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Summary: A pleasure for a writter...and for a reader too.
Review: Is the most helpful book for a new writer, and even for the critics to know how beautiful is the art of writting...even if the critics are there...for criticism...and more...
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Summary: Egri has his ups and his downs.
Review: Lajos Egri's book is kind of a classic, always controversial, but not always right. People who write books on making plays are always something of an odd sort; a book like Egri's also gets recommended for those who are into screenwriting, because those of us on the playwriting end are considerably sparser.In any case, Egri starts off by telling you about Premise. He's right that everything has a point. Where he starts to miss the mark is on saying that you should know exactly what the theme of your play will be, and write from there. To start a work with a Premise in mind is, frankly, to put the cart before the horse. No matter what play or screenplay you write, it will have a Premise, and Egri acknowledges this. But Egri is engaged in the worst kind of prescriptivism - start with a Premise is a formula that is theoretically designed to make you write a good play, but it's not how the plays Egri analyzes were written. He gets something else tragically close to partly right. Egri prescribes writing dialectical biographies of your characters to make them three-dimensional. He's right in that characters are primary over plot (though they're inextricable; could you really imagine a key character in a great drama outside of the play?), but writing biographies isn't how to get at them. Your audience will never see the biographies. For them, each and every character is nothing more nor less than the sum total of his or her actions on stage or film. Worry about developing them THERE. The rest is only useful if it yields some detail that can flesh them out more over time. Where Egri is good is in his analysis of movement and conflict. He's got a very good sense of everything being gradual, and really lays it out well. Don't take everything as gospel, but that is where you'll get the bang out of this book. If you need help there, it's worthwhile; if not, you don't really need to bother. No playwriting book is ever going to really get you there. It's an imprecise science, and authors are very often too prescriptivist for their own good. But there is good to be gleaned from them if you learn what you need and what works for you. Egri's book is no exception.
Rating:
Summary: Egri has his ups and his downs.
Review: Lajos Egri's book is kind of a classic, always controversial, but not always right. People who write books on making plays are always something of an odd sort; a book like Egri's also gets recommended for those who are into screenwriting, because those of us on the playwriting end are considerably sparser. In any case, Egri starts off by telling you about Premise. He's right that everything has a point. Where he starts to miss the mark is on saying that you should know exactly what the theme of your play will be, and write from there. To start a work with a Premise in mind is, frankly, to put the cart before the horse. No matter what play or screenplay you write, it will have a Premise, and Egri acknowledges this. But Egri is engaged in the worst kind of prescriptivism - start with a Premise is a formula that is theoretically designed to make you write a good play, but it's not how the plays Egri analyzes were written. He gets something else tragically close to partly right. Egri prescribes writing dialectical biographies of your characters to make them three-dimensional. He's right in that characters are primary over plot (though they're inextricable; could you really imagine a key character in a great drama outside of the play?), but writing biographies isn't how to get at them. Your audience will never see the biographies. For them, each and every character is nothing more nor less than the sum total of his or her actions on stage or film. Worry about developing them THERE. The rest is only useful if it yields some detail that can flesh them out more over time. Where Egri is good is in his analysis of movement and conflict. He's got a very good sense of everything being gradual, and really lays it out well. Don't take everything as gospel, but that is where you'll get the bang out of this book. If you need help there, it's worthwhile; if not, you don't really need to bother. No playwriting book is ever going to really get you there. It's an imprecise science, and authors are very often too prescriptivist for their own good. But there is good to be gleaned from them if you learn what you need and what works for you. Egri's book is no exception.
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Summary: The Number One Playwriting Guide
Review: Lajos Egri's magnificent account and demonstrations of how to write a dramatic play is exciting and accurate. Citing master playwrites as Shakespeare, Moliere, Henrik Ibsen, and many others pointing out their high points and low points and how a play is to be constructed showing their commonalities among them. Starting at the root, and logically building up the story and characters to create a well developed play. Legri argues whether the action or the characters drive the play, it would seem the he believes that the characters are the driving force, however he also recognizes that they are one in the same, that a well developed character will alone create the action. Overall the book is presented well, easy to read and one will have a solid working knowledge to begin critiquing plays, as well as to get moving on their own stories. It would be advised to read the plays Legri refers to throughout the book, it will become more handy and points made clearer when he discusses those stories. Highly reccomended!
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Summary: All about Drama
Review: Many parts of the book sound smart and well thought, but I have to admit that I think the search for the ultimate dramatic technique is like the search for the perpetuum mobile: Funny, sometimes interesting, but always futile. Still it is at times entertaining to hear somebody preach who is as convinced as Mr. Egri.
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Summary: great book
Review: There's so much more here than just the talk about premise, which for some people is what makes Egri so problematic. The sections on "Pivotal Characters" and "Unity of Opposites" and "Orchestration" are simply invaluable. Nowhere else will you find these key aspects of screenwriting addressed in such a direct, lucid and practical manner -- you can apply this stuff IMMEDIATELY to whatever story you are working on and your story will become stronger and better.
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Summary: Essential reading for serious screenwriters
Review: This book has stood the test of time. First published in 1946, Egri de-mystifies the art of story-telling. Originally written for the theatre, his principles apply equally well to film. Egri shows us how to start from square one and build a story, using examples from classic plays and movies we are all familiar with. An outstanding book: clear, direct, rings with truth. I wish he were still alive so he could be my script doctor.
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Summary: Really great
Review: This book is about plays, but it will help every novelist learn how to improve the structure of his stories. It should be in every writer's bookcase.
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Summary: This book is damaging
Review: This book shocks me. The worst advice you can give to a writer (especially a new writer) is to decide on the message of their work (premise / thesis) before they start writing. But that is precisely what Egri does. Writing is supposed to be about exploration -- not propagandizing. If you start writing with a premise (thesis) you'll end up stacking the deck, creating characters that are good guys and bad guys -- you would not have a play of ideas. In fact, you would not have a play. You'd have an essay with a thesis told through characters who garble at one another. Egri encourages the current tendency in dramaturgy to force writers to use theme (meaning thesis) as THE ONLY writing tool. Playwrighting and other creative forms need to discuss process and the mechanical tools of writing more than they have over the past fifty years. But this isn't the way to do it. This tool makes a writer do everything backwards.
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Summary: Understanding how the world works
Review: This book was better than I believed it would be when I bought it. I will never write a play, and have no ambition in that direction. But I wanted to understand what makes a good play good and a bad play bad - and to be able to put it to words. Mr Egri has certainly enabled me to do that. Egri uses the modern philosophies of dialectics as his starting point. His main thesis is that a play is a dialectical development: It has a premise to prove, and the steps taken must not be forced - must not come from outside the premises inherent in the play, in the characters and the situation set up by the playwright. It is a beautiful application of philosophical theory to practical life, and - I believe - the best currently on the market. Because of this, the structure he reveals as the basis of good playwriting is also applicable to other fields like storytelling and poetry. Even to life itself, and not only in the fabrication of lies to your boss about where you were on your sick day (when you really went to a lake with your laptop to write a play).
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