Bibliografía sobre guiones dramáticos para televisión y series / Comunicación audiovisual

Writing the Pilot by William Rabkin

Concise enough to read in a single library visit, Rabkin’s Writing the Pilot distills the basic elements of a television pilot into an 82-page credo. It’s the kind of book you can read once you finish your pilot, then again after you finish several more drafts. Particular emphasis is placed on identifying and developing concepts that have engines and can generate stories for multiple season.

THE PLATINUM AGE OF TELEVISION: FROM I LOVE LUCY TO THE WALKING DEAD, HOW TV BECAME TERRIFIC by David Bianculli

This book isn’t so much a writing instruction manual, but rather a history of television with special attention to how the small-screen landscape has evolved since its beginnings. It provides an essential framework and vocabulary for anybody wishing to create a TV series. From reading it, you gain a sense of how certain types of shows—like the medical drama—evolved from Dr. Kildare and Ben Casey to St. Elsewhere then ER then Grey’s Anatomy. You can’t push a medium forward unless you know where it’s been. You can’t be innovative in your storytelling unless you understand the elements and tropes at your disposal. This book gives you a sense of how others have pushed the boundaries of the television form and gives you seeds for how you might do that too.

THREE USES OF THE KNIFE by David Mamet

This thin little book is an uncompromising, bullshit-free examination of how drama is an essential human practice that helps us to organize and make sense of our lives. Mamet provides the magnifying glass for which to closely examine your own life. You’ll learn that everything has significance you can use in your storytelling. It’s one of my favorite manifestos on writing. You learn you have one job to do when you set pen to paper: TELL THE TRUTH.

THE WOMAN IN THE STORY by Helen Jacey

This is a rare how-to screenwriting guide written from the female gaze as opposed to the male one. It’s an eye-opening study of female characters and archetypes. It calls attention to the ways we’ve neglected and mis-written female characters for decades, but it assists us in our efforts to push past stereotypes and clichés to make all of our characters more multi-dimensional. The book even offers instruction on how to stand-up for yourself when an executive or note-giver wants to soften or diminish your female characters. Whether you think you do or not, you need a book like this.

THE WRITERS: A HISTORY OF AMERICAN SCREENWRITERS AND THEIR GUILD by Miranda Banks

If you really want to feel connected to the WGA and to the film and TV writing profession, The Writers will help you to better understand the ground on which you stand and the circumstances that led to a screenwriters’ union being formed in the first place. In this book, Miranda Banks explores the history of screenwriters fighting for fair compensation, credit and treatment in Hollywood and beyond, which is what the WGA still does today. More than that, she draws on a wealth of archival materials that can be found in the WGF Archives.

THE WRITER’S JOURNEY: MYTHIC STRUCTURE FOR SCREENWRITERS by Christopher Vogler

Joseph Campbell’s writings about “The Hero’s Journey” have provided a backbone for much of Hollywood’s storytelling for decades. The Writer’s Journey distills Campbell’s often dense teachings into simple concepts and examples very easily digestible by the average screenwriter. The most useful part of this book is its exploration of ancient character archetypes. In defining these archetypes, Vogler helps you make sure every character serves a distinct and useful function in your story. Screen and television writers are modern-day mythmakers. This book provides not only a great first step toward understanding myths more intrinsically, but also helps you to connect your own storytelling to the primal practice of mythmaking.

WRITING FOR EMOTIONAL IMPACT by Karl Iglesias

There’s nothing more vital for writers to understand than emotion. Writing for Emotional Impact is essential reading as it offers something truly valuable: Insight into how our emotions work. Having trouble making your character appealing on page one?  This book provides copious tactics for how to get a reader invested in your script at every level. More importantly, if you bring your own emotions to the table, it will help you to understand what you care about and are moved by, therefore inspiring you to rein in your own taste and storytelling impulses – the importance of which, again, cannot be overstated.