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Dramatists Toolkit, the Craft of the Working Playwright: The Craft of the Working Playwright [Paperback]

Jeff Sweet , Jeffrey Sweet , Sweet
4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (30 customer reviews)
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Book Description

Nov 1 1993 0435086294 978-0435086299

In The Dramatist's Toolkit, playwright and Backstage columnist Jeff Sweet offers an intensive and practical guide to being a working playwright. In this informative guide, Sweet discusses such matters as:

  • The building blocks of playwriting
  • How characters relate to one another
  • The differences and similarities between musicals and plays
  • Screenwriting vs. playwriting
  • and much more!

Jeff Sweet offers guidance for the beginning playwright and advice for the seasoned professional.


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About the Author

Jeffrey Sweet's plays - including Porch, The Value of Names, and Routed - have been presented off-Broadway, internationally, and in a variety of regional and developmental theatres. His American Enterprises won the American Theatre Critics Association Award for play-writing. His book for the musical What About Luv? won the Outer Critics Circle Award, and he is the author of the book and co-author (with composer Melissa Manchester) of the lyrics for the musical I Sent a Letter to My Love. Sweet has written drama, sitcom, miniseries, and TV movies for ABC, NBC, and CBS. His work has won the Writers Guild of America Award and been nominated twice for the Emmy.A popular teacher and author of many newspaper and magazine articles, Sweet is also the proud father of Jonathan Sweet.

Inside This Book (Learn More)
First Sentence
AFTER YEARS OF TEACHING DRAMATIC TECHNIQUE, I HAVE strong ideas about what kinds of people are most likely to become real, working playwrights: actors and journalists. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
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Customer Reviews

Most helpful customer reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars A great text for your actual writing Mar 16 2004
Format:Paperback
Its brevity aside, the most striking feature of Jeffrey Sweet's The Dramatist's Toolkit is that it's not written like most playwriting texts. Instead of ponderously essaying Aristotle (though if you want a good analysis of Poetics, I'd recommend Hatcher's Art & Craft of Playwriting), Sweet cuts to the chase of negotiations and subtext. His is the only book on playwriting that I've ever seen to really get to the heart of creating scenes (and the better part of the book focuses on just this).

Because of this emphasis, this is not going to be the book you should refer to for structure; again, Hatcher is strong there, as is Gordon Farrell's Power of the Playwright's Vision (the only text I've seen to give numerous structural breakdowns). However, Sweet's advice - taken well, and with the usual pinch of salt - is very liberating to the writer who's been struggling against formulaic playwriting texts.

Sweet's book is worth its cover price based solely on its discussions of negotiations, which really are eye-openers as to how subtext really works. His section on exposition, with a discussion on high and low contexts, is likewise strong. The book is great as a reference while doing your actual writing, just to remind you of things you can really make work.

Now, Sweet's a bit brief (but powerful) in this book, but makes up for it in the sequel, Solving Your Script. The latter is a reinforcement of the ideas from The Dramatist's Toolkit, with enlightening, well annotated examples. Together, they make up a powerful combination addressing what is so rarely touched on in playwriting books: how to actually write powerful, subtle scenes. Combine them with a couple of good structural books like Hatcher or Farrell, and you've got a much better basis than most of the formulaic texts.

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2.0 out of 5 stars for newcomers only Mar 8 2004
By A Customer
Format:Paperback
This book is a fair introduction for a newcomer. But when I say newcomer, I mean a newcomer to writing, not to playwriting. For example, what writer experienced in any genre really needs to be told not to let a couple of long-married characters converse endlessly about facts that should be second nature to both of them? Of course, as Sweet points out, knowing something and doing it are different things. But how to *do* within the context of a play is exactly what "The Dramatist's Toolkit" doesn't reveal. Sweet correctly notes that a play is a very different artistic form than a novel. But having made this observation, he doesn't go much of anywhere with with it. Most of what he says about the craft of writing a play could also be applied to novel or short story writing. This includes his point about using physical objects to illustrate themes.

Fortunately, Sweet elaborates on the doing of playwriting in his fine book "Solving Your Script," so I'd recommend skipping "The Dramatist's Toolkit" and going directly to Sweet's second book.

