The Shawshank Redemption (1994)
Miss Julie by August Strindberg
Boy Gets Girl by Rebecca Gilman
Hedda Gabler by Henrik Ibsen
The Clean House by Sarah Ruhl
A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams
The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia? by Edward Albee
The Pillowman by Martin McDonagh
Fences by August Wilson
The House of Yes by Wendy MacLeod
A Flea in Her Ear by Georges Feydeau
Henry V by William Shakespeare
The Promise by José Rivera
Fuddy Meers by David Lindsay–Abaire
Proof by David Auburn
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf by Edward Albee
Hamlet by William Shakespeare
The Good Person of Szechwan by Bertolt Brecht
Course and Workshop Syllabus Suggestions
For Further Reading
After you have mastered the art of dialogue writing, you are ready to move on to writing full-length scripts. Here are a few books that can get you started down this road:
Theater
McLaughlin, Buzz. 1997. The Playwright's Process. New York: Back Stage Books.
Spencer, Stuart. 2002. The Playwright's Guidebook. New York: Faber & Faber.
Film
Field, Syd. 2005. Screenplay. New York: Delta.
Halperin, Michael. 2003. Writing the Second Act. Studio City, CA: Michael Wiese Productions.
McKee, Robert. 1997. Story: Substance, Structure, Style and The Principles of Screenwriting. New York: Harper Collins.
Snyder, Blake. 2005. Save the Cat! Studio City, CA: Michael Wiese Productions.
Vogler, Christopher. 2007. The Writer's Journey (3rd Ed.). Studio City, CA: Michael Wiese Productions.
General
Johnstone, Keith. 1987. Impro. New York: Routledge/ Theatre Arts Books.
Note
The author acknowledges the authors and copyright owners of the following books, stage plays and motion pictures from which short excerpts of prose, dialogue or single frame images have been used in this book for purposes of commentary, criticism, and scholarship under the Fair Use Doctrine.
All About Eve, ©1950. Screenplay by Joseph L. Mankiewicz, Story by Mary Orr. 20th Century-Fox Home Entertainment, All Rights Reserved.
As Good As It Gets, ©1998. Screenplay by Mark Andrus and James L. Brooks. Columbia TriStar Home Entertainment, All Rights Reserved.
Biography, @1952. Stage play by S. N. Behrman, Published in 4 Plays By S. N. Behrman: The Second Man, Biography, Rain from Heaven, End of Summer, New York: Random House. All Rights Reserved.
Casablanca, ©2005. Screenplay by Julius J. Epstein, Philip G. Epstein and Howard Koch, based on the play Everybody Comes to Rick's by Murray Burnett and Joan Alison. Warner Home Video, All Rights Reserved.
The Emperor Brutus Jones, ©1921. Stage Play by Eugene O'Neill. Published in Eugene O'Neill: Complete Plays 1913-1920, New York: Library of America, All Rights Reserved.
Fight Club, ©2000. Screenplay by Jim Uhls, Novel by Chuck Palahniuk. 20th Century-Fox Home Entertainment, All Rights Reserved.
Goodfellas, ©2006, Screenplay by Nicholas Pileggi & Martin Scorsese. Warner Home Video, All Rights Reserved.
Gone With the Wind, ©2005. Screenplay by Sidney Howard, Novel by Margaret Mitchell, Warner Home Video, All Rights Reserved.
Grace, ©2008. Stage play by Mick Gordon and A.C. Grayling, London: Oberon Books, All Rights Reserved.
The Graduate, ©1999. Screenplay by Calder Willing-ham and Buck Henry, novel by Charles Webb. MGM Home Entertainment, All Rights Reserved.
Hamlet ©2007. Screenplay by Kenneth Branaugh. Stage play by William Shakespeare. Warner Home Video, All Rights Reserved.
His Girl Friday ©1940. Screenplay by Charles Lederer, stage play The Front Page by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur. Columbia Pictures.
The Jazz Singer, ©2007. Adaptation by Alfred A. Cohn, stage play by Samson Raphaelson. Warner Home Video, All Rights Reserved.
King John, stage play by William Shakespeare, distributed by Project Guttenberg.*
Life on the Mississippi, by Mark Twain, Distributed by Project Guttenberg.*
The Real Thing, ©2000. Stage play by Tom Stoppard, London: Faber & Faber, All Rights Reserved.
Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead, ©1967. Stage play by Tom Stoppard, New York: Grove Press, All Rights Reserved.
The Power Outage, ©1985. Stage play by David Mamet, Published in Goldberg Street: Short Plays and Monologues, New York: Grove Press, All Rights Reserved.
Proof, ©2006. Screenplay by David Auburn and Rebecca Miller, stage play by David Auburn. The Weinstein Company, All Rights Reserved.
The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe, ©1990. Stage play by Jane Wagner, New York: Harper Paperbacks, All Rights Reserved.
The Sea Gull, Stage play by Anton Chekhov. Distributed by Project Guttenberg.*
Sunday in the Park with George, ©1999. Play by James Lapine, music by Stephen Sondheim, inspired by the works of Georges Seurat. Image Entertainment, All Rights Reserved.
Star Wars, ©1977. Screenplay by George Lucas. 20th Century-Fox Film Corporation, All Rights Reserved.
Three Tall Women, ©1994. Stage play by Edward Albee. New York: Plume, All Rights Reserved.
The Wizard of Oz, ©2005. Screenplay by Noel Langley, Florence Ryerson and Edgar Allan Woolf, novel by L. Frank Baum. Warner Home Video, All Rights Reserved.
