Customer Reviews

Art Of Dramatic Writing: Its Basis in the Creative Interpretation of Human Motives

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Lajos Egri's book is kind of a classic, always controversial, but not always right. People who write books on making plays are always something of an odd sort; a book like Egri's also gets recommended for those who are into screenwriting, because those of us on the playwriting end are considerably sparser.

In any case, Egri starts off by telling you about Premise. He's right that everything has a point. Where he starts to miss the mark is on saying that you should know exactly what the theme of your play will be, and write from there. To start a work with a Premise in mind is, frankly, to put the cart before the horse. No matter what play or screenplay you write, it will have a Premise, and Egri acknowledges this. But Egri is engaged in the worst kind of prescriptivism - start with a Premise is a formula that is theoretically designed to make you write a good play, but it's not how the plays Egri analyzes were written.

He gets something else tragically close to partly right. Egri prescribes writing dialectical biographies of your characters to make them three-dimensional. He's right in that characters are primary over plot (though they're inextricable; could you really imagine a key character in a great drama outside of the play?), but writing biographies isn't how to get at them. Your audience will never see the biographies. For them, each and every character is nothing more nor less than the sum total of his or her actions on stage or film. Worry about developing them THERE. The rest is only useful if it yields some detail that can flesh them out more over time.

Where Egri is good is in his analysis of movement and conflict. He's got a very good sense of everything being gradual, and really lays it out well. Don't take everything as gospel, but that is where you'll get the bang out of this book. If you need help there, it's worthwhile; if not, you don't really need to bother.

No playwriting book is ever going to really get you there. It's an imprecise science, and authors are very often too prescriptivist for their own good. But there is good to be gleaned from them if you learn what you need and what works for you. Egri's book is no exception.

This book is the best book I have read yet on writing fiction. I think it is a classic. Fascinating.

Well, I read this book recently after reading god knows how many screenwriting books. Some of them are quite repetitive aren't they?! The thing that I've found is that there are a lot of books out there that explain the three-act structure by saying you have a set-up, then you have your turning points, your climax, your resolution blah blah blah. Thing is we all instinctively know we need this stuff in our plays and screenplays but what's hard as a writer is actually figuring out what these should be. What makes a good turning point, what makes a good resolution etc? If you want to find out, I strongly suggest you read this book.

I found this book (along with Robert McKee's 'Story') the most useful out of the many (screenwriting) books I've read because he gets into the nitty gritty hard stuff. He makes you think about how important the premise is. I disagree with some of the reviews of this book on this site that say that Egri says you have to know your premise from the outset, he doesn't say that, what he does say is that you have to know it clearly at some stage in writing your script and this is true because we go to films to find something out and all the pieces have to fit together or you'll say something like 'The second half of the movie dragged', 'Why did she do that? That wasn't in character' or 'The movie tried to prove too many points all at once' and so on.

The more I write scripts, the more I realise that it's all about planning and architecture because pacing is everything unlike novels etc.

In particular, the most useful takeout from this book is that your premise has to match your character and story. He goes into detail using 'A Doll's House' as an example. If Nora had been a different character, the resolution wouldn't have worked as well as it did and if the story happenings weren't chosen carefully based on her character, then the story wouldn't have rung true nor would we have understood what the premise is.

The other thing that I think you'll really like is the stuff on conflict, the different types of conflict and when to use a particular kind of conflict for the story you wish to tell.

I'm writing a script right now and this book encouraged me to be a bit more lateral and let go of the ideas I already had because they may not be the right situation for my main character or the story as is might not be the best vehicle for arguing the premise I want to argue.

Brilliant stuff! Written so long ago yet still so relevant.

There's so much more here than just the talk about premise, which for some people is what makes Egri so problematic. The sections on "Pivotal Characters" and "Unity of Opposites" and "Orchestration" are simply invaluable. Nowhere else will you find these key aspects of screenwriting addressed in such a direct, lucid and practical manner -- you can apply this stuff IMMEDIATELY to whatever story you are working on and your story will become stronger and better.

