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.
Customer Reviews:
Avg. Customer Rating: 4.5 / 5.0
A great text for your actual writing:
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).
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.... more info
Give credit where credit is "do.":
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: conflict, contradictory characters, small casts because no one can afford to produce your work,etc., but what is irritating is his unctious style wherein he provides his views as though they were the most perspicacious and insightful renderings of the dramatic writer's craft, when all they are are basically common sense. Also, there's much here that seems very... more info
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. Sweet's book is an exceptional one in the field.
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