Only Buy One Book

I’m not sure how many screenwriting books I’ve purchased/been given in the past decade. Dozens would be a conservative estimate but only a couple actually left an impression. The best thing I found about having this large library was their resellability – listed as a lot on Ebay, they sold quite quickly two years ago.

So when I began looking for a great book specifically on writing for TV, I wanted to maintain focus on what I was really trying to do – write something *great*. Not be fluent in a million different ways to attack structure.

So I limited my purchase to one book. I found a well-reviewed book by an author who’d actually been paid to do what he was writing about. And I treated it as gospel.

I choose “Crafty TV Writing” by Alex Epstein. I read it straight through and then I’d re-read a chapter every morning before hitting Final Draft.

And, Wow! It really allowed me to focus on writing. There weren’t a million different possibilities in my head (“Should I go with the Syd Field’s idea or McKee’s?”) – there was always just one. Alex knows what he’s talking about, so I didn’t question his method – I just applied it to what I was doing.

The pilot that came out of this routine ended up getting the attention of a major TV agent, an equally impressive manager, and the showrunners of a network series I came close to staffing on shortly thereafter. I attribute this directly to de-cluttering my mind and removing distractions from my routine. I highly recommend it to any writer looking for an escape hatch from an endless search for the “best” way to write something.