"Most young playwrights nowadays want to learn 'how to' write a play. This seems to me to be a mistake." Thus begins the first chapter of Walter Kerr's fascinating book on the art of playwriting. Taking an about-face look at the creative process, with chapters such as "How to Spoil a Good Story," Mr. Kerr leads us through the exciting and daring adventure of successfully bringing a play to fulfillment. "There is no point in pretending that this is not going to be an argumentative book or that overemphasis isn't going to crop up pretty frequently in the chapters that follow. The face of our theater is so familiar to us that we shall never see its features without blowing them up a bit, one by one. And it does seem to me that we had better do some arguing - quick." Walter Kerr, drama critic, playwright, teacher, director, and winner of a Pulitzer Prize for Drama Criticism, served as drama critic for the New York Herald Tribune and was chief critic for the Sunday New York Times until his retirement. -- from back cover

Jeffrey Hatcher knows the nuts and bolts of writing for the theater. Here, he shares his views on it all--from building tension and plotting a scene, right down to moving a character from one side of the stage to the other. From crafting an intriguing beginning to delivering a satisfying ending. In Hatcher's one-on-one discussions with acclaimed American playwrights Lee Blessing, Marsha Norman and Jose Rivera, you'll find a wealth of practical advice, tricks of the trade and insight that will help you in your own creative efforts.

A Masterclass in Dramatic Writing addresses all three genres of dramatic writing - for theatre, film and TV - in a comprehensive, one-semester, 14-week masterclass for the dramatic writer. This book is tightly focused on the practical outcome of completing a first draft and first rewrite of a dramatic work, drawing on Professor Janet Neipris’ many years of experience as the head of Dramatic Writing at NYU Tisch. The fourteen chapters, organized like a semester, take the reader week-by-week and step-by-step through writing a first draft of an original play, screenplay, or TV pilot, while also teaching the core principles of dramatic writing. Chapters include Beginnings, Creating Complex Characters, Dialogue, Escalating Conflicts, Endings, Checkpoints, Comedy, and Adaptation, and there are Weekly Exercises and progressive Assignments. This book is perfect for professional writers, teachers, and students of dramatic writing, as well as anyone who wants to complete their first dramatic work. An award-winning playwright and Professor of Dramatic Writing at NYU, Janet Neipris has written for Screen and Television. She has also taught dramatic writers at UCLA and in China, Australia, Indonesia, South Africa, Italy, and in the UK at Oxford, CSSD, University of Birmingham, and the University of East Anglia. Previous publications include To Be A Playwright (Routledge 2006). Janet Neipris’s plays and letters are in the Theatre Collection of Harvard University’s Houghton Library. For more, see www.janetneipris.com.

Winner of the National Book Award The publication of this extraordinary volume firmly established Flannery O'Connor's monumental contribution to American fiction. There are thirty-one stories here in all, including twelve that do not appear in the only two story collections O'Connor put together in her short lifetime--Everything That Rises Must Converge and A Good Man Is Hard to Find. O'Connor published her first story, "The Geranium," in 1946, while she was working on her master's degree at the University of Iowa. Arranged chronologically, this collection shows that her last story, "Judgement Day"--sent to her publisher shortly before her death—is a brilliantly rewritten and transfigured version of "The Geranium." Taken together, these stories reveal a lively, penetrating talent that has given us some of the most powerful and disturbing fiction of the twentieth century. Also included is an introduction by O'Connor's longtime editor and friend, Robert Giroux.

This carefully crafted ebook: “The Collected Works: Plays, Novels, Articles, Letters and Essays” is formatted for your eReader with a functional and detailed table of contents. George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) was an Irish playwright, essayist, novelist and short story writer and wrote more than 60 plays. He is the only person to have been awarded both a Nobel Prize in Literature (1925) and an Academy Award (1938), for his contributions to literature and for his work on the film Pygmalion (an adaptation of his own play) Content: Novels: Cashel Byron's Profession An Unsocial Socialist Love Among The Artists The Irrational Knot Plays: Widowers' Houses The Philanderer Mrs. Warren's Profession The Man Of Destiny Arms And The Man Candida You Never Can Tell The Devil's Disciple Captain Brassbound's Conversion Caesar And Cleopatra The Gadfly or The Son of the Cardinal The Admirable Bashville Man And Superman John Bull's Other Island How He Lied To Her Husband Major Barbara Passion, Poison, And Petrifaction The Doctor's Dilemma The Interlude At The Playhouse Getting Married The Shewing-Up Of Blanco Posnet Press Cuttings Misalliance The Dark Lady Of The Sonnets Fanny's First Play Androcles And The Lion Overruled Pygmalion Great Catherine The Music Cure O'Flaherty, V. C. Macbeth Skit Glastonbury Skit The Inca Of Perusalem Augustus Does His Bit Skit For The Tiptaft Revue Annajanska, The Bolshevik Empress Heartbreak House Back To Methuselah War Indemnities What do Men of Letters Say? On Socialism The Miraculous Revenge Quintessence Of Ibsenism Basis of Socialism The Transition to Social Democracy The Impossibilities Of Anarchism The Perfect Wagnerite Letter to Beatrice Webb The New Theology Memories of Oscar Wilde The Revolutionist's Handbook And Pocket Companion Maxims For Revolutionists The New Theology How to Write A Popular Play Memories of Oscar Wilde George Bernard Shaw The Quintessence of Shaw Old and New Masters...