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Blacker, Irwin R., The Elements of Screenwriting, A Guide for Film and Television Writing. Here is welcome help for every aspiring screenwriter who has discovered that putting together a successful screenplay is much harder than it seems. In The Elements of Screenwriting, the late Dr. Irwin R. Blacker, whose students included the writers of such films as American Graffiti, Apocalypse Now, and Star Wars, gives a no-nonsense course in screenwriting basics: plot, character, conflict, crisis, climax, exposition, dialogue. Then, using concrete examples from well-known films he shows precisely what works, what doesn't, and why. With a glossary of terms and an appendix listing the services and requirements of the Writers Guild of America, The Elements of Screenwriting is illuminating for film buffs and indispensable for professionals and would-be screenwriters.
Burroway, Janet, Writing Fiction. Any student wanting to improve his or her fiction writing will benefit from the years of expertise of Janet Burroway and her talents as a writer. This comprehensive, informal, practical guide and anthology approaches the elements of fiction from the writer's point of view. Writing Fiction ranges from freewriting to revision, addressing how writers must work through problems in plot, style, characterization, dialogue, atmosphere, imagery, and point of view to write exciting and fresh stories. The tone of this market-leading text is non-prescriptive and personal, helping students to feel comfortable with themselves and their writing.
Dillard, Annie, The Writing Life. In a surprising narrative, Annie Dillard describes the working life of a writer. These are vivid and ironic encounters at a desk. They illuminate. in metaphor after metaphor, any life of dedication, absurdity, and daring--any life at the edge. At one point, a typewriter erupts. It chars the table and burns Dillard's shirt. In Virginia, Dillard writes Pilgrim at Tinker Creek in a dark library. She taps the library stacks with her hand, and counts them to find the aisle to her desk. In the Pacific Northwest, a stunt pilot loops and spins over islands; the pilot takes her up and turns barrel rolls. Everywhere danger and power mingle. The writing life probes and exposes, examines and analyzes, and the reader is rewarded with a deeper insight into one of the most mysterious of the professions.
Egri, Lajos, The Art of Dramatic Writing, Its Basis in the Creative Interpretation of Human Motives. Amid the hundreds of "how-to" books appearing in recent years, few have attempted to analyze the mysteries of play-construction. This book does that--and its principles are so valid that they apply equally well to the short story, novel and screenplay. Lajos Egri examines a play from the inside out, starting with the heart of any drama: its characters. It is people--their private natures and their inter-relationships --that move a story, give it life. All good dramatic writing depends on understanding human motives. Why do people act as they do? What forces transform a coward into a hero, a hero into a coward? What is it that Romeo does early in Shakespeare's play that makes his later suicide inevitable? Premise, character, conflict: this is Egri's ABC. His book is a direct, jargon-free approach to the problem of truth in a literary creation.
Field, Syd, Screenplay, The Foundations of Screenwriting. The purpose of this book is to enable the reader to sit down and write a screenplay from the position of choice, confidence, and security; completely secure within himself that he knows what he's doing. Because the hardest thing about writing is knowing what to write. When you complete this book, you will know exactly what to do to write a screenplay. Whether you do it or not is up to you. Writing is a personal responsibility--either you do it, or you don't.
"Quite simply the only manual to be taken seriously by aspiring screenwriters." --Tony Bill, co-producer of The Sting.
Gardner, John, The Art of Fiction, Notes on Craft for Young Writers. From the author's Preface: "Though learning to write takes time and a great deal of practice, writing up to the world's ordinary standards is fairly easy. As a matter of fact, most of the books one finds in drugstores, supermarkets, and even small-town public libraries are not well written at all; a smart chimp with a good creative-writing teacher and a real love of sitting around banging a typewriter could have written books vastly more interesting and elegant. ... but for the serious young writer who wants to get published, it is encouraging to know that most of the professional writers out there are push-overs." This is a practical, instructive handbook based on courses and seminars given by John Gardner.
James, Henry, The Art of the Novel. A series of prefaces written by Henry James about his own work. From the Introduction by R. P. Blackmur: "The Prefaces of Henry James were composed at the height of his age as a kind of epitaph or series of inscriptions for the major monument of his life, the sumptuous, plum-coloured, expensive New York Edition of his works. The labour was a torment, a care, and a delight, as his letters and the Prefaces themselves amply show.... Criticism has never been more ambitious, nor more useful. There has never been a body of work so eminently suited to criticism as the fiction of Henry James, and there has certainly never been an author who saw the need and has the ability to criticise specifically and at length his own work." these Prefaces have influence critical thought ever since they were first written. All literary criticism today falls within their shadow.
