Here are 100 books that Television Development fans have personally recommended if you like
Television Development.
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I’m a professional screenwriter with a passion for story structure. I’ve worked on film & TV projects for more than 25 years – not only as a writer for independent producers and studios such as Warner and Universal – but also as a development exec and creative consultant. Over time, I was shocked to see how many talented storytellers felt stuck between prescriptive paradigms and a “seat-of-the-pants” approach. So I set out to fill that void and defined a more flexible yet powerful method in my first book, Screenwriting Unchained, which I’ve now enthusiastically applied to TV series. I hope you enjoy the books on this list as much as I have!
This fantastic book is full of useful tips on the craft, contains many interviews and is thoroughly documented.
It’s especially relevant for streaming. I love to discuss theory, but one of the best ways to learn is from practitioners. That’s why I’m a big fan of interviews. Not only do they give you a chance to learn from the masters, but they’re also inspiring. I always go back to my own writing with more energy when I’ve listened to someone talk passionately about their work.
Neil Landau’s book is a great resource, and it was very hard to decide between this one and The TV Showrunner’s Roadmap, another excellent work of his featuring interviews.
TV Writing On Demand: Creating Great Content in the Digital Era takes a deep dive into writing for today's audiences, against the backdrop of a rapidly evolving TV ecosystem. Amazon, Hulu and Netflix were just the beginning. The proliferation of everything digital has led to an ever-expanding array of the most authentic and engaging programming that we've ever seen. No longer is there a distinction between broadcast, cable and streaming. It's all content. Regardless of what new platforms and channels will emerge in the coming years, for creators and writers, the future of entertainment has never looked brighter.
I’m a professional screenwriter with a passion for story structure. I’ve worked on film & TV projects for more than 25 years – not only as a writer for independent producers and studios such as Warner and Universal – but also as a development exec and creative consultant. Over time, I was shocked to see how many talented storytellers felt stuck between prescriptive paradigms and a “seat-of-the-pants” approach. So I set out to fill that void and defined a more flexible yet powerful method in my first book, Screenwriting Unchained, which I’ve now enthusiastically applied to TV series. I hope you enjoy the books on this list as much as I have!
Another insightful overview of the TV development process, this time from a writer’s point of view.
This is primarily from a U.S. perspective, but one chapter gives a view of fifteen other countries, which is rare. Pamela Douglas offers the TV equivalent of Syd Field’s Screenplay. She lays out with great clarity the way TV episode structure is taught today – although I believe that talented and successful creators often use other tools to design their series.
From a practical point of view, this book is more useful if you’re developing a network procedural than if you’re developing a serial on ad-free streaming or premium channels, but it’s one of the best books out there if you’d like to explore what I call story format (rather than structure) in TV.
This revised and updated edition is a complete resource for anyone who wants to write and produce for television drama series or create an original series, as well as for teachers in screenwriting classes and workshops. It leads the reader step-by-step through every stage of the development and writing process, offering practical industry information and artistic inspiration. The Fourth Edition leads readers into the future and engages provocative issues about the interface between traditional TV and emerging technologies. It’s also the single most comprehensive source on what is happening in original television drama around the world, with surveys of 15…
I’m a professional screenwriter with a passion for story structure. I’ve worked on film & TV projects for more than 25 years – not only as a writer for independent producers and studios such as Warner and Universal – but also as a development exec and creative consultant. Over time, I was shocked to see how many talented storytellers felt stuck between prescriptive paradigms and a “seat-of-the-pants” approach. So I set out to fill that void and defined a more flexible yet powerful method in my first book, Screenwriting Unchained, which I’ve now enthusiastically applied to TV series. I hope you enjoy the books on this list as much as I have!
This is a short but excellent volume, dedicated to the design of a TV series.
It contains a brief history of U.S. Television, which in itself is enough to justify reading the book. As the title suggests, it focuses particularly on writing a pilot, a key part of any series project. William Rabkin is a veteran showrunner with hundreds of hours of produced shows under his belt, yet I really enjoyed the conversational tone in his book.
Make sure you get the most recent version, as the first edition of this classic dates back to 2011 and Rabkin has updated his book since.
