The Best Screenwriting Books

I have read a lot of screenwriting books as I was a film major in college and graduated with a degree in screenwriting. While I believe that no book can teach you the same things you'll learn by sitting through hours and hours of lectures and reading your peers' work, there are a couple books I highly recommend.

The first is The Screenwriter's Bible by Dave Trottier. It's a classic. This book covers the basics. What a screenplay is, structure, format, how to write action lines and dialogue lines. Perfect for someone just starting out. You'll learn how to write computer and telephone conversations for the page, what the difference between a montage and series of shots is, and how to introduce characters.

What I like most about Dave Trottier's book is the fact that it's written like a workbook. There are worksheets and pages to jot down notes. It's conversation but also has exercises for you to work on to develop your ideas and "checkpoints". These checkpoints are little stopping grounds for you to make sure you're on track with your idea and eventually your script. The checkpoints ask you to look at your story and your characters and check to see if they fit all the key requirements for a good script.

For example, "does your character have an outside goal the audience will care about? Are the scenes well paced? Do the subplots intersect with the main plot, creating new complications?" He asks several questions like these throughout that really force you as the writer to step back from your "masterpiece" and truthfully evaluate your script.

There is also a section in the book about marketing your script. He talks about agents, script competitions, query letters, the power of networking. This information is useful to a beginner but after having been in the industry for some time you realize, this information is just the tip of the iceberg.

The other book I highly recommend is Blake Snyder's Save the Cat! I had the pleasure of being instructed by Blake for a semester in college. He is amazing at what he does. His method of structuring a script is sheer genius. In his book he teaches you how a way to break down a film into fifteen story points (all is lost moment, fun and games sections, dark night of the soul, and more) as well as forty beats. His method takes all the guesswork out of writing and provides a logical way to approach the beast of a feature screenplay.

However breaking down a film is not all Blake teaches you. He also goes into depth about the different types of films there are. Now by types I don't mean genres such as drama, comedy and romance, I mean journeys. He describes stories as actions; rite of passage, dude with a problem, superhero, buddy love and so on. Save the Cat also does what few other books do, instruct you on how to develop a killer title and perfect logline. Blake has several examples of successful and not so successful titles and loglines.

He goes through what makes one title stand out more than another and convey what the movie is actually about. The perfect title according to him? The Forty Year-Old Virgin. It says everything upfront. And you already know it's a comedy. What more could you ask for?

If you're serious about screenwriting you need to read these books and take in everything they present. They are phenomenal guides and will surely help you launch a hopefully rewarding and successful career in this madness we call movies.