He does a wonderful job of helping the reader to understand what drama is all about. This is one of the best book on storytelling you can buy. Buy it, you won't regret the purchase.

This is the best book on writing I have ever read!

This book was better than I believed it would be when I bought it. I will never write a play, and have no ambition in that direction. But I wanted to understand what makes a good play good and a bad play bad - and to be able to put it to words. Mr Egri has certainly enabled me to do that.

Egri uses the modern philosophies of dialectics as his starting point. His main thesis is that a play is a dialectical development: It has a premise to prove, and the steps taken must not be forced - must not come from outside the premises inherent in the play, in the characters and the situation set up by the playwright. It is a beautiful application of philosophical theory to practical life, and - I believe - the best currently on the market.

Because of this, the structure he reveals as the basis of good playwriting is also applicable to other fields like storytelling and poetry. Even to life itself, and not only in the fabrication of lies to your boss about where you were on your sick day (when you really went to a lake with your laptop to write a play).

Best book I ever read on the art of writing!!!

Egri's work is the only contender that I know of to Aristotle's "Poetics" for a guide to what makes good writing Good. Throw in Joseph Campbell's "The Hero with A Thousand Faces" and you have a sort of holy trilogy and trinity for writers. I've looked at some writing computer programs (haven't bought any yet), and many of them use one, or all of these methods. As an aside, I'll also throw in Polti as a source for plot. Not because I think he's very good, but because he's popular.

In Egri's world, character is king. Each of the characters, he states, must have a driving reason to be on stage, and their reasons must be diametrically opposed. In other words, they can't all get what they want - for one person to get what she wants, someone else must be deprived of their goal. Each character must also be desperate (desperate enough to be interesting) to get what he wants. (It's been a few years since I've read Egri, so please forgive my bad paraphrasing.)

Using many examples (some familiar, some unfamiliar) he gives you the tools to analyze plays (and all stories), and (therefore, hopefully) write plays, or stories, or novels, or movies... My girlfriend and I, even years after reading this book can't walk out of a movie theater or playhouse without analyzing it using the methods we learned from Egri.

If I were only able to reccomend one book to writers, this would be it. (Followed, of course, by Aristotle & Campbell). If I were to have all books erased from my memory and could only re-read one, this would be a strong contendor. If I could say only one thing to you, reader of this review, it would be read this book as soon as you can get your grubby hands on it.

Years ago my girlfriend and I were in the local book store. As budding writers, visiting a book store is as good a way as any to spend an evening. She was looking for a book on writing, and asked me to help her evaluate the myriad of books on the shelves. Even though she was the one looking to buy a good book on writing, I was the one who walked out with this book.

For me, all writing falls into one of two categories - focused and revealing, or unfocused and confusing. Most books, and most books on writing fall into the latter category. The authors of these books haven't set up a criteria by which to judge words. Egri has. In this book he has deftly defined the craft of writing (play writing in particular, writing in general). By drawing a CLEAR line in the sand, he tells you what good writing is and should be.

In science when you have two possible theories to explain something, you always throw out the more complex theory in favor of the simple. Egri gives you a simple formula. One which, upon reading, may have you wanting to throw out many of your other books on writing.

Full of examples from plays both "of the times" and forgotten and classics, Egri describes what playwriting IS.

The only other books I've read on writing that reveal as much as this (albeit shedding light on different aspects of the process) are:

Stein on Writing by Sol Stein

Wild Mind by Natalie Goldberg

The Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell

and though I haven't finished it, The Passionate Accurate Story by Carol Bly.

On my shelf also are Heny Miller on Writing, and the Thirty Six Dramatic Situations (Gorges Polti).

This distillation of the world of Drama is one that changed the way I view the craft of writing. I recommend it to those of you who are ready for the same.

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