When I finished Writing the Pilot a few years back, I figured I’d managed to cram everything I had to say on the subject in that little 90-page package. But that was 2011, and in the years that have passed, a lot has changed about the television business.And when I say “a lot,” I mean everything. The way series are bought. The way series are conceived. The way stories are told. The way series are consumed. The kinds of stories that can be told. The limitations on content at every level. The limitations on form at every level. And maybe…
I’m a professional screenwriter with a passion for story structure. I’ve worked on film & TV projects for more than 25 years – not only as a writer for independent producers and studios such as Warner and Universal – but also as a development exec and creative consultant. Over time, I was shocked to see how many talented storytellers felt stuck between prescriptive paradigms and a “seat-of-the-pants” approach. So I set out to fill that void and defined a more flexible yet powerful method in my first book, Screenwriting Unchained, which I’ve now enthusiastically applied to TV series. I hope you enjoy the books on this list as much as I have!
This is the companion book for Des Doyle's acclaimed documentary with
the same title (also highly recommended).
Described as “the first ever
feature-length documentary to explore the world of U.S. television
showrunners and the creative
forces they employ”, the documentary is an insightful overview of the
TV creative process, featuring interviews with some of the best
showrunners in the business.
There is simply nothing that beats this if
you want to get a sense of how the industry works
and measure the stakes, the energy, the pressure, the creativity, the
professionalism, and the humor experienced or displayed by these
awe-inspiring storytellers.
The book features a foreword by Hart Hanson
(Showrunner of
Bones, The Finder, Backstrom), an introduction by Doyle, and expands on the interviews featured in the documentary.
Showrunners is an insider's guide to creating and maintaining a hit show in today's golden age of television. The official companion to the documentary Showrunners, this highly informative book features exclusive interviews with such acclaimed and popular showrunners as Joss Whedon, Damon Lindelof, Ronald D.Moore, Terence Winter, Bill Prady, and Jane Espenson.
Julian Friedmann is co-owner of the Blake Friedmann Literary Agency and was the publisher of ScriptWriter magazine. At the agency, he has represented both book and scriptwriters for over 40 years and also acts as Executive Producer for and with clients. Julian is a TEDx speaker and is the author of the Make Money Screenwriting series, co-author of The Insider’s Guide to Writing for Television, and editor of two volumes on Writing Long-Running Television series.
He has taught at universities and film schools all over the world. He designed the MA in Television Scriptwriting at De Montfort University, and PILOTS (for developing long-running television series) for the EU MEDIA Programme.
There are numerous books on writing for TV but Yvonne’s book is eminently practical covering the basics and also the more complex and nuanced aspects like the relationship between writers and script editors. Given the importance of the streamers writing for TV is more important than ever.
A no-nonsense, direct down-the-lens look at the television industry written from the point of view of a television drama producer who's been there, done it, fought some battles and won the odd award. Written in an engaging, anecdotal tone, Writing for Television provides advice on:
Getting an agent
The type of writer television's looking for
The tool kit a television writer needs
The writer /script editor relationship
How to structure a storyline
How to write good treatments and outlines
Packed full of useful insights, links and information, the book includes interviews with successful television writers working today, pointers on how…
Having been a Hollywood writer for thirty years, and now written a novel that although satirical still accurately describes the creation of a TV series, I’ve long been amazed at how many Hollywood stories – including films made in Hollywood – offer fantasies that have even less to do with the reality of love and work in film and television than Game of Thrones does with the real Middle Ages. I’ve written fantasy myself, but for people fascinated by Hollywood, or who want to work in film and TV, there’s a reason too to read books that capture the reality, especially when like the books listed here, they do so astonishingly well.
Oscar-nominated, Emmy-winning Eleanor Perry put her training as a psychiatric social worker to extraordinary use writing now-classic films including the hypnoticDavid and Lisaand The Diary of a Mad Housewife. She brought the same dramatic skills and insights to examining her own life as a writer at a time when women faced nearly impossible challenges in Hollywood. The result was this deeply felt, authentic, often autobiographical novel. My wife Loraine Despres, herself a highly regarded novelist and TV writer, gave it to me when I first confessed an interest in screenwriting. The book, now unjustly out of print but hopefully available from libraries and at a price from rare book dealers, has haunted me ever since.
I like understanding television as culturally situated. Television is constructed along a number of sites: cultural, institutional, ideological, historical, or via the different ways audiences understand it. Interrogating television and what it does as a medium was historically relevant because it was a mass medium. But how can we evaluate the medium in times of highly fragmented audiences? Because of this, exploring Netflix as a new form of ‘television’ has become so important to me. The authors all try to get to terms with how television has changed over its short existence. This helps us understand the medium better, as well as our current moment.
This is a short book in which Newman explores the changes in what the term ‘video’ means.
The term is closely intertwined with the history of television, describing first television broadcasts and then how taping was used to bridge the time differences between the American east and west coasts. The term then described the ways home video revolutionized how video was used in the private sphere. Today, we receive videos as the digital snippets we see on YouTube or the short clips we post on social media.