Kundera, Milan, The Art of the Novel. In his first work of nonfiction, Milan Kundera offers a "practitioner's confession" on the art of the novel. "Every novelist's work contains an implicit vision of the history of the novel, an idea of what the novel is," Kundera writes. "I have tried to express here the idea of the novel that is inherent in my own novels." Kundera brilliantly examines the work of such important and diverse figures as Rabelais, Cervantes, Sterne, Diderot, Faubert, Tolstoy, and Musil. His exploration of the world of Kafka's novels vividly reveals the cosmic terror of Kafka's bureaucratized universe.
Lodge, David, The Art of Fiction. The articles with which David Lodge entertained and delighted readers of the Independent and The Washington Post Book World for fifty weeks between 1991 and 1992 have now been revised, expanded, and collected together in book form. The art of fiction is considered under a wide range of headings, such as the Intrusive Author, Suspense, the Epistolary Novel, Time-shift, the Sense of Place, and Symbolism. Each topic is illustrated by a short passage or two taken from classic and modern fiction, ranging from Laurence Sterne to J. D. Salinger, from Jane Austen to Fay Weldon, from Charles Dickens to Martin Amis. David Lodge takes these passages apart and puts them back together again with the expertise of a novelist, critic, and teacher.
Marcus, Fred H., Film and Literature: Contrasts in Media. Recognizing that film flourishes in our culture and merits serious study as a vital and mature art form, this anthology opens with "The Art of Film," a series of essays by theorists, critics, and filmmakers--from Pudovkin on film technique to Stanley Kauffmann on the future of film art. Part two, "From Words to Visual Images," consists of analytic essays--including three original to this volume--by film-oriented scholars, contemporary theorists, and critics who focus their attention on specific films, including Midnight Cowboy, Catch-22, Tom Jones, Zeffirelli's Romeo and Juliet, and many other, often illustrated with stills from the films.
Nash, Constance, and Virginia Oakey, The Screenwriter's Handbook (Writing for the Movies), What to Write, How to Write It, Where to Sell It. This is a step-by-step guide for the beginning screenwriter from the original idea through the completed--and marketed--motion picture script. It tells how to plan and organize the screenplay, how to develop characters, how to write dialog, how to prepare the script, and how and where to submit it for sale. Also included are interviews with well-known film professionals (Ernest Lehman, Robert Evans, Delbert Mann, Frank Rosenfelt, Michael Zimring, Gene Wilder); excerpts from actual scripts; a glossary of terminology.
Seger, Linda, Creating Unforgettable Characters, A Practical Guide to Character Development in: Films, TV Series, Advertisements, Novels& Short Stories. How to create strong, multidimensional characters in fiction is the focus of this new book by Linda Seger, author of the highly acclaimed Making a Good Script Great. She introduces a series of concepts designed to stimulate the creative process, combining them with practical techniques and exercises. The book covers everything from doing the necessary research and developing the backstory and character psychology to avoiding stereotypes and working through character blocks. Throughout are interviews with many of today's top writers for film, television, and advertising as well as novelists and playwrights.
Seger, Linda, Making a Good Script Great, A Guide for Writing and Rewriting. In scriptwriting, it's not the writing but the rewriting that counts. For many writers, ideas for stories and characters flow easily, but in creating the script, something gets off track. The emphasis in this book is how to get that script back on track and preserve the original creativity. It takes the writer through the important second step--after a first draft has been written--by helping identify and define the subtle problems that occur in most scripts. And it gives specific methods to help writers craft their stories to create tighter, stronger, and more workable scripts.
Surmelian, Leon, Techniques of Fiction Writing: Measure and Madness. The writer needs both madness--inspiration, intuitive insight--and measure--technique, control of language, understanding of poetics. No one can teach the first, but Leon Surmelian expounds the second with such humor and zest that one can hardly resist taking to the typewriter. He illustrates fiction's many aspects with examples ranging from Flaubert to Joyce, from Dostoevsky to Hemingway, forcing one to look again at their books to see more clearly the trends of modern fiction.
Wellek, Rene, and Austin Warren, Theory of Literature. A systematic analysis of literature in the United States and Europe, defending literature as art rather than as the creature of historical and psychological environment. This book crystallizes a movement that has been underway for two decades in this country to focus literary criticism and literary study in general on literature itself, rather than on the historical backgrounds, the political and social currents that influence literary creation. This is a reasoned defense of the creative imagination, which is to be judged for the fruits of its labor without dependence on the crutch of custom.