And the other thing these famous tutorials do wrong (in my view) is that they combine 'movie career advice' with 3-act-structure advice, and then--for good measure-- anything else the author wants to toss in, too. Such as their own career highlights, the history of writing, or their own philosophy, or their mysticism, or whatever.

Oh well. Moving right along:

For playwrighting books, I very much admire David Ball's "Backwards and Forwards" which is slim, and technical in its approach. Very refreshing. Top pick for stage writing.

For stage directing, well...there are a ton of useless books from famous directors which talk about how their awesome careers evolved and which contain a ton of name-dropping about all the actors and plays they worked with. I've only ever seen 2-3 directing books that are decent but again, nothing which is an actual step-by-step which could tell me how to direct if I were suddenly placed in that role. But anyway, among the ones which are good, I'd pick something like 'Notes on Directing' by Hauser & Reich.

For film directing, pretty much the same situation. I have a few faves but nothing which would actually tell me how to direct if I had to suddenly do so. It's just too complex a craft. There's a dozen separate skillsets involved in movie directing, surely.

Perhaps the bitter reality is that you just can't get this kind of know-how out of any book; you need to just do it and learn from experience.

...but you'll learn more from just reading scripts themselves. Plenty of places to read them online if you Google. The key will be to know when you're reading a shooting script versus what the actual screenwriter wrote--when writing a script you don't include direction/camera angles).

Agree again. There is a widespread (and very natural) misunderstanding out there that one can just download any script from the web and use these downloads to familiarize oneself thoroughly with spec script formatting. This is far from true. MOST downloadable scripts are not spec scripts at all. So, this is how many beginning writers pick up a lot of bad habits and false information.

Its not just that many downloads are 'shooting' scripts (rife with telltale camera instructions). It's that many downloads are the highly-polished versions of scripts which (first of all) ...were never 'spec' scripts in the first place. They started out written by professional scriptwriters, in-house writers, and/or they were adaptations of novels or what-have-you.

Then too, the versions which have often been made 'available for download' are the much-refined products which had already climbed up the lengthy development ladder, going through re-write after re-write and meeting upon meeting, until it is so glossy that it reads like a cute little novel. You can tell because they're alarmingly short on crucial 'whitespace'. 'Whitespace' is KEY in a spec script.

Upshot: you have to really hunt high-and-low to find a true spec script online. If you look at your fave movie scripts like 'Taxi Driver' or 'Dog Day Afternoon' you see a ton of stuff which doesn't belong in a true spec. The writers (in this case, Schrader and Pearson) filled these script versions with luxurious morsels of characterization and setting details which are quite extraneous to a spec. They're, "okay let's show this to the executive vice-prez" scripts.

Were you to rashly include such 'fancies and notions' in an amateur script, a professional Reader would swiftly toss it to the floor. In spec scripts, the author's 'voice' is supposed to be near-invisible. You have to efface yourself to near-silence. As impersonal as a bowling sheet or a golf score. Spec scripts are bare-bones. Scenes need: a scene heading, sometimes a line of setting, but MOSTLY, MOSTLY dialog. Occasional action, only if there's no other means.

Nothing else needed. 'Over-writing' is probably one of the 2-3 most frequent newbie errors piled atop all the basic, common, inescapable, format errors.

And this is why partly why I believe most book tutorials are useless: because something like 'word-economy' is a skill nigh-impossible to convey with instructions. Knowing 'what to leave-out' is a knack you develop on your own.

Just my two centimes...
 
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Taylor Harbin

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Update: still haven't decided which book to buy...life's been hectic. But thanks for the advice on word economy! I'd never have guessed that was a virtue. Knowing me, I'd probably write detailed instructions on how the character is supposed to cock their eyebrows to indicate surprise.