Kellen Blair, Joe Kinosian, and Tim Kashani discuss writing musical books, covering three-act structure, character arcs, and how songs carry plot details. They stress reading libretti and studying classics like Hamlet, plus spending thousands of hours listening to songs to develop instinct for what works.
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There's so many music programs, and I find a lot of people write these great songs. It's like, okay, well, now we need a book to go with the songs. And you said earlier, we like to write the books first. Yeah. And I think some of that comes from your film school training as well.
I was just gonna say, I actually give credit to 4 years of studying screenplays. I give that a lot of credit in terms of what we know about just 3-act structure and dramatic reading.
And a lifetime wasted on watching old movies.
Watching movies. And you You know, I think Murder for Two, while very theatrical, if you actually were to like analyze the structure of it, is pretty formulaic in terms of 3-act screenplay structure. And I think a lot of that—
Pretty formulaic.
Pretty formulaic. You know, there's that like inciting incident and the dramatic question posed about, you know—
Ticking time bomb.
A fourth of the way through, and then there's the ticking clock and it's resolved, but there's still, you know— Character arc. Exactly. I think that that does come from, They're watching movies and going to film school.
It's also so linked to the songs. I mean, you know, being a bookwriter is just, it's the same job as a playwright and yet totally different. It's like, it's not just connecting the songs, but it kind of is. And it's not just drafting the whole story when you know so much of it is gonna be turned into songs, but it is that too. And I think it can be kind of a thankless job. I think it's really, really hard. To do that and be credited for it when, you know, musical is largely known for its— the songs and production numbers. And I think that's why it is beneficial to have kind of a— what's the expression? A foot in both doors, a leg in both pies. Whatever the expression is.
I don't think it's a leg in both pies. It's like a leg in both pies.
That's good.
It might be the new slogan for the show.
Irons in the fire, irons in the fire.
That's it, that's it.
More than one iron in the fire. Cut, go back. No, so that you can, you know exactly where it's going and you know, well, when I write the song, it's going to include this piece of information, so I don't necessarily need to include it in the scene. It's just that one.
Yeah. And I mean, really also the best education in terms of the book, I think, is just to read, you know, libretti and go see shows.
Well, and just know, I mean, if anything, we're talking about I read the questions you guys sent, and it was a lot about advice to people coming up. And I feel like a really good piece of advice, if you know this is what you want to do, is maybe less to get training as a writer and more to just read, to know the classic stories. I hadn't really spent any time with, say, Hamlet or The Great Gatsby having left college. And that's embarrassing. You should know those stories. You should know exactly why they work and what's so compelling about them.
Which I'll read a lot too.
Yeah. I'm making up for last time.
I think that—
You're getting to enjoy it now.
I do.
Yeah, yeah. But even songwriting, like, I think that sometimes— I think I know if a song we've written is good or bad. So I'm not going to say that everything we've written is good. We've written some really bad songs. But I think—
We'd like to do a few of them for you.
But I think I at least— I think I know when we're done if it's good or bad. And I think that part of that comes from just 28 years of listening to thousands and thousands of good songs. And I don't think that there's anything— I think that there's some raw talent in certain people, but I honestly think it's the kind of thing that like, I think a lot of people could be writing really good musicals if they would take the time to just figure out what is good and what is not good.
The 10,000-hour rule.
The 10,000 hours. Like, listen to 10,000 good songs and inevitably you're going to start to be able to recognize, oh, this is having an effect on me. This is good or it's not working. It's not doing at all what I set out for it to do. And yeah, I mean, if we're writing good songs, I think it's just because I've listened to a million, and we both have listened to a million. And after a while, you just kind of start to say, oh, that's a good song, or that's not working as a song, you know.
