The Paris Review is a quarterly literary magazine established in 1953 by Harold L. Humes, Peter Matthiessen, and George Plimpton. It’s renowned for its in-depth interviews with prominent writers, known as “The Art of Fiction,” series, as well as publishing original fiction, poetry, and essays. Here is a small sample from interviews I’ve read that may offer some insight and inspiration to those of us engaged in the long tradition of telling stories.
George Saunders, The Art of Fiction No. 245 – Issue 231, Winter 2019
“But I think it’s mysterious, what we end up writing about. I don’t have any big intellectual agenda regarding the Civil War. I just kind of switch on when I write about it. And my feeling is, if something fascinates you, you just should go there—you have to. I don’t think you have to necessarily understand why. We’re looking for language-rich zones, places that get us revved up, places that feel bountiful. You can dress the process up afterward, theoretically and explanatorily, but really we’re looking for a place of excitement and potential, a place that feels language-rich—it takes a lot of words to write a book and a lot of words are going to have to be taken out. So you need a deep reservoir of generative interest. One of the indicators that you’ve chosen a good topic is that you have strong opinions about everything that’s going on in the prose—the language, the form, all of it.”
August Wilson, The Art of Theatre No. 14 – Issue 153, Winter 1999
“I think it was the ability of the theater to communicate ideas and extol virtues that drew me to it. And also I was, and remain, fascinated by the idea of an audience as a community of people who gather willingly to bear witness. A novelist writes a novel and people read it. But reading is a solitary act. While it may elicit a varied and personal response, the communal nature of the audience is like having five hundred people read your novel and respond to it at the same time. I find that thrilling.”
Susan Sontag, The Art of Fiction No. 143 – Issue 137, Winter 1995
“Oddly enough, the plot is what seems to come all of a piece—like a gift. It’s very mysterious. Something I hear or see or read conjures up a whole story in all its concreteness—scenes, characters, landscapes, catastrophes. With Death Kit, it was hearing someone utter the childhood nickname of a mutual friend named Richard—just the hearing of the name Diddy. With The Volcano Lover, it was browsing in a print shop near the British Museum and coming across some images of volcanic landscapes that turned out to be from Sir William Hamilton’s Phlegraei Campi. For the new novel, it was reading something in Kafka’s diaries, a favorite book, so I must have already read this paragraph, which may be an account of a dream, more than once. Reading it this time the story of a whole novel, like a movie I’d seen, leaped into my head.”
John Irving, The Art of Fiction No. 93 – Issue 100, Summer 1986
“I write only favorable reviews. A writer of fiction whose own fiction comes first is just too subjective a reader to allow himself to write a negative review. And there are already plenty of professional reviewers eager to be negative. If I get a book to review and I don’t like it, I return it; I only review the book if I love it. Hence I’ve written very few reviews, and those are really just songs of praise or rather long, retrospective reviews of all the writer’s works: of John Cheever, Kurt Vonnegut, and Günter Grass, for example. And then there is the occasional “younger” writer whom I introduce to readers, such as Jayne Anne Phillips and Craig Nova. Another thing about not writing negative reviews: grown-ups shouldn’t finish books they’re not enjoying. When you’re no longer a child, and you no longer live at home, you don’t have to finish everything on your plate. One reward of leaving school is that you don’t have to finish books you don’t like. You know, if I were a critic, I’d be angry and vicious, too; it makes poor critics angry and vicious—to have to finish all those books they’re not enjoying. What a silly job criticism is! What unnatural work it is! It is certainly not work for a grown-up.”
