Playwriting the Merciless Craft Comprehensive Techniques for Mastering Beginning, Intermediate, and Advanced Playwriting

Playwriting: the Merciless Craft

Comprehensive Techniques for Mastering

Beginning, Intermediate, and Advanced Playwriting



This book is designed to serve concurrently the writer who has never written a play, but would like to write a good one; journeyman playwrights who would like to increase their skill set, deepen their knowledge of the craft and increase the power of their work; and advanced playwrights who are seeking new horizons to challenge their already considerable craftsmanship.



For the beginning playwright, this book provides specific techniques in how to design your material to work in the theater; for the writer who is already a practiced playwright, this book provides a tool box of skills for plotting, story structure, character development, theatricality, and multiple uses of dialog, to broaden and strengthen your work. It provides a diagnostic tool for trouble-shooting your plays, so that every moment of your plays will work in the theater as you envision them. For the advanced playwright, this book provides layers of techniques to test against your skill set, deepen your dramatic powers, and widen the horizons of your craft.



Carol Wolf's plays have been produced on both coasts and on five continents. The plays of her playwriting students have been produced on both coasts and on four continents, so far.