Screenwriting : Book Recommendations by Mike Heff

You should read screenplays by successful writers in the style you want to learn about.

Books (and I have written this type of book) like this take forensic look at writing. They break it into standard chunks. This removes the art.

You will fill the gaps in your own understanding by engaging with the art.

You can learn to walk with a book like this. But the only way to learn how to run. Is to run and watching people run.

Get some miles on your keyboard. Writing will make you a great writer, the world needs great writers.

The more you write the more confidence you will get in your own ability. Good luck.

I know I sound like an angry dickhead. But you will learn more reading the work of writers, not read people writing about writers.

Michael Hauge - Writing Screenplays That Sell

John Truby - The Anatomy of Story

Christopher Vogler - The Writers Journey (More about structure and archetypes)

Thanks guys! I appreciate the advice Craig. I enjoyed Save The Cat because it was written by a successful screenwriter. He breaks down why some of his screenplays didn't work as well and why some sold for millions. That set his book apart for me.

Tough question. There are many books on TV writing or running a TV show. But I haven't seen one that spells out the writing the way Blake did for movies. TV is just different because there is more than one type.

Paid cable shows without commercials are pretty much the same as film. Ray Donovan, Dexter, et cetera.

Shows on network or cable channels with commercials are different. There are things like act outs, buttons, teasers and tags, 5 acts, A story, B story, C-D stories, single camera vs multi-camera. The acts have very specific lengths as dictated by the showrunner that season because of the commercial breaks and how the story plots run during the show.

And there are some other nuances like pilot episodes tend to be longer page counts than the season episode scripts due to the setup information. If you only have a copy of the pilot for a particular show, that can through you off.

If you want to write for Grey's Anatomy, you don't write a spec episode for Grey and send it in. They won't read it. You have to write a spec for another hot show that is still on the air and capture that voice and format of the show and send that script in for a sample to Grey's Anatomy. Producers used to take spec scripts on their shows, but it because too much of a hassle. X-Files and Star Trek: TNG used to take episodes on spec for their own shows. No more.

If you are going to write a spec show, avoid procedurals like Law and Order or other cop shows. Those shows don't allow for character growth by the end of the episode, so producers don't like those samples.

I started reading The TV Showrunner's Roadmap by Neil Landau. Seems pretty decent.

Once you understand some of these differences, then you can write a TV script.

An excellent resource. Get a board!

Hello Mike,

Studio Binder has a great video series for writing television pilots, and you can find it here. I don't think you have to be a member, but you should join up anyway - they have a lot of great stuff for writers. Here's the link::

https://www.studiobinder.com/tv-show-pilot-scripts/

You can also find a lot of TV show scripts and TV bibles on the link in this thread that I started a couple weeks ago:

https://www.stage32.com/lounge/screenwriting/TV-Shows-Bibles-and-Script-...

ScriptReaderPro has a small library of TV show scripts, too, and here's the link:

https://www.scriptreaderpro.com/best-tv-scripts/

Best fortunes in your creative endeavors, Mike!

Story, by Robert McKee; Screenplay: The Sequence Approach, by Paul Joseph Gulino; Understanding comics, by Scott McCloud (because film is a visual medium).

Thank you everyone! Looking forward to putting in some work this year!