Cloth: 978-0-226-17253-8 | Paper: 978-0-226-17254-5 | Electronic: 978-0-226-17255-2
AVAILABLE FROM
This title is no longer available from this publisher at this time. To let the publisher know you are interested in the title, please email bv-help@uchicago.edu.ABOUT THIS BOOK
Moss Hart once said that you never really learn how to write a play; you only learn how to write this play. Crafted with that adage in mind, The Dramatic Writer’s Companion is designed to help writers explore their own ideas in order to develop the script in front of them. No ordinary guide to plotting, this handbook starts with the principle that character is key. “The character is not something added to the scene or to the story,” writes author Will Dunne. “Rather, the character is the scene. The character is the story.”
Having spent decades working with dramatists to refine and expand their existing plays and screenplays, Dunne effortlessly blends condensed dramatic theory with specific action steps—over sixty workshop-tested exercises that can be adapted to virtually any individual writing process and dramatic script. Dunne’s in-depth method is both instinctual and intellectual, allowing writers to discover new actions for their characters and new directions for their stories.
Dunne’s own experience is a crucial element of this guide. His plays have been selected by the Eugene O’Neill Theatre Center for three U.S. National Playwrights Conferences and have earned numerous honors, including a Charles MacArthur Fellowship, four Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle Awards, and two Drama-Logue Playwriting Awards. Thousands of individuals have already benefited from his workshops, and The Dramatic Writer’s Companion promises to bring his remarkable creative method to an even wider audience.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
Will Dunne is currently a resident playwright at Chicago Dramatists, where he develops plays and teaches workshops. He also has led over fifteen hundred workshops through his San Francisco program, served as a dramaturg at the O’Neill, and twice attended the Australian National Playwrights Conference as guest instructor. His plays, which include How I Became an Interesting Person and Hotel Desperado, have been presented in Russia, Australia, and Croatia as well as in the U.S.
REVIEWS
“Dunne has taken everything he knows from the powerful dual standpoints of an award-winning playwright and a master teacher to create the book we’ve been waiting for. It’s all there—from every angle and every perspective—how to bring fascinating, fully-developed characters in conflict out into the light and onto the stage.”
“Dunne mixes an artist’s imagination and intuition with a teacher’s knowledge of the craft of dramatic writing. It is an irresistible combination, producing a book which is simultaneously astute and imaginative. . . . No one can teach anyone to become a dramatic writer. But it is possible to learn how to improve your writing skills. It is possible to be provoked into thinking differently, into adding different colours and dimensions to your ideas, to extend the range of images in your head, to startle your imagination; in short, to be inspired into trying new approaches and methods. The Dramatic Writer’s Companion has the potential to do all of that for a writer.”
“A breath of fresh air. Whether you’re working on your first play or your fortieth, preparing a first draft or polishing up a finished piece, The Dramatic Writer’s Companion offers challenging, thought-provoking exercises rather than formulaic ‘how-to’ solutions. This is the kind of book that not only makes plays stronger; it makes writers stronger as well.”
“The practical genius of Dunne’s writing lessons proved invaluable to me in the development of the script for my own film, Mean Creek. I have read many books on scriptwriting, most a bunch of intellectual blather about themes and structure, whereas Dunnesl’s approach to writing is grounded in specific and useful exercises that a writer can actually employ at the moment of creation.”
“Will Dunne lays out all the right questions with great precision and elegance. In the process he coolly demystifies all the dramaturgical demons; they become nothing more than the routine technical challenges faced by any craftsman.”
“Dunne meets the writer on his or her own terms, eye to eye. Unique, ambitious, and comprehensive, The Dramatic Writer’s Companion contains practical writing exercises underscored by well-developed dramatic theory.”
“In his new handbook for writers Dunne adheres to the idea that character development is essential to telling a story. . . . Dunne employs his wealth of experience as the current resident playwright at Chicago Dramatists, a Charles MacArthur Fellowship honoree, a former O’Neill Theatre Center dramaturg and an award-winning author of such plays as How I Became an Interesting Person, Love and Drowning, and Hotel Desperado to give writers a blueprint on how to examine their ideas in depth in order to develop their plays and screenplays.”
TABLE OF CONTENTS
About This Guide
Exercises at a Glance
Developing your character
Basic Character Builder
What the Character Believes
Where the Character Lives
Where the Character Works
Getting Emotional
Into the Past
Defining Trait
Allies: Then and Now
Adversaries: Then and Now
Characters in Contrast
Finding the Character’s Voice
Three Characters in One
The Secret Lives of Characters
The Noble Character
Seven Deadly Sins
The Dramatic Triangle
Spinal Tap
Character as Paradox
The Character You Like Least
In So Many Words
Causing a scene
Basic Scene Starter
Where in the World Are We?
The Roots of Action
What Does the Character Want?
What’s the Problem?
Good Intentions
How It Happens
Character Adjustments
Scene in a Sentence
Seeing the Scene
There and Then
The Aha!s of the Story
Heating Things Up
The Emotional Storyboard
In the Realm of the Senses
The Voice of the Setting
Thinking in Beats
Talking and Listening
Unspeakable Truths
Universal Truths and Lies
The Bones of the Lines
Building your story
Whose Story Is It?
How Will the Tale Be Told?
As the World Turns
Inciting Event
The Art of Grabbing
Step by Step
Turning Points
What Happens Next?
Pointing and Planting
Crisis Decision
Picturing the Arc of Action
Before and After
Twelve- Word Solution
Main Event
Your Story as a Dog
The Incredible Shrinking Story
What’s the Big Idea?
What’s in a Name?
The Forest of Your Story
Ready, Aim, Focus
Six Steps of Revision
Fixing common script problems
Glossary
Acknowledgments