Paul Auster, The Art of Fiction No. 178 – Issue 167, Fall 2003
“I suppose I think of the notebook as a house for words, as a secret place for thought and self-examination. I’m not just interested in the results of writing, but in the process, the act of putting words on a page. Don’t ask me why. It might have something to do with an early confusion on my part, an ignorance about the nature of fiction. As a young person, I would always ask myself, Where are the words coming from? Who’s saying this? The third-person narrative voice in the traditional novel is a strange device. We’re used to it now, we accept it, we don’t question it anymore. But when you stop and think about it, there’s an eerie, disembodied quality to that voice. It seems to come from nowhere and I found that disturbing. I was always drawn to books that doubled back on themselves, that brought you into the world of the book, even as the book was taking you into the world. The manuscript as hero, so to speak. Wuthering Heights is that kind of novel. The Scarlet Letter is another. The frames are fictitious, of course, but they give a groundedness and credibility to the stories that other novels didn’t have for me. They posit the work as an illusion—which more traditional forms of narrative don’t—and once you accept the “unreality” of the enterprise, it paradoxically enhances the truth of the story. The words aren’t written in stone by an invisible author-god. They represent the efforts of a flesh-and-blood human being and this is very compelling. The reader becomes a participant in the unfolding of the story—not just a detached observer.”
Stephen King, The Art of Fiction No. 189 – Issue 178, Fall 2006
“I’d say that what I do is like a crack in the mirror. If you go back over the books from Carrie on up, what you see is an observation of ordinary middle-class American life as it’s lived at the time that particular book was written. In every life you get to a point where you have to deal with something that’s inexplicable to you, whether it’s the doctor saying you have cancer or a prank phone call. So whether you talk about ghosts or vampires or Nazi war criminals living down the block, we’re still talking about the same thing, which is an intrusion of the extraordinary into ordinary life and how we deal with it. What that shows about our character and our interactions with others and the society we live in interests me a lot more than monsters and vampires and ghouls and ghosts.”
Susan-Lori Parks, The Art of Theater No. 18 – Issue 235, Winter 2020
“Anything, anything can change a writer, if one is open to it. The artists I admire most go through their changes. Think about Aretha Franklin. Started out singing gospel in church, went through a change. She grew. She got into secular music, blues and jazz standards, and then pop songs that became clas- sics. Started writing her own material. At first, people had an issue with her secular side, but she had such confidence in her voice and she was able to follow it.
One could say that as a writer, my voice has changed. It’s grown. And the idea that we have to be who we were when we started is bullshit. It’s poppycock. Think of Bob Dylan at Newport. The famous folk singer has an electric guitar and plugs in—and he gets booed by the audience. The artists I admire go through their changes instead of clinging to what they might have started out doing. Like, we are no longer babies, right? We grow. As a human it’s natural, but as an artist, you are known by your “brand,” and it takes a lot of moxie to step out of your comfort zone again and again and again.”
Wallace Shawn, The Art of Theatre No. 17 – Issue 201, Summer 2012
“I love the idea that drama is a form of literature, and I love the fact that plays are published and can be read. But this can create a problem or a conflict. For example, it might be perfectly appropriate for a character in a play to say something like, “Edwin, I’ve always believed that there are tuna-salad men, and there are hamburger men, and I’ve always been a bit of a tuna-salad man myself, so I think I’ll sit this one out.” But it might actually be more effective and better for the actor onstage to say, “No! I won’t do that!” Given the right actor, those words might ring out, they might fly across the stage and devastate everyone. The sound of those words, the rhythm of them, might perfectly and beautifully convey the character’s hopes, needs, and beliefs. To the spectator sitting in the audience, “No! I won’t do that!” might be the most exciting moment in the whole play, even though for the reader sitting at home it might seem like a very flat and uninteresting line.”
Ray Bradbury, The Art of Fiction No. 203 – Issue 192, Spring 2010
“Take Fahrenheit 451. You’re dealing with book burning, a very serious subject. You’ve got to be careful you don’t start lecturing people. So you put your story a few years into the future and you invent a fireman who has been burning books instead of putting out fires—which is a grand idea in itself—and you start him on the adventure of discovering that maybe books shouldn’t be burned. He reads his first book. He falls in love. And then you send him out into the world to change his life. It’s a great suspense story, and locked into it is this great truth you want to tell, without pontificating.
