Scroll down and you’ll see a list of all my writing reference books that I use for preparing new musical theater works. I’ve read each of these books cover to cover and some I have read many, many times over and over. I do have some favorites in this list but I’m not listing them in any particular order because what you get from each book may be wildly different than what I learned from each book. We all have “holes” in our knowledge which is different for everyone. For me, these books helped fill in the holes of my knowledge with a deeper understanding of structure, character arcs and story development.
A couple of these books I’ve had for many years but most of these I read in 2018-2019 in preparation for my fourth original musical. This latest musical was widely considered by audience members to be my strongest musical theater work yet. I put the credit to many factors, but mostly it came down to really, really hard work and understanding the content in these books at a gut level.
I judge my theater works on a few metrics which includes tickets sold and how many standing ovations each show received. I don’t count it as a standing ovation unless it’s a full audience “O” within ten seconds of the final number. To me that’s a true “O”. So here’s ticket sales and standing “O”s from my first four musicals and you’ll see that there was a big improvement with the study of these books and their implementation into the latest musical and script.
Conrad Askland musicals:
Musical #1 (2012)
Tickets Sold: 2200
Standing Ovations: 0/10
Musical #2 (2013)
Tickets Sold: 2500
Standing Ovations: 7/10
Musical #3 (2015)
Tickets Sold: 1250
Standing Ovations: 3/10
Musical #4 (2019)
Tickets Sold: 4,000
Standing Ovations: 10/10
The books listed below are mainly focused on the craft of writing. I have additional books on orchestration and of course we all study the orchestra and conductor scores of famous musicals. It’s a lot of work to go through all these books but for me it was worth every minute to experience the end result of a show that landed very strong with audiences.
MY CURRENT REFERENCE BOOKS FOR MUSICAL THEATER WRITING
Comedy Writing Self-Taught Workbook – Gene Perret and Linda Perret
Dialogue – Kempton
Dialogue – Rober McKee
Narrative, Identity and the Map of Cultural Policy – Constance DeVereaux and Martin Griffin
How NOT to Write a Screenplay – Flinn
Words with Music – Creating the Broadway Musical Libretto – Lehman Engel
Sondheim on Music – Mark Horowitz
The 101 Habits of Highly Successful Screenwriters – Iglesias
The Musical Theatre Writer’s Survival Guide – Spencer
Understanding Show, Don’t Tell – Hardy
The Writer’s Journey – Vogler
Conflict and Suspense – James Scott Bell
Finishing the Hat – Stephen Sondheim
Playwriting Seminars 2.0 – Richard Toscan
Steering the Craft – Ursula Le Guin
How Musicals Work – Julian Woolford
The American Musical Theater – Engel
The Making of Musical Theater – Engel
The Secret Life of the American Musical – Jack Viertel
The Art of Dramatic Writing – Lajos Egri
Writing Without Boundaries – Pattison
The Art of Script Editing – Karol Griffiths
Creating Character Arcs – K.M. Weiland
A Practical Handbook for the Actor – Melissa Bruder, Lee Michael Cohn, Madeleine Olnek, Nathaniel Pollack, Robert Previto, Scott Zigler
The Elements of Style – Strunk and White
Three Uses of the Knife – David Mamet
The Fiction Writer’s Guide to Dialogue – Hough
How to Write a Dynamite Scene Using the Snowflake Method – Randy Ingermanson
Songwriting Essential Guide to Lyric Form and Structure – Pat Pattison
Outlining Your Novel – K.M. Weiland
Songwriting Essential Guide to Rhyming – Pat Pattison
The Comic Toolbox – Vorhaus
True and False – David Mamet
Writing Better Lyrics – Pat Pattison
Script Analysis – Thomas
Popular Lyric Writing – Andrea Stolpe
The Art of Character – David Corbett
How Music Works – David Byrne
The Dramatists’s Toolkit – Jeffrey Sweet
Stein on Writing – Sol Stein
Behind Bars – Definitive Guide to Music Notation – Elaine Gould
The Anatomy of Story – John Truby
Creative Courage – Wiley