The Art of Dramatic Writing - Its Basis in the Creative Interpretation of Human Motives

This book does just that - and its principles are so valid that they apply equally well to the short story, novel and screenplay

Lajos Egri examines a play from the inside out, starting with the heart of any drama - its characters

For it is people - their private natures and their inter-relationships - that move a story and give it life

All good dramatic writing depends upon an understanding of human motives

Why do people act as they do?

What forces tranform a coward into a hero, a hero into a coward?

What is it that Romeo does early in Shakespeare's play that makes his later suicide seem inevitable?

Why must Nora leave her husband at the end of A Doll's House?

These are a few of the fascinating problems which Egri analyzes

He shows how it is essential for the author to have a basic premise - a thesis, demonstrated in terms of human behavior - and to develop his dramatic conflict on the basis of that behavior

Premise, character, conflict - this is Egri's ABC

His book is a direct, jargon-free approach to the problem of achieving truth in a literary creation