I often use the metaphor of Perseus and the head of Medusa when I speak of science fiction. Instead of looking into the face of truth, you look over your shoulder into the bronze surface of a reflecting shield. Then you reach back with your sword and cut off the head of Medusa. Science fiction pretends to look into the future but it’s really looking at a reflection of what is already in front of us. So you have a ricochet vision, a ricochet that enables you to have fun with it, instead of being self-conscious and superintellectual.”
Iris Murdoch, The Art of Fiction No. 117 – Issue 115, Summer 1990
“You could name almost anybody who has written a great or good novel and see that their lives are imperfect. You can be unselfish and truthful in your art, and a monster at home. To write a good book you have to have certain qualities. Great art is connected with courage and truthfulness. There is a conception of truth, a lack of illusion, an ability to overcome selfish obsessions, which goes with good art, and the artist has got to have that particular sort of moral stamina. Good art, whatever its style, has qualities of hardness, firmness, realism, clarity, detachment, justice, truth. It is the work of a free, unfettered, uncorrupted imagination. Whereas bad art is the soft, messy self-indulgent work of an enslaved fantasy. Pornography is at one end of that scale, great art at the other end.”
Joan Didion, The Art of Nonfiction No. 1 – Issue 176, Spring 2006
“Writing fiction is for me a fraught business, an occasion of daily dread for at least the first half of the novel, and sometimes all the way through. The work process is totally different from writing nonfiction. You have to sit down every day and make it up. You have no notes—or sometimes you do, I made extensive notes for A Book of Common Prayer—but the notes give you only the background, not the novel itself. In nonfiction the notes give you the piece. Writing nonfiction is more like sculpture, a matter of shaping the research into the finished thing. Novels are like paintings, specifically watercolors. Every stroke you put down you have to go with. Of course you can rewrite, but the original strokes are still there in the texture of the thing.”
James Baldwin, The Art of Fiction No. 78 – Issue 91, Spring 1984
“I remember standing on a street corner with the black painter Beauford Delaney down in the Village, waiting for the light to change, and he pointed down and said, “Look.” I looked and all I saw was water. And he said, “Look again,” which I did, and I saw oil on the water and the city reflected in the puddle. It was a great revelation to me. I can’t explain it. He taught me how to see, and how to trust what I saw. Painters have often taught writers how to see. And once you’ve had that experience, you see differently.”
***
“I write only when inspiration strikes. Fortunately it strikes every morning at nine o’clock sharp.”
How many kinds of stories are there? I think there are three types of story and that every story written, filmed, or told can fit these three cateogries.
* * *
I spend a lot of my time thinking about story and what story means and how stories should be told. I’ve read Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting by Robert McKee, Making Movies by Sidney Lumet, The Playwright’s Guidebookby Stuart Spenser, and The Hidden Tools of Comedyby Steve Kaplan among others and you can learn something from all of them. In fact, I’m starting to reread some of these books because most of them I read seven or eight years ago. I’ve listed these books along with a dozen others at the end of this blog post that you can check out.
Plus if you’re looking for some submission opportunities have a look at my Submission Opportunities for Playwrights page. I’ve listed several opportunities and provided a short description of each as well as a link to each opportunities website for further information. This is a list I no longer update but many of the opportunities are still active and you can check them out directly if you want.
When it comes to writing you’re always learning – always seeking knowledge – always on a quest to improve your ability to tell a good story. Which brings us to the subject of this blog. What do you say when somebody asks you about your story? Do you have a one-line description? Do you dive into a quick summary of the plot? Do you even know where to begin? It can be a challenging question to answer because it depends on how you define your story.
Do you define it by genre?
Do you describe your story based on its three-act structure?
Do you describe your story based on a classification system such as the one described in the book Save the Cat by Blake Snider where he identifies ten different types of movies including Monster in the House, Dude with a Problem, and Superhero? Each type of movie Snider discusses has particular storytelling elements. For example, in Monster in the House, the protagonist is trying to survive a monster. The house must be a confined space and some sort of sin is committed that unleashes the monster. So, in the film Fatal Attraction the Monster is Alex Forrest played by Glenn Close and the sin is the affair. These are primal films.
