Customer Reviews

The Dramatic Writer's Companion: Tools to Develop Characters, Cause Scenes, and Build Stories (Chicago Guides to Writing, Editing, and Publishing)

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I can't say enough about this book! The most useful book on dramatic writing I've come across--including Syd Field and Lajos Egri. It's perfect for experienced writers looking for exercises and analytical tools to help with rewrites; but it's also ideal for anyone first learning the craft. It can be used as either a how-to book, or a reference manual. My favorite feature is a troubleshooting guide at the end called "Fixing Common Script Problems." Each section gives you the problem ("Not enough conflict," "Main character too passive,"etc.), suggests how to approach it, then points to exercises in the book to help fix it. That section alone is worth the price of the book! Every serious playwright and screenwriter should own this book.

After years of writing using only a (often slow and laborious) trial and error method, I have finally discovered a book that has stream-lined the writing process. The exercises in Mr. Dunne's book not only provide a writer with a much stronger foundation with which to begin his or her plays (novels, short-stories, screenplays, etc.), they provide a variety of solutions for overcoming almost any writing-related obstacle that come up. Whether it's flat characters, lack of conflict, or the dreaded "what happens next," The Dramatic Writer's Companion offers a solution for them all. This is definitely a book that any writer who is serious about getting his or her work in front of an audience needs to read (over and over).

The product description here on Amazon, plus the preview I saw in Google Books, convinced me that Will Dunne's book could be worth something in the sea of oh-so-many fiction writing books. Boy, was I wrong. "The Dramatic Writer's Companion" is not just worth something--it's simply the most comprehensive set of brainstorming exercises any storyteller needs to thoroughly flesh out a story.

It doesn't teach you writing per se. What it does is encourage you to explore the potential of your idea. Do you have a concept but hard-pressed to create a story for it? "The Dramatic Writer's Companion" can help.

Every step of the story development process is covered, whether you just have a core idea, or if you already have a glitch-laden draft that needs ironing out. Through questions and straightforward commentary, author Will Dunne encourages you to THINK and DIG DEEP. If you're serious about coming up with a well-rounded dramatic story, then this is the book to beat. Avoid this book if you're looking for shortcuts.

In other words, this book wants to make sure that you know your story like the proverbial back of your hand--inside and out, up and down, side to... you get the picture.

The book starts with a character, with the objective of making this character as three-dimensional as possible, as well as exploring the aspects of this character that could inspire dramatic action. The book then brings in the other characters and helps you establish the kind of character relationships that fuel a dramatic story.

Moving forward, the book then provides exercises for scene building, defining what a scene is and what it's supposed to do, and how characters influence scenes. There are exercises to help establish the tone of a scene, heighten conflict and tension, and connect scenes with the overall story objective. Threshing out dialogue is also covered.

As you go further, the book goes for the big picture. Point of view, dramatic arcs, inciting event, setups and payoffs... they're all here.

And then some. It doesn't matter if you're writing plays, or screenplays, or fiction, or graphic novels. Long overdue, "The Dramatic Writer's Companion" is a must for every serious storyteller's bookshelf.

Buy this book even if you're writing a novel!

Especially, buy it if you're a bit sick of books that endlessly go on about structuring "their" way, or include endless forms to fill out hoping that you'll have enough data to forge into a novel at the end of it. This book is not a "program" or a "method", or a step-by-step process. What it is is a series of extremely insightful and thought-provoking exercises that are innovative, fun, sometimes unexpected, and that really get you to understand "what precisely is the story that I want to tell?" and how you can improve your telling of it. Because it doesn't go step by step, you can pick and choose what you feel you need - if you're not sure, there's a "troubleshooting" guide in the back to steer you towards exercises that are most likely to help.

This is not one of those books that presents the author's take on myth, either. You can of course use any other book you like along with this, or none at all. What it does is get you to go much deeper into your characters and themes and explore connections between them, what works and doesn't work, how you can make things better. I experienced it as causing an almost "intuitive-feeling" process of understanding how to craft a story better. Though I think this will stay with me to some extent (in other words, it's been a genuine learning experience), I am anticipating with pleasure and excitement using it in other projects.

It would be impossible for me to recommend this book more highly..

Whether you're writing novels, plays, or short stories, this book contains marvelous tools to help build dramatic action, develop characters and refine your story. You'll discover many ways to explore and analyze your work through examination of conflict, objectives, action, and characters. Not the usual how-to book that talks at you with boring narrative, this makes you look at your work like you've never done before. With new discoveries in every chapter, you'll do well to keep this book by your side!

Yep...just a bunch of exercises to help you develop your story. Kind of like sit-ups and push-ups, they just plain work.

I don't understand why this book was targeted specifically to playwrights and screenwriters, as the excellent and thought-provoking "exercises" (not really the right word) in this book are just as relevant to fiction writers.

What I appreciated most is that the author has you applying these exercises to your own work, rather than giving you abstract situations or characters to write about.

Each exercise also tells you when it will be most helpful to you: "Any time you need to know a character better", "when you want to heighten conflict in a scene", "during scene revision", and the like.

In fact, that's all the book is: over 300 pages of exercises. No "how-to" here (yay!).

I'm currently working my way through the exercises in this book. While it's geared toward playwrights and screenwriters rather than musical writers, I've found it very
valuable in helping me through places in my project where I've felt snagged- or where I feared I'd written myself into a brick wall. I've done 9 of the 66 exercises so far, and each one opened up new character insights and ideas for dramatic action for me. I feel like my story is alive again, and I've made some discoveries about it that are surprising to me. The exercises are simple, and most of them can be done in about 15 minutes. Amazing that 15 minutes following a few targeted questions can shift my perception about what I'm working on. I highlight a lot, and flag pages that I find helpful, and my copy of this book has a lot of color and fringe.

I've been stewing over the details of my screenplay and book for years. This book has broken the logjam and gotten me moving again. I have the highest praise for the approach and the content.

What a remarkable book! Will Dunne's writing exercises are focused, succinct and unambiguous.The exercises really "jump start" my creativity and greatly facilitate the writing process! It truly opens the floodgates. I find this an invaluable tool for writing stage and screen plays as well as for prose. It's a 'must have' for any writer's tool box.