7 Books to Get You Started as a Playwright

While primarily aimed at stage and screenwriters, this book captures all of the major issues involved in creating a character and his or her motivations, which are necessary not only for character development but for plot structure as well. Highly recommended.

An excellent guide to writing plays by a working professional. Lots of motivation and advice on how to approach writing your play.

A good textbook on the complete scope of drama. Not ponderous like most textbooks, but eminently readable.

There are more detailed and more technical books out there for the technical stagecraft student, but this is a good guide to what goes on "behind the scenes" in the theater. It specifically covers the technical aspects of stagecraft in an engaging way. For the aspiring or beginning playwright, it's a good idea to have at least a passing understanding of what it takes to stage a play.

While you may never act in a play, and you may despise "The Method," reading this book and even attempting some, if not all, of the exercises within can make you a better playwright.

Doing so helps you understand just what an actor needs to go through (at least in Stanislavski's method) while trying to get into the skin of one of your characters. By reading this book along with everything written by any of your favorite playwrights, and attending as many plays as you can afford, you'll have a better chance of writing an interesting play.

This very concise and motivating primer on writing your first play, from conception to production, is from a working playwright in England, Steve Gooch. You may need to look on Amazon.co.uk for this book, but it's worth the price, especially if you're just starting as a playwright.

Longman's ideas about "polarity" can help any writer of fiction — whether stage, screen, story, or novel — understand the dynamic interplay between characters and how it must be used to be successful.