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The PG £50 Screenwriting Challenge - for a future blog entry
Poetics (Penguin Classics)Poetics (Penguin Classics) by Aristotle
Buy new: £1.95 / Used from: £1.75
PG is a screenwriter who will sell you an ebook on screenwriting for £50 or so. This challenge is to spend £50 more productively. I suggest 6 stages:
Poetics (Dover Thrift)Poetics (Dover Thrift) by Aristotle
Buy new: £1.25 / Used from: £0.01
1. Get a copy of 'The Poetics', like the one above, or this one...
Aristotle's Poetics for Screenwriters: Storytelling Secrets from the Greatest Mind in Western CivilisationAristotle's Poetics for Screenwriters: Storytelling Secrets from the Greatest Mind in Western Civilisation by Michael Tierno
Buy new: £3.10 / Used from: £3.06
...or this, with extra screenwriteryness...
Classical Literary Criticism: Plato: Ion; Republic 2-3, 1; Aristotle: Poetics; Horace: The Art of Poetry; Longinus: On the Sublime (Penguin Classics)Classical Literary Criticism: Plato: Ion; Republic 2-3, 1; Aristotle: Poetics; Horace: The Art of Poetry; Longinus: On the Sublime (Penguin Classics)
Buy new: £3.58 / Used from: £0.33
...this, with some other classical literary ideas...
The Poetics (Dramatic Contexts)The Poetics (Dramatic Contexts) by Aristotle
Buy new: £5.59 / Used from: £2.25
...this, with a modern theatre perspective...
The Rhetoric and Poetics of AristotleThe Rhetoric and Poetics of Aristotle by Aristotle
Buy new: £4.44 / Used from: £4.99
... or this, if you also want to think about rhetoric (and, by extension, Shakespeare) - or buy a separate copy of 'The Rhetoric', to go with an edition of 'The Poetics', above.
The Oresteia (Dover Thrift Editions)The Oresteia (Dover Thrift Editions) by Aeschylus
Buy new: £0.02 / Used from: £0.01
2. Get some tragedies to go with 'The Poetics', like this...
The Theban Plays: Oedipus Rex, Oedipus at Colonus and Antigone (Dover Thrift Editions)The Theban Plays: Oedipus Rex, Oedipus at Colonus and Antigone (Dover Thrift Editions) by Sophocles
Buy new: £1.76 / Used from: £0.01
...and this...
Three Plays: "Alcestis","Hippolytus","Iphigenia in Tauris" (Classics)Three Plays: "Alcestis","Hippolytus","Iphigenia in Tauris" (Classics) by Euripides
Buy new: £2.97 / Used from: £0.01
...and this... (or whatever editions you prefer)
Four Tragedies: Hamlet; Othello; King Lear; Macbeth (Penguin Classics)Four Tragedies: Hamlet; Othello; King Lear; Macbeth (Penguin Classics) by William Shakespeare
Buy new: £7.69 / Used from: £3.25
3. Add some Shakespearean Tragedy, for comparison, to show how he expanded upon Aristotle's definitions of Tragedy.
The Norton Shakespeare TragediesThe Norton Shakespeare Tragedies by S Greenblatt
Buy new: £42.67 / Used from: £16.95
... or a complete version ...
Four Revenge Tragedies: "Spanish Tragedy", "Revenger's Tragedy", "Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois", "Atheist's Tragedy" (Oxford World's Classics)Four Revenge Tragedies: "Spanish Tragedy", "Revenger's Tragedy", "Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois", "Atheist's Tragedy" (Oxford World's Classics)
Buy new: £3.91 / Used from: £1.00
... optional Tragedy extra, number one...
Five Jacobean Tragedies (Wordsworth Classics of World Literature)Five Jacobean Tragedies (Wordsworth Classics of World Literature) by Thomas Middleton
Buy used from: £0.01
... optional Tragedy extra, number two...
The Hero with a Thousand FacesThe Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell
Buy new: £5.99 / Used from: £4.71
4. PG offers to simplify this for you, I think you should save some money (and a possible misrepresentation) and stick to the original - and be sceptical of its thesis
Story: Substance, Structure, Style and the Principles of ScreenwritingStory: Substance, Structure, Style and the Principles of Screenwriting by Robert McKee
Buy new: £13.99 / Used from: £11.98
5. Stages 1-4 should be good context for this book, which seems to be the template for 'screenwriters guides'...
Screenplay: The Foundations of ScreenwritingScreenplay: The Foundations of Screenwriting by Syd Field
Buy new: £4.13 / Used from: £4.23
...and this, which is more of the same sort of thing. I'm not convinced that PG has any insights that McKee and Field don't have. And you can get both of these books for £20 or so.
Adaptation [2003]Adaptation [2003]
Buy new: £4.72 / Used from: £1.66
6. Finally, pick and chose from some stuff that goes against McKee and Field. McKee is even a character in 'Adaption'...
The Passenger [1975]The Passenger [1975]
Buy new: £5.98 / Used from: £4.92
...this doesn't mean you should ignore structure...
Shooting The Past (BBC) [1999]Shooting The Past (BBC) [1999]
Buy used from: £11.00
...or be deliberately avant garde...
The Singing Detective [1986]The Singing Detective [1986]
Buy new: £11.48 / Used from: £11.29
...or disdain clear communication... or popular culture...
The Complete Dramatic Works of Samuel BeckettThe Complete Dramatic Works of Samuel Beckett by Samuel Beckett
Buy new: £10.99 / Used from: £12.00
...or not try your best to make a living from writing...
Plays: "Lear"; the "Sea"; "Narrow Road to the Deep North"; "Black Mass"; "Passion": Vol 2 (World Dramatists)Plays: "Lear"; the "Sea"; "Narrow Road to the Deep North"; "Black Mass"; "Passion": Vol 2 (World Dramatists) by Edward Bond
Buy new: £9.06 / Used from: £0.45
...but that you should be suspicious of apparently easy, but expensive, answers...
Plays:2 The Caretaker .Night School. The Dwarfs. The Collection. The Lover. Night School . Trouble in the works. The black and white request stop. Last ... Dwarfs", "The Collection", "The Lover" v. 2Plays:2 The Caretaker .Night School. The Dwarfs. The Collection. The Lover. Night School . Trouble in the works. The black and white request stop. Last ... Dwarfs", "The Collection", "The Lover" v. 2 by Harold Pinter
Buy new: £7.55 / Used from: £7.46
...always challenge your own ideas...
Absurd Drama - Amedee, Professor Taranne, The Two Executioners & The Zoo StoryAbsurd Drama - Amedee, Professor Taranne, The Two Executioners & The Zoo Story by Eugene Ionesco
Buy used from: £1.00
...and take some time to work out the stories you really want to tell, and why you want to bother...
On TheatreOn Theatre by Bertolt Brecht
Buy new: £9.74 / Used from: £5.50
...this part of the list is pretty arbitrary, but click around the other listmania lists on this page for other possibilities. If you don't want to spend £50 at all, remember your local library.