That’s one book. Another book is 20 Master Plots by Ronald B. Tobias and his categories include Master Plot Classifications such as Quest, Escape, Underdog, Metamorphosis, Forbidden Love, and Revenge. Again, each Master Plot has specific elements and in the Quest plot, for example, your protagonist is motivated to find a person, place, or thing. The protagonist should have one or more companions on his journey and in the end what the protagonist discovers is different than what he thought he’d find.
And just this week I stumbled upon another book called The Seven Basic Plots by Christopher Booker. This is a hefty volume with the paperback edition coming in at 738 pages compared to 278 pages for 20 Master Plots and 195 pages for Save the Cat. This is a much more academic book and his classification system includes The Quest, Rags to Riches, and Comedy. Yes, comedy is a stand-alone category. So, too, is tragedy.
So, which of these classifications is the right one? The answer is they’re all right and you can use whatever one works for you. I’ve come to the conclusion that the most important thing is whether or not it helps you with your writing. Can you use it to understand your story and does it give you a way to talk about your story with others?
So, I’ve been thinking do any of these classification systems work for me? And I like a lot of the things they say and the story elements they discuss, but I think they’re too complicated. So, after some thought here is my unscientific story classification system including thirteen examples of each.
I think there are only three types of stories. There’s the survival story, the love story, and the quest story. That’s it. And each story can be told as either a comedy or a drama with extreme comedy being satire and extreme drama being tragedy. As far as genres go each type of story can have multiple types of genres so, for example, you can have a science fiction or fantasy story that is about survival, or you can have a historical fiction or a vampire story that is about love.
THREE TYPES OF STORY – SURVIVAL STORIES
SURVIVAL STORIES
TYPE
GENRE
ENDING
Ready or Not
Satire
Horror
Happy
Marathon Man
Drama
Suspense
Happy
A Quiet Place
Drama
Science Fiction
Happy
Misery
Drama
Suspense
Happy
Sleuth
Tragedy
Mystery
Unhappy
Shawshank Redemption
Drama
Epic
Happy
Parasite
Tragedy
Suspense
Unhappy
Star Wars
Drama
Science Fiction
Happy
Zombieland
Satire
Horror
Happy
Harry Potter
Drama
Fantasy
Happy
Death Wish
Drama
Revenge
Happy
The Incredibles
Comedy
Superhero
Happy
The Poseidon Adventure
Drama
Disaster
Unhappy
Survival stories are pretty easy to define. The main character is trying to survive. The threat could be a supernatural force or a real threat like a shark or an aspect of society such as an oppressive prison system. It’s also a category that doesn’t have a lot of comedy but the comedy it has tends to be satire and that’s probably because most of the time we’re dealing with life and death here.
In terms of endings, it seems most of the time the protagonist survives the ordeal but often at a terrific cost. And if he doesn’t survive it’s often because the protagonist sacrifices his life for the greater good or for a particular person or cause.
THREE TYPES OF STORY – LOVE STORIES
LOVE STORIES
TYPE
GENRE
ENDING
The English Patient
Tragedy
War
Unhappy
While You Were Sleeping
Comedy
Romantic Comedy
Happy
The Princess Bride
Comedy
Fantasy
Happy
Airplane
Satire
Romantic Comedy
Happy
Up In the Air
Tragedy
Dramedy
Unhappy
Moulin Rouge!
Drama
Musical
Unhappy
Sleepless in Seattle
Comedy
Romantic Comedy
Happy
Die Hard
Drama
Action
Happy
Doctor Zhivago
Tragedy
Epic
Unhappy
Christmas in Connecticut
Comedy
Romantic Comedy
Happy
Some Like It Hot
Comedy
Crime
Happy
Her
Comedy
Science Fiction
Unhappy
Marriage Story
Drama
Family Drama
Unhappy
So, our second great human urge is love. This was an interesting category. A lot of the films make sense. The Princess Bride and While You Were Sleeping are obviously films about love but Die Hard? How is that a film about love? Well, the first Die Hard is about John McClane trying to save his wife and prove himself worthy of his family’s love. The later Die Hard films I’d classify as survival stories because the primary goal is simply survival and beating the bad guy since there is no longer the tie-in to love as a motivating force. The thing that defines a love story is that the main motivation which moves the story forward is the pursuit of the person who is loved. In the end, the protagonist either finds love or doesn’t find love, but either way he or she grows in some way as a person.
