There are countless Screenwriting courses, tutorials, articles available online, but for some, having a book is still a necessity to learn. This is an up-to-date list of recommended books.
- Save The Cat! The Last Book on Screenwriting You’ll Ever Need (2005)
- Screenplay: The Foundations of Screenwriting (2005)
- The Nutshell Technique: Crack the Secret of Successful Screenwriting (2016)
- Adventures in the Screen Trade: A Personal View of Hollywood and Screenwriting (1989)
- The Idea: The Seven Elements of a Viable Story for Screen, Stage or Fiction (2018)
- The Anatomy of Story: 22 Steps to Becoming a Master Storyteller ()
- The Screenwriter’s Bible, 6th Edition: A Complete Guide to Writing, Formatting, and Selling Your Script (Expanded & Updated) (2014)
- Write to TV (2014)
- Screenwriting for Teens: The 100 Principles of Screenwriting Every Budding Writer Must Know (2006)
- Screenwriting For Dummies (2008)
Save The Cat! The Last Book on Screenwriting You’ll Ever Need (2005)
Here’s what started the phenomenon: the best seller, for over 15 years, that’s been used by screenwriters around the world! Blake Snyder tells all in this fast, funny and candid look inside the movie business.
Screenplay: The Foundations of Screenwriting (2005)
Hollywood’s script guru teaches you how to write a screenplay in “the ‘bible’ of screenwriting” (The New York Times)—now celebrating forty years of screenwriting success!Syd Field’s books on the essential structure of emotionally satisfying screenplays have ignited lucrative careers in film and television since 1979.
The Nutshell Technique: Crack the Secret of Successful Screenwriting (2016)
"The Nutshell Technique cracks the code behind why we love the movies that we love. It guides you to organically write the story you want to tell." Veteran script consultant Jill Chamberlain discovered in her work that an astounding 99 percent of first-time screenwriters don't know how to tell a story. What the 99 percent do instead is present a situation.
Adventures in the Screen Trade: A Personal View of Hollywood and Screenwriting (1989)
Now available as an ebook for the first time!No one knows the writer’s Hollywood more intimately than William Goldman.
The Idea: The Seven Elements of a Viable Story for Screen, Stage or Fiction (2018)
Most screenwriting books tend to focus on story structure, scene writing, navigating the business, and other parts of the craft that come AFTER the initial choice of the central concept for a story.Multiple Emmy- and Golden Globe-winning writer/producer Erik Bork (HBO’s Band of Brothers) takes a different approach.
The Anatomy of Story: 22 Steps to Becoming a Master Storyteller ()
John Truby is one of the most respected and sought-after story consultants in the film industry, and his students have gone on to pen some of Hollywood’s most successful films, including Sleepless in Seattle, Scream, and Shrek. The Anatomy of Story is his long-awaited first book, and it shares all his secrets for writing a compelling script.
The Screenwriter’s Bible, 6th Edition: A Complete Guide to Writing, Formatting, and Selling Your Script (Expanded & Updated) (2014)
The 20th anniversary edition of one of the most popular, authoritative, and useful books on screenwriting. A standard by which other screenwriting books are measured, it has sold over 200,000 copies in its twenty-year life.
Write to TV (2014)
Learn to craft smart, original stories and scripts for a variety of television formats and genres, including comedy, drama, pilots, animation, made-for-TV movies, late night, and reality television. Hear directly from studio and network executives, agents, and managers on what they’re looking for in new writers and how to avoid common pitfalls.
Screenwriting for Teens: The 100 Principles of Screenwriting Every Budding Writer Must Know (2006)
This books gives teens -who go to the movies more than any age group in the world – the tools to do more than just watch those movies. It gives them the tools to write their own films.
Screenwriting For Dummies (2008)
So you want to be a screenwriter? Whether you want to write a feature film or a TV script or adapt your favorite book, this friendly guide gives you expert advice in everything from creating your story and developing memorable characters to formatting your script and selling it to the studios. You get savvy industry tips and strategies for getting your screenplay noticed!
Best Screenwriting Books You Should Read
We highly recommend you to buy all paper or e-books in a legal way, for example, on Amazon. But sometimes it might be a need to dig deeper beyond the shiny book cover. Before making a purchase, you can visit resources like Library Genesis and download some screenwriting books mentioned below at your own risk. Once again, we do not host any illegal or copyrighted files, but simply give our visitors a choice and hope they will make a wise decision.
SCREENWRITING FOR DUMMIES.
Author(s): LAURA SCHELLHARDT
ID: 3139227, Publisher: JOHN WILEY & SONS, Year: 2022, Size: 31 Mb, Format: pdf
Inclusive Screenwriting for Film and Television
Author(s): Jess King
ID: 3377899, Publisher: Routledge/Focal Press, Year: 2022, Size: 2 Mb, Format: pdf
Naked Screenwriting
Author(s): Lew Hunter; Meg Gifford
ID: 2937271, Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Year: 2021, Size: 2 Mb, Format: epub
Please note that this booklist is not definite. Some books are absolutely best-sellers according to Chicago Tribune, others are drafted by unknown authors. On top of that, you can always find additional tutorials and courses on Coursera, Udemy or edX, for example. Are there any other relevant resources you could recommend? Leave a comment if you have any feedback on the list.