Screenwriting is a noble pursuit, with the role of a screenwriter to create the initial seed and starting point of a dramatic narrative that will eventually take physical form. Whether that is a film, a play or even an opera. In this article, we’re going to cover some of the best screenwriting books out there.

I’m often asked what are the best books on screenwriting, so I thought an article with some of my recommendations would be helpful.

Are you starting out as a screenwriter? We have you covered with these recommendations. And if you’re more advanced, some of these tomes would be awesome additions to the vast knowledge you already possess.

Let’s jump in!

Best Screenwriting Books – A Guide to the Best Books on Screenwriting

Here is a selection of books which offer tips and advice for screenwriters of all levels. Pick the ones that most resonate with you and this can be the most enjoyable and creatively rewarding.

Without further ado, let’s jump into our list of the best screenwriting books out there.

Story: Style, Structure, Substance, 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.

Save the Cat: The Last Book on Screenwriting 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.

Your Screenplay Sucks: 100 Ways to Make It Great

A lifetime member of the Writer’s Guild of America who has had three feature films produced from his screenplays, Akers offers beginning writers the tools they need to get their screenplay noticed.

Screenplay

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.

In this revised edition of his premiere guide, the underpinnings of successful onscreen narratives are revealed in clear and encouraging language that will remain wise and practical as long as audiences watch stories unfold visually—from hand-held devices to IMAX to virtual reality . . . and whatever comes next.

As the first person to articulate common structural elements unique to successful movies, celebrated producer, lecturer, teacher and bestselling author Syd Field has gifted us a classic text.

From concept to character, from opening scene to finished script, here are fundamental guidelines to help all screenwriters—novices and Oscar-winners—hone their craft and sell their work.

In Screenplay, Syd Field can help you discover:

• Why the first ten pages of every script are crucial to keeping professional readers’ interest
• How to visually “grab” these influential readers from page one, word one
• Why structure and character are the basic components of all narrative screenplays
• How to adapt a novel, a play, or an article into a saleable script
• Tips on protecting your work—three ways to establish legal ownership of screenplays
• Vital insights on writing authentic dialogue, crafting memorable characters, building strong yet flexible storylines (form, not formula), overcoming writer’s block, and much more

Syd Field is revered as the original master of screenplay story structure, and this guide continues to be the industry’s gold standard for learning the foundations of screenwriting.

150 Screenwriting Challenges

Writer/director Eric Heisserer has collected 150 specific exercises to help screenwriters develop and hone their skills in dialogue, character, story, idea generation, and rewriting.

Hi. I’m Eric, and I’m a working screenwriter, which is a dressed-up way of saying it’s how I pay the rent.

I started writing for the chance at paying the rent with it about fifteen years ago (oh god, that’s a long time, I was such a derp), and during that long, slow crawl uphill to professional status I learned a ton of tricks and tests to help me improve my craft, including ways to find my own unique voice, and methods to break through writer’s block.

A few years ago I began sharing these writing challenges on Twitter (@HIGHzurrer) and gained a healthy number of followers who were just here for the “writing insight porn” if you know what I mean. This book contains my favorite challenges from that collection, plus a few dozen new ones I’ve learned since then.

To be honest, the book is going to be as much a reference document for myself as I hope it will be for you, so here it is. We’re in this together.

The Coffee Break Screenwriter

The writer receives guidance and tips at every stage of the often intimidating writing process with a relaxed, “ten minutes at a time” method that focuses the writer and pushes him or her forward.

At each step, writers are encouraged to “Take Ten” and tackle an element of their script using the templates and tools provided.

“What You’ve Accomplished” sections help writers review their progress. And “Ten-Minute Lectures” distill and demystify old school theory, allowing the writer to unblock and get writing.

The Hero with A Thousand Faces

Since its release in 1949, The Hero with a Thousand Faces has influenced millions of readers by combining the insights of modern psychology with Joseph Campbell’s revolutionary understanding of comparative mythology.

