Janet Neipris - A Masterclass in Dramatic Writing: Theater, Film, and Television

A Masterclass in Dramatic Writing addresses all three genres of dramatic writingfor theater, film, and TVin a comprehensive, 14-week masterclass for the dramatic writer.

Including new material alongside revised, extended selections from Janet Neipris original and much loved book To Be a Playwright, this volume takes the writer week-by-week up to a first draft and rewrite of a dramatic work.

Brand new chapters include:

Preface: the moral responsibility of the artist

Introduction: one writers life

Creating complex characters

Comedy

Putting it all together: the making of a playA Question of Country

Checkpoints

Lessons from master teachers and students

Adapting from fact, fiction, and further.

Adding these to selections on Character, Dialogue, Sixty questions, Endings, and Rewriting, Neipris has created a stunningly useful text which works across genres.

If your goal is a completed script to be proud of, you can have no more authoritative, inspiring, and careful guide than Janet Neipris.

Janet Neipris is an award-winning playwright and Professor of Dramatic Writing at NYUs Tisch School of the Arts. Her previous publications include To Be a Playwright (Routledge, 2006), Natives (2011), Plays by Janet Neipris (2000), and the musical Jeremy and the Thinking Machine, with Barbara Greenberg (2005). Her plays and letters are in the Theatre collection of Harvard Universitys Houghton Library.

Praise for this book

Janet Neipris writes her books as she does her playsfrom a joyous heart. Drawing on her long experience as both a playwright and a professor, she combines memoir and master class to teach us not only the craft of writing, but what it means to be a writer.

Lynn Ahrens,
stage- and screen-writer and lyricist
(Ragtime, Once on this Island, Anastasia)

Neipris combines an impressive knowledge of dramatic form with her considerable experience as both an educator and writer to produce an invaluable guide for aspiring writers. Packed full of practical advice, insightful anecdote, illuminating examples, and discussion with other writers and teachersthis is no ordinary run of the mill book. Neipris book is pretty much the definitive statement on contemporary dramatic writing techniques.

Dr Tony Fisher,
Reader in Theatre and Philosophy,
Royal Central School of Speech and Drama

A Masterclass in Dramatic Writing

Theater, Film, and Television

A fully revised and extended second edition of To Be a Playwright

Janet Neipris

Dedicated to Harley, Andre, and Kaila