THREE TYPES OF STORY – QUEST STORIES
QUEST STORIES
TYPE
GENRE
ENDING
Chinatown
Tragedy
Detective
Unhappy
Lord of the Rings
Drama
Fantasy
Happy
Stand by Me
Comedy
Coming of Age
Happy
2001: A Space Odyssey
Drama
Science Fiction
Happy
Wizard of OZ
Drama
Musical Fantasy
Happy
Monty Python and the Holy Grail
Satire
Myth
Unhappy
Moana
Comedy
Myth
Happy
Pirates of the Caribbean
Comedy
Action Adventure
Happy
The Hangover
Satire
Buddy Movie
Happy
Raiders of the Lost Ark
Drama
Action Adventure
Unhappy
Planes, Trains, and Automobiles
Comedy
Buddy Movie
Happy
Jumanji
Comedy
Fantasy Adventure
Happy
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
Drama
Western
Happy
Quest stories are those stories where the main character is on a quest to gain knowledge or solve a problem or get home. It’s often a story of transformation as the person who starts the journey isn’t the same as the person who ends the journey. For example, the first Indiana Jones movie Raiders of the Lost Ark is different than any of the other Indiana Jones films because Indy isn’t a believer in the supernatural. It isn’t until his encounter with the supernatural forces unleashed at the end of Raiders that he realizes there might be more to this world than he thought.
There’s one type of quest story where the protagonist doesn’t really change and that’s the traditional detective story. Miss Marple, Sherlock Holmes, Columbo – none of these characters go on a personal journey. Instead, they solve a crime. Do we really want our detective to be going through a personal journey? No. We want our detective to outsmart the killer.
CLEAR OUTCOME
So, each of these categories has a clear outcome. In the survival story, the protagonist either defeats the enemy or is defeated. In the love story, the protagonist either wins the love of the person they want to be with or they don’t. In the quest story, the protagonist either completes the quest and wins or doesn’t complete the quest and fails.
If you look at something as complicated as Game of Thrones it becomes clear that the story at its very basic level is a quest for the Crown. And of course, what we learn is that anyone who goes after the throne is eventually destroyed.
So, what am I going to do with this? I think it’s a good way for me to keep my stories focused when I start working on a new project. That means I need to figure out which category my story fits into and then I need to make sure that what drives my story is either survival, love, or a quest. The specific elements of the story are based on the genre. And that’s something I’ll need to think about on a deeper level because there are all kinds of genres out there. The good thing is I don’t think you need to understand every genre you only need to understand the genres you write about.
STORY PLANNER
So, I’m going to incorporate some of these ideas into my story planner and that means one of the first things to decide when I start writing something new is what type of story is it? Is it a story about survival like my comedy 500 bucks and a pack of smokes, or is it a story about love like my comedy, Under the Mistletoe, or is it a story about a quest like my detective story Heart of Stone: A Jessica Quinn Mystery? And then I’ll evaluate whether or not this is a helpful exercise.
In the meantime, I have some reading to do. The Secret Life of the American Musicalby Jack Viertel beckons. Plus, I’ve recently finished a new blog post called The Four Rules of Comedy. In the meantime, check out some books on writing and submission opportunities for playwrights by following the link at the bottom of the page.
BOOKS ON WRITING
I thought I’d add a section to this blog post and list some of my favourite books on my bookshelf related to writing so you can check them out for yourself.
