Dramatic Structure Quotes

Boswell, when he speaks of his Life of Johnson, calls it my magnum opus, but it may more properly be called his opera, for it is truly a composition founded on a true story, in which there is a hero with a number of subordinate characters, and an alternate succession of recitative and airs of various tone and effect, all however in delightful animation.

Scripts are kind of a bare bones type of reading material.

I was trained as a straight dramatist.

I suppose, writing a play is finding out what the play is.

If you have a problem with the third act, the real problem is in the first act.

One of the things I love about my job as a playwright or as a screenwriter is that I get to do a lot of research and a lot of thinking and taking a lot of notes before I turn it in.

Get into the scene late; get out of the scene early.

It's funny how that comes up, because sometimes I'll write something and I'll think, I don't know if that's a film or a play, and then other things I feel very strongly about them just being plays - they feel very theatrical to me.

The first act's doubtful, but we say, it is the last commends the play.

The things that converge in the writing of a play come from a complex of motives, a genesis shrouded in a certain kind of mystery.

I want to write a play. I'd like to do an original musical. I should probably put together a poetry collection.

There are vast differences between scripts and stories, of course. Few fiction writers would want to give up the opportunity to explore how the minds of their characters work, or to set aside the opportunity to provide necessary background exposition in a succinct fashion.

I don't think I write differently when I'm writing a screenplay, as opposed to a stage play or a teleplay. Maybe if I were in a film class and there was time to think about it, we could point out differences.

When I write plays, I'm already seeing the shapes on stage, of the actors and their interaction, and so on and so forth. I don't think I've ever written one play as an abstract piece, as a literary piece, floating in the air somewhere, to be flushed out later on.

Any play is hard to write, and plays are getting harder and harder to get on the stage.

The rules of drama are very much separate from the properties of life. I think that's especially true of Shakespeare.

A play should have barely been rescued from the mess it might just as easily have been.

When I first started, I didn't really know how to structure a play.

The End of the Affair is almost like a play.

Our Euripides the human, With his droppings of warm tears, and his touchings of things common Till they rose to meet the spheres.

If you string together a set of speeches expressive of character, and well finished in point and diction and thought, you will not produce the essential tragic effect nearly so well as with a play which, however deficient in these respects, yet has a plot and artistically constructed incidents.

The popular definition of tragedy is heavy drama in which everyone is killed in the last act, comedy being light drama in which everyone is married in the last act.

The composition of a tragedy requires testicles.

I would like to write a play.

For me, playwriting is sharing my experiences, telling my stories.