Yankee Doodle Dandy ©2006. Screenplay by Robert Buckner and Edmund Joseph. Story by Robert Buckner. Warner Home Video, All Rights Reserved.
*Project Guttenberg eBooks are for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License available online at www.gutenberg.net.
About the Author
Penny Penniston is a Chicago-area playwright and screenwriter. Her newest play, Spin, will have its world premiere with Chicago's Theater Wit during the 2009–2010 season.
Previous stage plays include now then again and The Roaring Girl. now then again had its world premiere in Chicago at the Bailiwick Repertory Theater on February 17, 2000. The show ran for seventeen weeks, received wide critical acclaim, and was awarded Chicago's Joseph Jefferson Citation for “Best New Work.” In 2002, now then again was published by Broadway Play Publishing.
Penniston coauthored The Roaring Girl with her husband, director Jeremy Wechsler. This adaptation of the 1611 comedy by Thomas Middleton and Thomas Dekker had its world premiere in Chicago with Shakespeare's Motley Crew. It received a Joseph Jefferson nomination for “Best Adaptation.”
Penniston's screenplays include Love is Brilliant (an adaptation of her stage play, now then again), Going Out of the Box, and Gay Pride & Prejudice. Love is Brilliant received the Sloan Award at the 2005 Tribeca Film Festival.
Penniston has written short plays for Chicago's Collaboraction Theater Company and Shakespeare's Motley Crew. From 2002–2007, she taught playwriting as an adjunct professor in the Theater Department of Northwestern University. She has also guest lectured at DePaul University. For more information on Penniston's work, see her website at www.peninkent.com.
THE WRITER'S JOURNEY
3RD EDITION
MYTHIC STRUCTURE FOR WRITERS
CHRISTOPHER VOGLER
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See why this book has become an international best seller and a true classic. The Writer's Journey explores the powerful relationship between mythology and storytelling in a clear, concise style that's made it required reading for movie executives, screenwriters, playwrights, scholars, and fans of pop culture all over the world.
Both fiction and nonfiction writers will discover a set of useful myth-inspired storytelling paradigms (i.e., “The Hero's Journey") and step-by-step guidelines to plot and character development. Based on the work o
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The updated and revised third edition provides new insights and observations from Vogler's ongoing work on mythology's influence on stories, movies, and man himself.
“This book is like having the smartest person in the story meeting come home with you and whisper what to do in your ear as you write a screenplay. Insight for insight, step for step, Chris Vogler takes us through the process of connecting theme to story and making a script come alive.”
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“This is a book about the stories we write, and perhaps more importantly, the stories we live. It is the most influential work I have yet encountered on the art, nature, and the very purpose of storytelling.”
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CHRISTOPHER VOGLER is a veteran story consultant for major Hollywood film companies and a respected teacher of filmmakers and writers around the globe. He has influenced the stories of movies from The Lion King to Fight Club to The Thin Red Line and most recently wrote the first installment of Ravenskull, a Japanese-style manga or graphic novel. He is the executive producer of the feature film P.S. Your Cat is Dead and writer of the animated feature Jester Till.
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He's made millions of dollars selling screenplays to Hollywood and now screenwriter Blake Snyder tells all. “Save the Cat!®” is just one of Snyder's many ironclad rules for making your ideas more marketable and your script more satisfying — and saleable, including:
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This ultimate insider's guide reveals the secrets that none dare admit, told by a show biz veteran who's proven that you can sell your script if you can save the cat.
“Imagine what would happen in a town where more writers approached screenwriting the way Blake suggests? My weekend read would dramatically improve, both in sellable/producible content and in discovering new writers who understand the craft of storytelling and can be hired on assignment for ideas we already have in house.”
–From the Foreword by Sheila Hanahan Taylor, Vice President, Development at Zide/Perry Entertainment, whose films include American Pie, Cats and Dogs, Final Destination
“One of the most comprehensive and insightful how-to's out there. Save the Cat!®is a must-read for both the novice and the professional screenwriter.”
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“Want to know how to be a successful writer in Hollywood? The answers are here. Blake Snyder has written an insider's book that's informative – and funny, too.”
– David Hoberman, Producer, The Shaggy Dog (2005), Raising Helen, Walking Tall, Bringing Down the House, Monk (TV)
BLAKE SNYDER, besides selling million-dollar scripts to both Disney and Spielberg, was one of Hollywood's most successful spec screenwriters. Blake's vision continues on www.blakesnyder.com.
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{ THE MYTH OF MWP }
In a dark time, a light bringer came along, leading the curious and the frustrated to clarity and empowerment. It took the well-guarded secrets out of the hands of the few and made them available to all. It spread a spirit of openness and creative freedom, and built a storehouse of knowledge dedicated to the betterment of the arts.
The essence of the Michael Wiese Productions (MWP) is empowering people who have the burning desire to express themselves creatively. We help them realize their dreams by putting the tools in their hands. We demystify the sometimes secretive worlds of screenwriting, directing, acting, producing, film financing, and other media crafts.
By doing so, we hope to bring forth a realization of ‘conscious media’ which we define as being positively charged, emphasizing hope and affirming positive values like trust, cooperation, self-empowerment, freedom, and love. Grounded in the deep roots of myth, it aims to be healing both for those who make the art and those who encounter it. It hopes to be transformative for people, opening doors to new possibilities and pulling back veils to reveal hidden worlds.
MWP has built a storehouse of knowledge unequaled in the world, for no other publisher has so many titles on the media arts. Please visit www.mwp.com where you will find many free resources and a 25% discount on our books. Sign up and become part of the wider creative community!
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Talk the Talk Page 15