Read Any Good Books….?
Once in a while you come across a gem of a book and you have to ask yourself: do I keep this to my self, or share with my competition? Well, we’re all friends here – the four of us – so I will share.
I discovered a little bookstore – The Drama Book Shop — last week when the wife and I took a few days to enjoy New York City and while the store mostly caters to playwrights and actors they do have two or three shelves dedicated to screenwriting. One particular book caught my eye: The Dramatic Writer’s Companion, by Will Dunne. The subtitle is: Tools to develop characters, cause scenes, and build stories.
The book is chocked full of tools and exercises to help any writer create compelling stories. This weekend I devoured the book, highlighted it, placed little white plastic tabs at every useful chapter – there are twenty-seven (27) of the little buggers.
Just to wet your whistle, here is a sample from the table of contents on character:
DEVELOPING YOUR CHARACTER
Stage I: Fleshing out the bones
Basic Character Building
What the Character Believes
Where the Character Lives
Where the Character Works
Getting Emotional
Into the Past
Defining Trait
Stage II: Getting to Know the Character Better
Allies: Then and Now
Adversaries: Then and Now
Characters in Contrast
Finding the Character’s Voice
Three Characters in One
The Secret Lives of Characters.
And then this on creating scenes:
CAUSING A SCENE
Stage I: Making Things Happen
Basic Scene Starter
Where in the World Are We?
The Roots of Action
What Does the Character Want?
What’s the Problem?
Good Intentions
How it Happens
Character Adjustments
Scene in a Sentence
Stage II: Refining the Action
Seeing the Scene
There and Then
The Aha!s of the Story
Heating Things Up
The Emotional Storyboard
In the Real of the Senses
The Voice of the Setting
Thinking in Beats
Stage III: Refining Dialogue
Whew!…. tired of typing. It would be so much easier if you just went on line and look inside the book for yourself. Check it out here at Amazon – and know, I am no way affiliated with either Amazon or the author:
http://www.amazon.com/Dramatic-Writers-Companion-Characters-Publishing/dp/0226172546#reader
Get it – read it – let me know what you think.
Defy Gravity – Keep Writing!
I’ll check it out Mike.
Thanks.
Looks like a good book.
I feel there is a ballance we all need to find between training, reading books about how to do it etc, and actually doing it. I’ve noticed that during periods when I am doing a lot of teaching of creative writing, I get very logical about the whole thing and thus tend to find it harder to write my own stuff. But still, we all need to learn! The day I stop learning will probably be the day I quit. Happily I don’t think that day will come.
Rod