In these pages, Campbell outlines the Hero’s Journey, a universal motif of adventure and transformation that runs through virtually all of the world’s mythic traditions.

He also explores the Cosmogonic Cycle, the mythic pattern of world creation and destruction.

As part of the Joseph Campbell Foundation’s Collected Works of Joseph Campbell, this third edition features expanded illustrations, a comprehensive bibliography, and more accessible sidebars.

As relevant today as when it was first published, The Hero with a Thousand Faces continues to find new audiences in fields ranging from religion and anthropology to literature and film studies.

The book has also profoundly influenced creative artists—including authors, songwriters, game designers, and filmmakers—and continues to inspire all those interested in the inherent human need to tell stories.

The Idea: The Seven Elements of a Viable Story for Screen, Stage or Fiction

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.

His experience in the industry and as a screenwriting professor and coach have led him to recognize that it’s the selection of the initial idea that is the most important part of the process — with the most impact on the project’s chance of success.

And as Mr. Bork knows from experience, this choice takes a lot more understanding and work to get “right” than it might seem.

Most screenwriters and fiction writers have difficulty getting their work read and accepted by agents, editors and producers mainly because their idea for a story presented in a query or pitch doesn’t excite these “gatekeepers” like it would need to, for them to want to engage.

And when they do read the whole story, their core reasons for “passing” are usually also about the basic idea (although lack of professional-level execution matters, too).

But writers are usually in the dark about this, not realizing that the project they spent months or years on had fundamental flaws on a concept level, in the eyes of the people they most hoped to impress with it.

But even the best fiction writing books and screenwriting experts tend to move quickly past the crucial step of choosing a viable idea, to get to the specific plotting and composition of it, because there is so much to master in those later parts of the process — which feel a lot more like “writing” than developing and mulling over potential story concepts.

Professionals, though, tend to understand the primacy of “the idea,” and learn that there are certain key elements in story or series premises that really work, and which are worth investing time and energy in.

And that’s what The Idea focuses on — laying out what those specific elements are, and how to master them.

While its concepts originate from the author’s screenwriting experiences, they apply equally to commercial fiction writing, playwriting and other forms of “story” — because the focus is on what makes an underlying concept compelling enough to appeal to a substantial audience or readership.

Adventures in the Screen Trade

No one knows the writer’s Hollywood more intimately than William Goldman.

Two-time Academy Award-winning screenwriter and the bestselling author of Marathon Man, Tinsel, Boys and Girls Together, and other novels, Goldman now takes you into Hollywood’s inner sanctums…on and behind the scenes for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, All the President’s Men, and other films…into the plush offices of Hollywood producers…into the working lives of acting greats such as Redford, Olivier, Newman, and Hoffman…and into his own professional experiences and creative thought processes in the crafting of screenplays.

You get a firsthand look at why and how films get made and what elements make a good screenplay. Says columnist Liz Smith, “You’ll be fascinated.

The Writer’s Journey

The updated and revised third edition provides new insights and observations from Vogler’s ongoing work on mythology’s influence on stories, movies, and man himself.

The previous two editions of this book have sold over 180,000 units, making this book a ‘classic’ for screenwriters, writers, and novelists.

The 21st Century Screenplay

The 21st-Century Screenplay is the long-awaited, much-expanded successor to the author’s internationally acclaimed Scriptwriting Updated.

Many books in one, it offers a comprehensive, highly practical manual of screenwriting from the classic to the avant-garde, from The African Queen and Tootsie, to 21 Grams, Pulp Fiction, Memento and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

Whether you want to write short films, features, adaptations, genre films, ensemble films, blockbusters or art house movies, this book takes you all the way from choosing the brilliant idea to plotting, writing and rewriting.

Featuring a range of insider survival tips on time-effective writing, creativity under pressure and rising to the challenge of international competition, The 21st-Century Screenplay is essential reading for newcomer and veteran alike.

The Screenwriter’s Bible

The Screenwriter’s Bible’s 7th edition marks the 25th anniversary 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 340,000 copies in its 25-year life.

