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:

Get it – read it – let me know what you think. 

Defy Gravity – Keep Writing!