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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Conrad Askland musicals:<\/strong><\/p>\n Musical #1 (2012) Musical #2 (2013) Musical #3 (2015) Musical #4 (2019) 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.<\/p>\n MY CURRENT REFERENCE BOOKS FOR MUSICAL THEATER WRITING<\/strong><\/p>\n Comedy Writing Self-Taught Workbook – Gene Perret and Linda Perret<\/p>\n Dialogue – Kempton<\/p>\n Dialogue – Rober McKee<\/p>\n Narrative, Identity and the Map of Cultural Policy – Constance DeVereaux and Martin Griffin<\/p>\n How NOT to Write a Screenplay – Flinn<\/p>\n Words with Music – Creating the Broadway Musical Libretto – Lehman Engel<\/p>\n Sondheim on Music – Mark Horowitz<\/p>\n The 101 Habits of Highly Successful Screenwriters – Iglesias<\/p>\n The Musical Theatre Writer’s Survival Guide – Spencer<\/p>\n Understanding Show, Don’t Tell – Hardy<\/p>\n The Writer’s Journey – Vogler<\/p>\n Conflict and Suspense – James Scott Bell<\/p>\n Finishing the Hat – Stephen Sondheim<\/p>\n Playwriting Seminars 2.0 – Richard Toscan<\/p>\n Steering the Craft – Ursula Le Guin<\/p>\n How Musicals Work – Julian Woolford<\/p>\n The American Musical Theater – Engel<\/p>\n The Making of Musical Theater – Engel<\/p>\n The Secret Life of the American Musical – Jack Viertel<\/p>\n The Art of Dramatic Writing – Lajos Egri<\/p>\n Writing Without Boundaries – Pattison<\/p>\n The Art of Script Editing – Karol Griffiths<\/p>\n Creating Character Arcs – K.M. Weiland<\/p>\n A Practical Handbook for the Actor – Melissa Bruder, Lee Michael Cohn, Madeleine Olnek, Nathaniel Pollack, Robert Previto, Scott Zigler<\/p>\n The Elements of Style – Strunk and White<\/p>\n Three Uses of the Knife – David Mamet<\/p>\n The Fiction Writer’s Guide to Dialogue – Hough<\/p>\n How to Write a Dynamite Scene Using the Snowflake Method – Randy Ingermanson<\/p>\n Songwriting Essential Guide to Lyric Form and Structure – Pat Pattison<\/p>\n Outlining Your Novel – K.M. Weiland<\/p>\n Songwriting Essential Guide to Rhyming – Pat Pattison<\/p>\n The Comic Toolbox – Vorhaus<\/p>\n True and False – David Mamet<\/p>\n Writing Better Lyrics – Pat Pattison<\/p>\n Script Analysis – Thomas<\/p>\n Popular Lyric Writing – Andrea Stolpe<\/p>\n The Art of Character – David Corbett<\/p>\n How Music Works – David Byrne<\/p>\n The Dramatists’s Toolkit – Jeffrey Sweet<\/p>\n Stein on Writing – Sol Stein<\/p>\n Behind Bars – Definitive Guide to Music Notation – Elaine Gould<\/p>\n The Anatomy of Story – John Truby<\/p>\n Creative Courage – Wiley<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3923],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3C0LX-1Vf","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/conradaskland.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7393"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/conradaskland.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/conradaskland.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/conradaskland.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/conradaskland.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7393"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/conradaskland.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7393\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7397,"href":"https:\/\/conradaskland.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7393\/revisions\/7397"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/conradaskland.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7393"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/conradaskland.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7393"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/conradaskland.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7393"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nTickets Sold: 2200
\nStanding Ovations: 0\/10<\/p>\n
\nTickets Sold: 2500
\nStanding Ovations: 7\/10<\/p>\n
\nTickets Sold: 1250
\nStanding Ovations: 3\/10<\/p>\n
\nTickets Sold: 4,000
\nStanding Ovations: 10\/10<\/p>\n