Stephen King – On Writing
A Memoir of the Craft
“Immensely helpful and illuminating to any aspiring writer, Stephen King’s critically lauded, classic bestseller shares the experiences, habits, and convictions that have shaped him and his work. “Long live the King” hailed Entertainment Weekly upon publication of Stephen King’s On Writing. Part memoir, part master class by one of the bestselling authors of all time, this superb volume is a revealing and practical view of the writer’s craft, comprising the basic tools of the trade every writer must have. King’s advice is grounded in his vivid memories from childhood through his emergence as a writer, from his struggling early career to his widely reported, near-fatal accident in 1999–and how the inextricable link between writing and living spurred his recovery. Brilliantly structured, friendly and inspiring, On Writing will empower and entertain everyone who reads it–fans, writers, and anyone who loves a great story well told.” (Description from Thrift Books.)
With insight, humor, and practicality, Natalie Goldberg inspires writers and would-be writers to take the leap into writing skillfully and creatively. She offers suggestions, encouragement, and solid advice on many aspects of the writer’s craft: on writing from “first thoughts” (keep your hand moving, don’t cross out, just get it on paper), on listening (writing is ninety percent listening; the deeper you listen, the better you write), on using verbs (verbs provide the energy of the sentence), on overcoming doubts (doubt is torture; don’t listen to it)—even on choosing a restaurant in which to write. Goldberg sees writing as a practice that helps writers comprehend the value of their lives. The advice in her book, provided in short, easy-to-read chapters with titles that reflect the author’s witty approach (“Writing Is Not a McDonald’s Hamburger,” “Man Eats Car,” “Be an Animal”), will inspire anyone who writes—or who longs to. (Description from Authors Website)
“This description may be from another edition of this product. Learn the basic techniques every successful playwright knows Among the many “how-to” playwriting books that have appeared over the years, there have been few that attempt to analyze the mysteries of play construction. Lajos Egri’s classic, The Art of Dramatic Writing, does just that, with instruction that can be applied equally well to a short story, novel, or screenplay. Examining a play from the inside out, Egri starts with the heart of any drama: its characters. All good dramatic writing hinges on people and their relationships, which serve to move the story forward and give it life, as well as an understanding of human motives — why people act the way that they do. Using examples from everything from William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet to Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House, Egri shows how it is essential for the author to have a basic premise — a thesis, demonstrated in terms of human behavior — and to develop the dramatic conflict on the basis of that behavior. Using Egri’s ABCs of premise, character, and conflict, The Art of Dramatic Writing is a direct, jargon-free approach to the problem of achieving truth in writing.” (Description from Thrift Books.)
The Hidden Tools of Comedy by Steve Kaplan, On Writing by Stephen King, and Save the Cat by Blake Snider. Great books on writing – Three Types of Stories
Save The Cat! by Blake Snyder
The Last Book On Screenwriting That You’ll Ever Need
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. “Save the Cat” is just one of many ironclad rules for making your ideas more marketable and your script more satisfying, including: The four elements of every winning logline The seven immutable laws of screenplay physics The 10 genres that every movie ever made can be categorized by — and why they’re important to your script Why your Hero must serve your Idea Mastering the 15 Beats Creating the “Perfect Beast” by using The Board to map 40 scenes with conflict and emotional change How to get back on track with proven rules for script repair This ultimate insider’s guide reveals the secrets that none dare admit, told by a showbiz veteran who’s proven that you can sell your script if you can save the cat. (Description from Thrift Books.)
20 Master Plots and How to Build Them by Ronald B. Tobias
“This book shows the reader how to take timeless storytelling structures and make them immediate, now, for fiction that’s universal in how it speaks to the reader’s heart and contemporary in detail and impact.Each chapter includes brief excerpts and descriptions of fiction from many times, many genres – myth and fairy tale, genre and mainstream fiction, film plots of all types, short story and novel.Find 20 fundamental plots that recur through all fiction – with analysis and examples – that outline benefits and warnings, for writers to adapt and elaborate in their own fiction.Ronald B. Tobias has spent his career as a writer moving from genre to genre, first as a short story writer, then as an author of fiction and nonfiction books and finally as a writer and producer of documentaries for public television. He is currently a professor in the Department of Media and Theatre Arts at Montana State University and the author of the Insider’s Guide to Writing for Screen and Television. He lives in Bozeman, Montana.”
