About the Book:

The Art of Dramatic Writing is a useful and easy-to-understand book used in UCLA Extension's world-famous Writers' Program.

Lajos Egri was writing about the concept of premise – a thesis, demonstrated in terms of human behaviour – long before Syd Field, William Goldman, and Blake Snyder. The Art of Dramatic Writing, a groundbreaking work first published in 1946, became a bible for many screenwriters during the 1950s and stands as a timeless guide for playwrights, screenwriters, and storytellers.

Learn the basic techniques every successful playwright and screenwriter knows. Among the many "how-to" books that have appeared over the years, there have been few that attempt to analyze the mysteries of construction. You really must have a sense of what form is. Everyone thinks they have great ideas, but unless you can translate them to the page, they mean nothing. Lajos Egri's classic, The Art of Dramatic Writing (originally intended for playwrights), does just that. One of the best books on screenwriting for beginners, it is often used as a textbook in screenwriting classes, but the instruction can be applied equally well to a short story, novel, play, or screenplay.

Examining a script from the inside out, Lajos Egri starts with the heart of any drama: its characters. All good dramatic writing hinges on people and their relationships, which serve to move the story forward and give it life, as well as an understanding of human motives – why people act the way that they do. One tool he uses for character design is the Character Bone Structure, which fleshes out the physical, social and psychological factors that make up a character. Filling out the specific details of each serves as a good start in creating a three dimensional character. He also brilliantly analyses plays – using examples from everything from William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet to Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House – and shows how it is essential for the author to have a basic premise and to develop the dramatic conflict on the basis of that behaviour. Once you've digested the contents of this book, with examples drawn from the great playwrights, you'll have a deeper view of what drama is. This book is an excellent compliment to Syd Field's Screenplay. While Syd Field is all about screenplay structure, Lajos Egri is all about character and the character driven story. All great drama revolves around a great character and Lajos Egri gives you lots of help developing solid characters. He is fascinated by the motivations for our actions, and at the heart of the book is a moving belief in human beings' capacity for change.

Using Lajos Egri's ABCs of premise, character, and conflict, The Art of Dramatic Writing is a direct, jargon-free approach to the problem of achieving truth in writing.

What people say:

"For many years, Lajos Egri's highly opinionated but very enjoyable The Art of Dramatic Writing has been a well-guarded secret of playwrights, scriptwriters, and writers for television. Unlike many other books on playwrighting (several of which Egri criticizes during the course of this one), the author's systematic breakdown of the essentials for creating successful realistic plays and screenplays effectively demystifies the process of creative writing." — John Longenbaugh, playwright and director

"I found Lajos Egri's book enormously interesting – one of the best I have ever read." — Moss Hart, award-winning playwright and screenwriter

"...this is an inspiring and passionate introduction to playwriting. Egri is fascinated by the motivations for our actions, and at the heart of the book is a moving belief in human beings' capacity for change. He also brilliantly analyses plays, in particular Ibsen's A Doll's House, one of my own personal favourites." — Matthew Morrison, senior lecturer in creative writing, University of Westminster

About the Author:

Lajos Egri (1888-1967) was born in Hungary and worked as a dramatist and theatre director, first in Hungary and, from the 1930s on, in New York City. In the mid-1940s, he founded the Egri School of Writing, which he also directed, and published his highly regarded and widely used text The Art of Dramatic Writing. In the 1960s, he moved to California, where he worked in cinema and television.