Always up-to-date and reliable, it contains everything that both the budding and working screenwriter need under one cover five books in one!

• A Screenwriting Primer that provides a concise course in screenwriting basics
• A Screenwriting Workbook that walks you through the complete writing process, from nascent ideas through final revisions
• A Formatting Guide that thoroughly covers today’s correct formats for screenplays and TV scripts
• A Spec Writing Guide that demonstrates today’s spec style through sample scenes and analysis, with an emphasis on grabbing the reader’s interest in the first ten pages
• A Sales and Marketing Guide that presents proven strategies to help you create a laser-sharp marketing plan.

Among this book’s wealth of practical information are sample query letters, useful worksheets and checklists, hundreds of examples, sample scenes, and straightforward explanations of screenwriting fundamentals.

The 7th edition is chock-full of new examples, the latest practices, and new material on non-traditional screenplay outlets.

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.

Based on the lessons in his award-winning class, Great Screenwriting, The Anatomy of Story draws on a broad range of philosophy and mythology, offering fresh techniques and insightful anecdotes alongside Truby’s own unique approach to building an effective, multifaceted narrative.

Writing Movies for Fun and Profit

This is the only screenwriting guide by two guys who have actually done it (instead of some schmuck who just gives lectures about screenwriting at the airport Marriott); “These guys are proof that with no training and little education, ANYONE can make it as a screenwriter” (Paul Rudd)

Robert Ben Garant and Thomas Lennon’s movies have made over a billion dollars at the box office—and now they show you how to do it yourself!

This book is full of secret insider information about how to conquer the Hollywood studio system: how to write, pitch, structure, and get drunk with the best of them.

Well…maybe not the best of them, but certainly the most successful. (If you’re aiming to win an Oscar, this is not the book for you!) But if you can type a little, and can read and speak English—then you too can start turning your words into stacks of money!

This is the only screenwriting book you will ever need (because all other ones pretty much suck). In these pages, Garant and Lennon provide the kind of priceless tips you won’t find anywhere else, including:

-The art of pitching

-Getting your foot in the door

-Taking notes from movie stars

-How to get fired and rehired

-How to get credit and royalties!

And most important: what to buy with the huge piles of money you’re going to make

Getting it Write: An Insider’s Guide to a Screenwriting Career

There are plenty of books about the craft of screenwriting, and a handful about pitching your screenplay.

However, little can be found on how to go from writing to pitching in the professional space. There is no formula, no three-step plan.

Getting It Write: An Insider’s Guide to a Screenwriting Career unlocks pragmatic guidance for constructing a screenwriting career, delivered by a sought-after industry authority who works with writers both novice and professional.

Never pulling any punches, the book aims to decode Hollywood, prepare the writer for the road ahead, and offer tangible avenues for screenwriting success.

The Nutshell Technique

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. In order to explain the difference, Chamberlain created the Nutshell Technique, a method whereby writers identify eight dynamic, interconnected elements that are required to successfully tell a story.

Now, for the first time, Chamberlain presents her unique method in book form with The Nutshell Technique: Crack the Secret of Successful Screenwriting.

Using easy-to-follow diagrams (“nutshells”), she thoroughly explains how the Nutshell Technique can make or break a film script.

Chamberlain takes readers step-by-step through thirty classic and contemporary movies, showing how such dissimilar screenplays as Casablanca, Chinatown, Pulp Fiction, The Usual Suspects, Little Miss Sunshine, Juno, Silver Linings Playbook, and Argo all have the same system working behind the scenes, and she teaches readers exactly how to apply these principles to their own screenwriting.

Learn the Nutshell Technique, and you’ll discover how to turn a mere situation into a truly compelling screenplay story.

Since its publication in 2016, The Nutshell Technique: Crack the Secret of Successful Screenwriting was an instant classic.

It is the go-to manual many professionals swear by, and it’s on the syllabus at film schools across the world including the world renowned screenwriting program at Columbia University. It has also been published in Mandarin Chinese, Korean, and Italian.