The Complete Guide to Turning Story Concepts Into Movie and Television Deals by Michael Hauge
“No one is better than Michael Hauge at finding what is most authentic in every moment of a story.” –Will Smith “Michael Hauge is a story master, and this book is an absolute must have for anyone serious about telling great stories for the screen.” –DeVon Franklin, Vice-President of Production, Columbia Pictures Concise, authoritative, and comprehensive, Writing Screenplays that Sell is the most complete guide available on the art, craft, and business of screenwriting for movies and television. Renowned Hollywood story consultant Michael Hauge–considered “one of the most sought after lecturers and script consultants in the U.S.” by Scriptwriter magazine–covers every aspect from concept to deal: screenplay development, artistry versus commerciality, adaptations, copyright protection, living and working outside Los Angeles; finding an agent; and more. Reflecting the latest trends and scripts, Writing Screenplays that Sell includes insight and detailed information on: Finding and selecting commercial story concepts Guidelines for story structure, including: Opening scenes that immediately grab the reader – The five most common goals in Hollywood movies – Why most adaptations fail – The most effective use of flashbacks – Creating emotionally powerful endings Tips for marketing a script–script consultants, script competitions, pitch fests, virtual pitching, e-mail blasts, log-line listings, audio script readings, and Internet resources for screenwriters A complete, in depth analysis of the screenplay for Avatar, the biggest box office success of all time Whether you’re an aspiring artist looking to break into the business or a seasoned pro looking for tips to boost your skills, Writing Screenplays that Sell is the one essential guide you need. (Description from Thrift Books.)
Turning Pro by Steven Pressfield, Story by Robert McKee, Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg. Great books on writing – Three Types of Stories
The WAR of ART by Steven Pressfield
Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles
A succinct, engaging, and practical guide for succeeding in any creative sphere, The War of Art is nothing less than Sun-Tzu for the soul. hat keeps so many of us from doing what we long to do? Why is there a naysayer within? How can we avoid the roadblocks of any creative endeavor-be it starting up a dream business venture, writing a novel, or painting a masterpiece? Bestselling novelist Steven Pressfield identifies the enemy that every one of us must face, outlines a battle plan to conquer this internal foe, then pinpoints just how to achieve the greatest success. The War of Art emphasizes the resolve needed to recognize and overcome the obstacles of ambition and then effectively shows how to reach the highest level of creative discipline. Think of it as tough love . . . for yourself. Whether an artist, writer or business person, this simple, personal, and no-nonsense book will inspire you to seize the potential of your life. (Description from Thrift Books.)
“Could you be getting in your way of producing great work? Have you started a project but never finished? Would you like to do work that matters, but don’t know where to start? The answer is Do the Work, a manifesto by bestselling author Steven Pressfield, that will show you that it’s not about better ideas, it’s about actually doing the work. Do the Work is a weapon against Resistance – a tool that will help you take action and successfully ship projects out the door.Picking up where The War of Art and Turning Pro left off, Do The Work takes the reader from the start to the finish of any long-form project–novel, screenplay, album, software piece, you name it.Do The Work identifies the predictable Resistance Points along the way and walks you through each of them. No, you are not crazy. No, you are not alone. No, you are not the first person to “hit the wall” in Act Two.Do The Work charts the territory. It’s the stage-by-stage road map for taking your project from Page One to THE END.” (Description from Thrift Books.)
Turning Pro is the follow-up work to Steven Pressfield’s classic, The War of Art. What we get when we turn pro is we find our power. We find our will and our voice and we find our self-respect. We become who we always were but had, until then, been afraid to embrace and to live out.
Substance, Structure, Style, and The Principles of Screenwriting
Robert McKee’s screenwriting workshops have earned him an international reputation for inspiring novices, refining works in progress and putting major screenwriting careers back on track. Quincy Jones, Diane Keaton, Gloria Steinem, Julia Roberts, John Cleese and David Bowie are just a few of his celebrity alumni. Writers, producers, development executives and agents all flock to his lecture series, praising it as a mesmerizing and intense learning experience. In Story, McKee expands on the concepts he teaches in his $450 seminars (considered a must by industry insiders), providing readers with the most comprehensive, integrated explanation of the craft of writing for the screen. No one better understands how all the elements of a screenplay fit together, and no one is better qualified to explain the “magic” of story construction and the relationship between structure and character than Robert McKee.(Description from Thrift Books.)
