Customer Reviews

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

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What Lajos Egri will show you:

* Formulate your premise. Premise is a statement, idea, or conviction that your story proves true. For example, the premise of Romeo and Juliet would be something like "Love defies even death."

* Choose a pivotal character who will force the conflict.

* Orchestrate the other characters. The unity of opposites must be binding. Polar opposites must form a dialectic which creates a unified tension.

* Be careful to select the correct point of attack. Every point of attack starts with conflict.

* There are several types of conflict, such as jumping conflict, but you only want rising or foreshadowing conflict.

* No conflict can rise without perpetual exposition, which is transition. For example, a character going about his daily life doesn't suddenly become a NAZI, it happens in gradual steps--transition.

* Rising conflict, the product of exposition and transition, will ensure growth.

* Characters must conflict--there must be some polarity.

* Crisis will lead to climax. Climax will lead to conclusion.

* Dialogue should come from the voice of the character, not the writer.

Many TV, film, and novel plots and characters lack compelling conflict. The characters are just floating by... until something big happens. Lajos Egri illustrates how to change all this.

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.

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.

This concerns the BN Publishing paperback edition from 2008, ISBN 978-9562915861:

The people at BN Publishing, may they roast forever in literary purgatory who ever they are, have a web site with the claim 'Improving People's Life'. They improved this playwrights classic by spacing lines and paragraphs the way we do it on the web: no indents, just a blank line between the paragraphs. Then they added some odd looking formatting of headings & sub-headings. Plus typos, typos and... typos. Here and there the lines also break in funny places across the page. It's all rather sad, sloppy and annoying, though no major crime, perhaps. What in my opinion is way beyond annoying... they have quietly REMOVED WHOLE SECTIONS of the original text -- in other words, chopped the thing up and decided what we don't need to read. Or, probably, how to make money... Shame on them. Just stay away, please.
Also available these days is the 1972 Touchstone Revised edition -- The Art Of Dramatic Writing: Its Basis in the Creative Interpretation of Human Motives. That's got the text Egri wrote.

Lajos Egri's magnificent account and demonstrations of how to write a dramatic play is exciting and accurate. Citing master playwrites as Shakespeare, Moliere, Henrik Ibsen, and many others pointing out their high points and low points and how a play is to be constructed showing their commonalities among them. Starting at the root, and logically building up the story and characters to create a well developed play. Legri argues whether the action or the characters drive the play, it would seem the he believes that the characters are the driving force, however he also recognizes that they are one in the same, that a well developed character will alone create the action. Overall the book is presented well, easy to read and one will have a solid working knowledge to begin critiquing plays, as well as to get moving on their own stories. It would be advised to read the plays Legri refers to throughout the book, it will become more handy and points made clearer when he discusses those stories. Highly reccomended!

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.

Contact me with your comments.

I've easily read more than 100 books on creating fiction (my focus is primarily short stories and novels), and I've done so because I'm always interested in learning what others have to say about the craft that I might find ways to improve my own.

I disagree with the reviewer who pishaws Egri's recommendation to create character biographies, saying that the "audience will never see them". The fact is, every short story, novel, play, movie is like an iceberg: what the audience reads/sees is only 10% of the whole. The rest is hidden. If a writer hasn't done her homework on a story's setting, background or, more importantly, on her characters' backgrounds, it will show, and in the worst way possible. Even if a writer is of the sort who develops her characters as she creates the story, there is still much about those characters which doesn't make it into the tale. It's rather like when you tell a cousin about a friend of yours. You don't give your cousin all the details, only those details which are relevant to giving your cousin an accurate, yet true, representation of your friend, but you can only accomplish this if you know your friend very well. The same is -- HAS TO BE! -- true of your story characters: you MUST know them very well (more than what you reveal) if you are to represent them to your audience accurately and truthfully (but not exhaustively), and that's precisely Egri's point.

Regarding Egri and his agreements/disagreements with Aristotle, his disagreement with regard to a story's beginning has more to do with modern readers' interpretations of what constitutes a beginning. Every story must have a beginning, even if it doesn't appear on the page, on the screen, or on the stage. All the consituent parts of a story, even if they aren't put plainly before the audience, must be implied in what is. (Algis Budrys' WRITING TO THE POINT demonstrates this quite well.) Egri's disagreement with regard to Aristotle's views on plot/character, however, are, I believe, on the mark. In this case, however, the disagreement has more to do with historical/cultural/religious context. Aristotle's putting plot primary is due largely to the prevalent beliefs of his time, just as our putting character primary is due to the prevalent beliefs of ours. This, too, is a point which Egri recognizes.

After reading Egri's book, my writing will never be the same again, I'll never read another novel or short story the same way again, and I'll never see a movie or play in the same way again, either. I dare say that I'll appreciate a good novel/short story/movie/play even more with the tools that Egri provides in this book, and will now be able to elucidate far more clearly than before why I didn't like a particular novel/short story/movie/play. In like manner, I now believe that I'm better equipped, after reading Egri's book, to recognize what is wrong with any story that I've written and will, therefore, be better able to fix the problem.

After reading all the books I've read on story/character creation, I'd have to say that Egri's book is easily the best book I've ever read on the subject. While other authors of such books may have said much the same thing, Egri presents the same material in a way that makes it eminently clear and immediately memorable.

POSTSCRIPT: In defense of novels (since that is my preferred medium), unlike what was stated in one review on Egri's book, pacing is just as important in a novel as it is in a stage play. If you have one high-paced scene after another in a novel, your reader will be breathless before she's half-done with the book. Conversely, if your pacing is constantly slow, you're very likely to lose reader interest. There are all sorts of tricks to controlling pacing in a novel, from word, sentence, and paragraph length, and even down to specific word choice. There are other ways to control pacing, as well, but I shan't get into that here. It's a shame that very few books have covered this aspect of novel creation.

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 has stood the test of time. First published in 1946, Egri de-mystifies the art of story-telling. Originally written for the theatre, his principles apply equally well to film. Egri shows us how to start from square one and build a story, using examples from classic plays and movies we are all familiar with. An outstanding book: clear, direct, rings with truth. I wish he were still alive so he could be my script doctor.

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.