It speaks loudly about "Solving Your Script" that I would recommend it, because I had serious trouble with the unblinkingly self-important tone of "The Dramatist's Toolkt." In his first chapter, for example, Sweet seems to assert that playwriting should be an actors-only club, because no one else could really understand the stage well enough to write for it. Short of revealing something about Sweet's background or loyalties, this assertion is useless. One buys a book on playwriting to receive the author's insights, not to be told to go home if one lacks those insights at the outset. Besides, Sweet's preference for actors as playwrights is just plain unsupportable. While he lists several great novelists that made lousy playwrights, he doesn't name a single great actor who made a good playwright. There have been some, but they are outnumbered by the great actors who stuck to acting, the art form they knew best. Remarkably, it is without a trace of irony that Sweet later complains that too many modern plays revolve around acting and show business. His proposed solution to this problem is laughably underwhelming: it is that actors should pick up a newspaper now and then so that they'll write better plays.

Sweet is undoubtedly a good playwright, but "The Dramatist Toolkit" provides scant evidence of his skills as a playwriting teacher. Sweet's insight about using physical objects to illustrate themes did seem powerful to me. A few more insights of this caliber might have made this into what I would consider a five star book.

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2.0 out of 5 stars Pretty flimsy stuff Dec 29 2003
Format:Paperback
My advice is to skip this book and go directly to Jeffrey Hatcher's or Louis Catron's, if you haven't already. Sweet's book is pretty obvious and vague, but what is irritating is his unctious style wherein he provides his views on playwriting as though they were the most perspicacious and insightful renderings of the dramatic writer's craft, when all they are are basically common sense. Additionally, his reliance on improv as a means to develop plays is extremely overrated! I don't know one truly distinguished playwright who uses improv to develop ideas; this method, in my view, usually leads to rather banal dramatic development, for example, ok, you're a couple and are having a fight over having your mother-in-law over for dinner. Not much to work on as far as I'm concerned. Maybe Jeffrey Sweet uses improv to develop his plays, but the ones I've read that he's written are fairly mechanical and unoriginal.
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Most recent customer reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars One of my favorite....
...books on writing plays...this one, as well as "Backwards and Forwards," have changed me as a playwright. I still have a long way to go, but Mr. Read more
Published on Oct 24 2001 by Wretched Man
5.0 out of 5 stars The Dramatist's Toolkit :The Craft of the Working Playwright
This book is wonderful. It distills so much that I wanted to know about theatre plays. But, the title should have been longer. It should have added "... Read more
Published on Aug 28 2001 by Morgan Parker
5.0 out of 5 stars Valuable lessons based on practical truths
I've had the pleasure of studying with Jeff and he's very adept at transcribing his lessons to an easily understood distillation of basic precepts regarding dramatic writing. Read more
Published on Aug 25 2001 by THOMAS J VOYTKO
1.0 out of 5 stars I did not find this book helpful
THE DRAMATIST'S TOOLKIT was not helpful to me. I have read other books on playwriting which detailed the process in much more specific detail. Read more
Published on Mar 26 2001
4.0 out of 5 stars Wrote my previous review on a bad writing day ;-)
Just a quick note to rephrase my previous post on this book from September.

Upon reconsideration, I think my first review of this book (especially in light of how much I... Read more

Published on Nov 28 2000 by Angela D. Mitchell
3.0 out of 5 stars A worthwhile (if somewhat discouraging) addition
I had a divided reaction to this book. On the positive side (and most of my reaction was positive), Sweet offers some wonderful insights into the profession of the dramatist, as... Read more
Published on Sep 15 2000 by Angela D. Mitchell
5.0 out of 5 stars Useful, entertaining, conversational
Only a handful of books on playwriting are written by people who have actually written successful plays. Read more
Published on Feb 7 2000
5.0 out of 5 stars The best playwriting text currently available.
The great thing about this book is in the title. It really is a toolkit - an assortment of techniques, craft tips and ideas for helping to make scenes work onstage. Read more
Published on Jan 30 2000 by Michael Ladenson
5.0 out of 5 stars this book is my bible
In my development work, both in film and theatre, my feedback for writers always finds its roots in the principals taught to me by "The Dramatists' Toolkit. Read more
Published on Jan 30 2000 by Dawson Moore
5.0 out of 5 stars A Must for Playwrights
After you've learned the basic ingredients of a play (for which I recommend Buzz McLaughlin's "The Playwright's Process"), this is the single most useful text available... Read more
Published on Jan 30 2000 by Nancy Gall-Clayton
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