The Art of Dramatic Writing by Lajos Egri, The Playwright’s Guidebook by Stuart Spencer, Playwriting Seminars 2.0 by Richard Toscan. Great books on writing – Three Types of Stories
Thanks, But This Isn’t For Us by Jessica Page Morrell
A (Sort of) Compassionate Guide to Why Your Writing Is Being Rejected
A fun, practical guide that reveals the essentials of good fiction and memoir writing by exposing the most common mistakes literary writers make. All great works of fiction and memoir are unique-but most bad novels, stories, and memoirs have a lot in common. From clunky dialogue to poorly sketched out characters, sagging pacing to exaggerated prose, these beginners’ mistakes drive any agent or editor to their stock rejection letter, telling the aspiring writer “Thanks, but this isn’t for us,” and leaving many to wonder what exactly it is that they’re doing wrong. Veteran writing coach, developmental editor, and writing instructor Jessica Page Morrell will fill in the gaps in every rejection letter you’ve ever received. In Thanks, But This Isn’t for Us, Morrell uses her years of experience to isolate the specific errors beginners make, including the pitfalls of unrealistic dialogue, failing to “show, not tell,” and over-the-top plot twists. These are just a few of the problems that keep writers from breaking through with their work. Sympathetic and humane, but pulling no punches, Thanks, But This Isn’t for Us shows writers precisely where they’ve gone wrong and how to get on the right track. In sixteen to-the-point chapters, with checklists, exercises, takeaway tips, and a glossary, Morrell helps readers transcend these mistakes so that they don’t have to learn the hard way: with another rejection letter. (Description from Thrift Books.)
While other books give you tips on how to “write funny,” The Hidden Tools of Comedy offers a paradigm shift in understanding the mechanics and art of comedy itself, and the proven, practical tools that help writers translate that understanding into successful, commercial scripts. Steve Kaplan unlocks the unique secrets and techniques of writing comedy, deconstructing sequences in popular films and television to show when comedy works, when it doesn’t, and why. (Description for Kaplan Comedy)
An insightful primer on the art of dramatic writing
An accessible, contemporary guide to the art of dramatic writing During the ten years that Stuart Spencer has taught playwriting, he has struggled to find an effective playwriting handbook for his courses. Although most of the currently popular handbooks have good ideas in them, they all suffer from the same problems: they’re poorly organized; are composed mostly of quirky, idiosyncratic advice on how specific playwrights have gone about writing their own work; and are full of abstract theorizing on the nature of art. As a result, they fail to offer any concrete information on how to construct a well-written play or any useful guidelines and exercises. Moreover, few of these books are actually written by working playwrights. Out of frustration, Spencer wrote his own book. The result, The Playwright’s Guidebook, is a clear, concise, and engaging handbook. Spencer addresses the important principles of structure, includes insightful writing exercises that build upon one another, explores the creative process, and troubleshoots recurrent problems that playwrights actually face. (Description from Thrift Books.)
Why does a director choose a particular script? What must they do in order to keep actors fresh and truthful through take after take of a single scene? How do you stage a shootout–involving more than one hundred extras and three colliding taxis–in the heart of New York’s diamond district? What does it take to keep the studio honchos happy? From the first rehearsal to the final screening, Making Movies is a master’s take, delivered with clarity, candor, and a wealth of anecdote. For in this book, Sidney Lumet, one of our most consistently acclaimed directors, gives us both a professional memoir and a definitive guide to the art, craft, and business of the motion picture. Drawing on forty years of experience on movies that range from Long Day’s Journey into Night to Network and The Verdict –and with such stars as Katharine Hepburn, Paul Newman, Marlon Brando, and Al Pacino–Lumet explains how painstaking labor and inspired split-second decisions can result in two hours of screen magic. (Description from Thrift Books.)
