Ebook: The Secret Life of Plays

A guide to the hidden workings of plays and the trade secrets that govern their writing - by the acclaimed playwright Steve Waters. Drawing on a wide range of drama, both historical and modern, Waters takes the reader through the key elements of dramatic writing? scenes, acts, space, time, characters, language and images? to show how a play is more than the sum of its parts, with as much inner vitality as a living organism. Almost uniquely amongst accounts of playwriting, Waters' book looks at the ways in which good plays move their audiences, generating powerful emotio.;Cover; Title page; Contents; Dedication; Acknowledgements; Introduction: Inside the Apple; Act One: Deep Structures; 1. Changing Scenes; 2. Shaping Acts; 3. Writing Space; 4. Time Codes; Act Two: Vital Signs; 5. Dramatis Personae: Constructing Character; 6. Powers of Speech: Language as Rhetoric; 7. Dynamic Symbols: The Art of Suggestion; 8. Forms of Feeling: Moving the Audience; Act Three: Professional Secrets; 9. A Taxonomy of Playwrights; Coda; About the Author; Copyright Information.