I like Newman’s work in general. But this book tells us so much about TV history in the US; I find it an incredibly fascinating work.
Since the days of early television, video has been an indispensable part of culture, society, and moving-image media industries. Over the decades, it has been an avant-garde artistic medium, a high-tech consumer gadget, a format for watching movies at home, a force for democracy, and the ultimate, ubiquitous means of documenting reality. In the twenty-first century, video is the name we give all kinds of moving images. We know it as an adaptable medium that bridges analog and digital, amateur and professional, broadcasting and recording, television and cinema, art and commercial culture, and old media and new digital networks. In…
The short version: I just really love television! The slightly longer version is that, in my career, I’ve had a very unusual perspective on both entertainment and activism. My first jobs out of college were at companies like Lucasfilm and The Jim Henson company, where I saw first-hand just how important pop culture and fandom can be for audiences. And I also worked extensively on queer causes, eventually making activism my full-time job when I joined the team that brought marriage equality to the US Supreme Court. Through that work, I became more and more interested in the ways that pop culture – particularly television – has been a tool for advancing civil rights.
Along with Kathryn Montgomery’s book Target: Primetime, this book is a fascinating peek into the furious fights over sex and violence on television.
It shines a light on a mostly-invisible struggle between creators, executives, censors, and the public. I love how vividly this book is written; it really feels like you’re right there on the front lines.
And the fact that it was published in 1978 means that it’s possible now to see the repercussions of this fight, nearly fifty years later.
From Simon & Schuster, See No Evil is Geoffrey Cowan's fascinating exploration of the backstage battle over sex and violence in the television medium.
In See No Evil, Cowan offers a probing investigation into the history, impact, and politics of television censorship, examining network programming, and such controversial practices as the Family Hour.
For almost fifty years, we have been chronicling American television, tracking its history, and following its transformation from the era of three networks to the cornucopia of choices now available through streaming. Along the way, we have appreciated and learned much from other TV books that look at the industry from multiple angles. When we started, there were precious few on this topic. Now, there is a surplus. These are the ones we treasure for their well-told stories.
Rod Serling’s fantasy anthology (where he was narrator and chief writer) was a favorite of ours back then and still is. Despite a skimpy production budget, the show’s quality scripts, acting, and imaginative themes usually transcended the sparse settings.
Having seen most episodes several times, we still turn to Zicree’s handy book to refresh our memories of the show. This was one of the first of the “companion” books to document a memorable TV series, presenting each episode with cast and crew information, airdate, sample photo, the text of Serling’s intro and outro narration, plot summary and revealing analysis, and background details. The expanded 3rd edition (from 2018) also covers the various later revivals of the series.
The Twilight Zone Companion is the complete show-by-show guide to one of television's greatest series. Zicree's well-written account is fascinating reading for even the casual fan. Coverage of each episode includes a plot synopsis, Rod Serling's opening narration, behind-the-scenes stories from the original artists who created the series, and a complete list of cast and credits.
My mother called me a “television junkie.” In graduate school, where TV was not yet considered a worthwhile scholarly endeavor, I became enthralled by Twin Peaks and Roseanne. Rebelliously, I thought both had so much to say about gender studies and theories of postmodernism. Absent of an official curriculum, I started reading and writing about television history, medium specificity, genre theory and seriality. I got my PhD and published articles on film, TV, and my book. Since 1992, I have developed several television studies courses for our small media studies department: Crime Drama, Reality TV, Gender and Genre on Television, Transmedia Adaptations, and Media Rituals.
I love reading, rereading, and teaching with this book. Whenever I open it, I learn something new or remember crucial aspects that enhance my understanding of television as a medium, my enjoyment of specific shows or genres I watch, and find new ways of engaging with production, representation, and performance aspects.
I have now taught with it since his earlier 2011 volume (Critical Approaches) and am only sad that this one appears to be the final edition. It is chock-full of intriguing case studies and deft explanations of what makes television television.
For over two decades, Television has served as the foremost guide to television studies, offering readers an in-depth understanding of how television programs and commercials are made and how they function as producers of meaning. Author Jeremy G. Butler shows the ways in which camera style, lighting, set design, editing, and sound combine to produce meanings that viewers take away from their television experience.
Highlights of the fifth edition include:
An entirely new chapter by Amanda D. Lotz on television in the contemporary digital media environment.
Discussions integrated throughout on the latest developments in screen culture during the on-demand era-including…
