Reddit reviews Writing Musical Theater

There's a number of good books out there, with the Woolford being the best I've read to date:

http://www.amazon.com/Writing-Broadway-Musical-Aaron-Frankel/dp/0306809435

http://www.amazon.com/Musical-Theatre-Writers-Survival-Guide/dp/0325007861/ref=pd_sim_b_1?ie=UTF8&refRID=0HYJ16TZG6J6MQMR2J5K

http://www.amazon.com/Writing-Musical-Theater-Allen-Cohen/dp/1403963959/ref=pd_sim_b_2?ie=UTF8&refRID=0HYJ16TZG6J6MQMR2J5K

http://www.amazon.com/Making-Musicals-Informal-Introduction-Musical/dp/0879100958/ref=pd_sim_b_5?ie=UTF8&refRID=0HYJ16TZG6J6MQMR2J5K

http://www.amazon.com/How-Musicals-Work-Write-Theatrebook/dp/1848421753/ref=pd_sim_b_10?ie=UTF8&refRID=0HYJ16TZG6J6MQMR2J5K

:)

This book is my favorite, because it really focuses on the practical nuts and bolts.

There's a great book by Lehman Engel -- one of the gurus of musical theater writing (his workshop in NYC spawned some of the great musicals). But I think his book is more about the lyrics and/or the libretto.

There are also books by Tom Jones, Aaron Frankel, and David Spencer which I don't have time to link to at the moment, but they all have titles similar to "writing musical theater." Most of these books cover a lot of factors and don't focus particularly on the music--definitely not from a theory perspective.

Your best bet may be to get some songwriting books which focus on music theory, and then adapt your songwriting skills to the principles you find in the musical theater writing books.