Masterclass in Dramatic Writing

A Masterclass in Dramatic Writing addresses all three genres of dramatic writing - for theatre film and TV - in a comprehensive one-semester 14-week masterclass for the dramatic writer.This book is tightly focused on the practical outcome of completing a first draft and first rewrite of a dramatic work drawing on Professor Janet Neipris’ many years of experience as the head of Dramatic Writing at NYU Tisch. The fourteen chapters organized like a semester take the reader week-by-week and step-by-step through writing a first draft of an original play screenplay or TV pilot while also teaching the core principles of dramatic writing. Chapters include Beginnings Creating Complex Characters Dialogue Escalating Conflicts Endings Checkpoints Comedy and Adaptation and there are Weekly Exercises and progressive Assignments.This book is perfect for professional writers teachers and students of dramatic writing as well as anyone who wants to complete their first dramatic work.An award-winning playwright and Professor of Dramatic Writing at NYU Janet Neipris has written for Screen and Television. She has also taught dramatic writers at UCLA and in China Australia Indonesia South Africa Italy and in the UK at Oxford CSSD University of Birmingham and the University of East Anglia. Previous publications include To Be A Playwright (Routledge 2006). Janet Neipris’s plays and letters are in the Theatre Collection of Harvard University’s Houghton Library. For more see janetneipris.