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Type of bind: Mass Market Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 808
EAN num: 9789562915861
ISBN number: 9562915867
Label: bnpublishing.com
Manufacturer: bnpublishing.com
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 140
Printing Date: October 18, 2007
Publishing house: bnpublishing.com
Release Date: September 18, 2008
Sale Popularity Level: 53130
Studio: bnpublishing.com
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Product Description:
Learn the basic techniques every successful playwright knows
Among the many 'how-to' playwriting books that have appeared over the years, there have been few that endeavor to analyze the mysteries of play construction. Lajos Egri's classic, The Art of Dramatic Writing, does just that, with instruction that can be applied equally well to a short story, novel, or screenplay.
Examining a play from the inside out, Egri starts with the heart of any drama: its characters. All good dramatic writing hinges on people and their relationships, which serve to move the story forward and give it life, as well as an understanding of human motives -- why people act the way that they do. Using examples from everything from William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet to Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House, Egri shows how it is essential for the author to have a basic premise -- a thesis, demonstrated in terms of human behavior -- and to develop the dramatic conflict on the basis of that behavior.
Using Egri's ABCs of premise, character, and conflict, The Art of Dramatic Writing is a direct, jargon-free approach to the problem of achieving truth in writing.
Amazon.com Review:
For many years, Lajos Egri's highly opinionated but very enjoyable The Art of Dramatic Writing has been a well-guarded secret of playwrights, scriptwriters, and writers for television. Unlike many other books on playwrighting (several of which Egri criticizes during the course of this one), the author's systematic breakdown of the essentials for creating successful realistic plays and screenplays effectively demystifies the process of creative writing. Egri, who formulated his thoughts about 'a well-made play' during its heyday (the 1940s and '50s), places a premium on an exhaustive analysis of characters and discusion of their psychological motivations. The writer is exhorted to find a premise to explore and to discover which characters will most effectively demonstrate this thesis, then is shown how most effectively to place them into conflict with each other. Conflict itself is also discussed, particularly how to create scenarios in which the crisis develops at a pace that feels unforced and natural. While Egri's view of the well-made play has little space for either the spare musings of Beckett and Pinter or the conscious excesses of non-narrative and other experimental writing, it nonetheless remains an essential text for writers drawn to realistic drama, and to any writer interested in the fundamental motivations of human behavior. --John Longenbaugh
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Rated by buyers 
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Lajos Egri's book 'The Art of Dramatic Writing' is poignantly subtitled 'It Basis in the Creative Interpretation of Human Motives' and this is what lies at the heart of Egri's book.
Egri argues that all action is conditioned by a fundamental principle, which he terms the "premise", whether or not the premise is a known or an unknown subconscious motivation: and just as in real life, which adheres to this basic principle, so must it be in dramatic life. Without this "premise" no writing, no matter how stylistically good, can be a fully developed and emotionally rewarding script, story, play, or novel.
Egri draws the premise of his own book from the Marxist principle of Dialectics, in particular the law regarding Unity of Opposites. He applies the principle that all things in existence, including the dramatic creations of an author, are affected by this dialectical principle of inherent conflict and resolution, which is the very motivating force of both the universe and the stage. He draws on material from the ages such as the tragedies of Euripides and Sophocles, the works of Shakespeare and Molière, Chekhov and Ibsen, thru to several motion pictures contemporaneous with his book all the while applying his critical principle of "premise" and dialectics to demonstrate the inadequacies and successes in each work.
There is no doubting that that Egri is a well-read man with discriminating tastes, which adds a greater cogency to his argument. Even if one does not wholly subscribe to the tenets of Marxist-Leninism, there is no doubting that after reading this book, the principles of dialectics will have embedded themselves in the readers' critical faculties. So much so, that after completing the reading of Egri's work one might even find themselves reading thru selected chapters of Engels' `Dialectics of Nature' as this reviewer did.
If one had to choose only one `How To...' book, of which this is an early yet superlative example, then one could do no better than `The Art of Dramatic Writing.'
Rated by buyers -
This is a classic from 1945 that still rings true today. I have recommended this to my writing friends and they love it also.
Rated by buyers -
One thing this book does not intend to do is tell you how to write. It tells you what needs to be there, so you can judge whether a play is any good or not. A lot of people seem to ignore this basic fact.
What this book does not give is a method, or any other way of writing. Lajos Egri acknowledges that if you have a method that produces all the right ingredients, that's okay. But what are those ingredients?
If you're one of those writers that:
1. is tired of discussions on what industry word means what, and
2. you just want a bunch of rules to judge your writing by...
This is definitely the book for you. No matter whether you adhere to a method, write off the bat from story function, or are such an experienced secretary that you have a "feel" of good writing, this book will help you understand what you write.
This book to me bridges the gap between all the different theories out there. If you want to communicate to yourself or others what you write, and you find you're in trouble with any of the other books out there, try this one. It will help.
What the hell... Try it anyway, no matter what. It's a great book.
Rated by buyers -
The book is exceptional in offering the reader, what works and what doesn't in great writing and play writing. Though written a long time ago, there is no other book like it.
Rated by buyers -
Got book for Stepson, he hasn't complained about it, so I guess it was good.
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