Chicago Manual of Style 15th Edition (The tools of the trade, the nuts and bolts of grammar and punctuation.)
Complete Idiot’s Guide to Getting Published (Everything a newbie needs to know about the industry, written by editors who work in major publishing houses.)
Reading the Romance: Women, Patriarchy, and Popular Literature (A fantastic collection of surveys and essays that provide insight into the expectations of the female demographic audience.)
Story Sense: A Screenwriter’s Guide for Film and Television (How to masterfully convey your characters and plot in 120 or 60 pages.)
Story: Substance, Structure, Style and The Principles of Screenwriting by Robert McKee (Thorough breakdowns of various plot models and the best ones to employ to get your script sold.)
The Power of Myth by Joseph Campbell (The references to books and movies really help drive home the archetypal themes that Western culture goes to again and again in our stories and myths.)
The Screenplay Workbook: The Writing Before The Writing (For those who need to meticulously plot things out before writing (a script is a blueprint, and therefore writing it will be more structured than a stream-of-consciousness novel, for example), this book provides all the templates, charts, and questionnaires you need to figure out the answers before you start to type.)
The Ultimate Encyclopedia of Mythology (This is just super useful for anyone who likes to allude to or reference common themes and symbols; plus, it provides a lot of inspiration!)
Writers’ Market 2008 (How can you get an agent or be published without it?)