1. “Iteration” by CGP Grey
“Though people think my job is making YouTube videos, most of my working time is actually spent writing. When I think about how to work better or faster, it’s all about improving the writing process.”
2. “On Writing Well: The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction” by William Zinsser
“Therefore think small. Decide what corner of your subjects you’re going to bite off, and be content to cover it well and stop. Often you’ll find that along the way you’ve managed to say almost everything you wanted to say about the entire subject.”
3. “The World’s Biggest Scavenger Hunt: A Guide To Finding Stories”by Latif Nasser of Radiolab
“You should also ask people what they’ve read recently, as well as the new breakthroughs happening in their field that may just change everything. Two years ago, I sat next to a pleasant stranger on a bus … an anthropologist… asked her to tell me about the youngest and most interesting folks working in the field today. She told me about a book [that] ultimately became Radiolab’s Border Trilogy”
4. “Postmortem: Every Frame a Painting” by Taylor Ramos and Tony Zhou
“Every idea we’ve ever had for a video started in one of these notebooks, and many of them gestated for months. … The end result is that you (the audience) are only seeing the stuff that passed through our first filter: are we still thinking about this idea long after we first came up with it?”
Also, this film on structure is very helpful:
5. “Working: Researching, Interviewing, Writing” by Robert A Caro
“In interviews, silence is the weapon, silence and people’s need to fill it—as long as the person isn’t you, the interviewer.”
Legendary biographer talks about his process. If you don’t want the book, a lot of the best stuff is in this New Yorker piece.
6. “TED Talks: The official TED guide to public speaking” by Chris Anderson
A surprisingly useful book, and although TED is known as a conference, it’s worth reflecting on what a successful video publisher they are. I found this a useful checklist before I start a video:
7. Malcolm Gladwell Teaches Writing on Masterclass.com
I got a lot out of this set of videos. For example:
Also: Malcolm Gladwell on the importance of candy
8. “On Writing” by Stephen King
“If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot.”
A reminder to me that if I want to be a better filmmaker I have to watch a lot, a thought that ended up inspiring my email list, Video Ideas.
9. “Priceonomics Content Marketing Handbook” by Robin Dhar
Chapter 3 of this document is probably the best analysis I’ve read about how things spread online.
10. “Perennial Seller “ by Ryan Holiday
“Creative people naturally produce false positives. Ideas that they think are good but aren’t. Ideas that other people have already had. Mediocre ideas that contain buried within them the seeds of much better ideas. The key is to catch them early. And the only way to do that is by doing the work at least partly in front of an audience. A book should be an article before it’s a book, and a dinner conversation before it’s an article.”
11. “Ali Wong and the structure of stand-up comedy “ by The Pudding [Visual essay]
A fascinating analysis of the “call back” in stand-up comedy. Found it very helpful when I come to think about video endings.
