TABLE OF CONTENTS -- A playwright's solitary work -- The writer's vision -- Seeing into life -- Ideas about art -- Drama as a fine art -- The natural vs. the artificial -- Of subjects and sources -- Creativity -- The process of playwriting -- The beginning -- The scenario -- Drafting and revisions -- Rewriting and production -- Principles of drama -- Structure -- The structure of action -- Traditional forms -- Story -- Unity -- Preparation, suspense and surprise -- Magnitude and development -- Explorations of new structure -- Character -- Characters are not human beings -- Contrast and difference -- Crucial qualities -- The protagonist -- Characters in action -- Thought -- The three loci of thought -- Meaning -- How thought appears in a drama -- Thought in a didactic play -- Diction -- The problem of expression -- Words, words, words -- Phrases, clauses and sentences -- Wandering among the punctuation marks -- Mechanics -- Beats: Paragraphs of dialogue -- Segments, scenes and acts -- Titles -- Sounds -- The music in words -- Acoustics: tone and noise -- Phonetics -- Rhythm -- Melody -- The actor's voice -- The potential of non-human sounds -- Spectacle -- About man, by man, for man -- The world of the play -- Action, acting and interaction -- How much stagecraft for the playwright? -- Styles of production -- Spectacle in stage directions -- Visual imagination -- Problems of production -- Working relationship and contemporary theatre -- Co-creation with theatre artists -- Connections with theatre managers -- Business and social contacts -- The dramatic scene -- Living audiences -- Audience identity -- Theatrical conventions -- Contemporary audiences -- Scripts and markets -- The functions of a format -- An acceptable manuscript format -- Copyright: when and how to secure it -- The business process -- Markets -- The submission details -- A way of life -- Action -- Structure -- Vision -- Craft -- Image.
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