Solidifying Your Stories: Places to Get More Information

I thought I would list my top fifteen favorite books that touch on the subject of mythic structure. You’ll see that many of these books have the words “movies” or “screenwriting” in the title. Don’t let that scare you off. As I’ve discussed in previous posts, the ideas they present apply just as much to your novel writing as they do to writing for the screen. In fact, reading books about screenplay construction is, in some ways, more helpful (for me, anyway) than reading books about novel writing because movies wear their underlying structure so much more obviously on their sleeves.

Rest assured, though, once you learn the concepts, they travel freely over into whatever type of writing you do and will automatically adapt to the extra complexity needed when constructing a novel.

The books are sort of listed in order of how I perceive them as being effective, although I would really recommend anyone seriously interested in improving their stories to study every book on this list.

Author
Title


Vogler, Christopher
The Writer’s Journey


Snyder, Blake
Save the Cat!


Campbell, Joseph
The Hero with a Thousand Faces


Field, Syd
Screenplay


McKee, Robert
Story


Wellman, Wendell
A Writer’s Roadmap


Bell, James Scott
Plot & Structure


Bonnet, James
Stealing Fire from the Gods


Campbell, Joseph
The Masks of God (DVD set)


Field, Syd
The Screenwriter’s Problem Solver


Voytilla, Stuart
Myth and the Movies


Snyder, Blake
Save the Cat! Strikes Back


Snyder, Blake
Save the Cat! Goes to the Movies


Field, Syd
The Screenwriter’s Workbook


Kress, Nancy
Beginnings, Middles & Ends

That’s it for today’s post. Just passing on some information that has dramatically helped me improve the quality of my work over the years. I hope it might help you, too.

Michael out.