This afternoon I went to the library at my university for a bit of research on movie making and screenwriting to help continue my development of a screenplay. The library features 10 full floors of books and even though the film section is relegated to a single row on a single floor it still features more material than I could reasonably read even with years at my disposal. When I thought about this fact while making my way from shelf to shelf I realized that while I read every single day I probably have only read 20-30 entire books so far this year. It dawned on me that most of my information comes through articles and reading the parts of books that interest me and that actually may be a good thing.

Today for instance I pulled books off of the shelf on Woody Allen films,a book on Ridley Scott's films, a book of essays on Blade Runner, and three separate books on writing and selling screenplays. Now unless I had mounds of time that I wanted to dedicate to reading these books let's say it could take a month or so of my life to sit down and read each page. Sure it would be an accomplishment of sorts but would the time invested be worth it? No. I knew exactly what I wanted to read about going into the day, developing a screenplay. So as a result upon opening each books I scanned the table of contents to pick out the sections that would be most beneficial for me. I read about the characters and their relationships in Manhattan, I read about interpretations of Blade Runner and the production of that Los Angeles cityscape , and then I focused specifically on writing scenes and took notes from each of the three books on their specific advice.

In three hours I managed to gather all the information I wanted today and read some nice tid bits about two movies I enjoy that made me feel creative. Now I'm not saying that I want to start doing this with every single book I pick up but let's face it many books especially non-fiction that don't require you to follow in a linear fashion because up to half of it can be fluff. When I looked through these books on screenplays entire chapters were devoted to why would you want to write one? This may be well and good if you lack motivation to do something but I'm in a library on a day I could have done anything I wanted but instead I wanted to learn further about crafting scenes, I think I can safely skip those types of chapters.

It's just like the textbooks you buy for a class have any of your professors covered every chapter that's in those mammoth back breakers? None of mine have but did it stop you from feeling like you didn't learn? Would you have learned more if the professor tried to squeeze 50-60 chapters into 4 months of the semester? No you have to be efficient with your learning and break things down into further sections just like you have separate classes for a major. If i were to sit down and read one giant book that covered every topic of screenwriting I highly doubt that I could write a better script than if I had taken the same time and read only about creating scenes from several sources. The first option would give me shallow understanding of everything instead of a great deal of knowledge in one area and the movie maybe crap and other areas but it might have enough memorable scenes to carry it to decency.

I still want to read complete books every month and I'm doing so especially with classics on audio book which just listening to at the gym could net me and extra 5-10 per month but I also need to ramp up my intensity for going after specific knowledge in books. I need to stop feeling like it was somehow a failure that I checked out a book and didn't finish the whole thing and cut through the fluff. It's like I mentioned in this post: Become World Class at Something about utilizing short bursts of intense focus on one aspect of a subject and becoming great at one thing instead of trying to learn a whole broad topic at once and I think I may have just found it's application in crafting a screenplay. I'll have to think on this some more and I'll let you know in future posts what my course of action will be. Keep reading.

I got the list of these books from the selected bibliography of the 48 Laws of Power and linked the titles to places on the internet where they could be found. For the majority of these books I linked right to the Amazon page because they aren't very popular and still under copyright so finding them on the web for free was a no go. However, for many of the books I did link the free text or audio versions because they are classics that belong to the public domain. I don't think I'm going to go through this whole list and read everything myself but if you're up to the challenge by all means dive in.


Fables of Aesop by Aesop

The Chinese Machiavelli by Dennis Bloodworth and Ching Ping

Cheating: Deception in war & magic, games & sports, sex & religion, business & con games, politics & espionage, art & science by J. Barton Bowyer

The Book of the Courtier by Baldesar Castiglione

On War by Carl von Clausewitz

The Court Society by Norbet Elias.

The Power of the Charlatan by Grete de Francesco (try your local libraries for this one it's apparently hard to come by).

The Power Tactics of Jesus Christ and Other Essays by Jay Haley

The Complete Works of Han-fei-tzu by Han-fei-tzu
I linked the basic writings because the book was out of print.

The Histories by Herodotus. Free audio book here: Librivox

Kissinger: A Biography by Walter Issacson

Selected Fables by Jean de La Fontaine

Life, Letters and Epicurian Philosophy of Ninon de Lenclos, The Celebrated Beauty of the 17th Century by Ninon de Lenclos.

Bismarck: The Story of a Fighter by Emil Ludwig.

The Prince and The Discourses by Niccolo Machiavelli.

Selected Military Writings of Mao Tse-tung by Mao Tse-tung.

Monstrous Regiment: Women Rulers in Men's Worlds by Betty Milan.

The Complete Essays by Michel de Montaigne.

The Art of Winning Wars by Col. James Mrazek.

Hustlers and Con Men by Jay Robert Nash.

The Birth of Tragedy and On the Genealogy of Morals by Friedrich Nietzsche.

Talleyrand: The Art of Survival by Jean Orieux.

Makers of Rome and The Rise and Fall of Athens by Plutarch.

Foxes and Lions: Machiavelli's Confidence Men by Wayne A. Rebhorn.

Memoirs of Jean Francois Paul de Gondi, Cardinal de Retz by Cardinal de Retz.

Cha-no-yu: The Japanese Tea Ceremony by A.L. Sadler.

Amoral Politics by Ben-Ami Scharfstein.

Mirrors, Masks, Lies, and Secrets by Karl E. Scheibe.

The Wisdom of Life and Counsels and Maxims by Arthur Schopenhauer.

The Book of Stratagems: Tactics for Triumph and Survival by Harro von Senger.

The Craft of Power by R.G.H. Siu.

The Art of War by Sun-tzu.

The History of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides.

Ways of Lying: Dissimulation, Persecution, and Conformity by Perez Zagorin.

The Con Game and "Yellow Kid" Weil by "Yellow Kid" Weil.