Writing Your First Play

This is a good college textbook on playwriting for the beginner. The chapters cover action, conflict, character, dialogue, writing from life, writing from a source, special exercises to expand one's skills, writing a one-act play and marketing plays. The feature that sets it apart from other books on the subject are the many excerpts from plays, most of which were written by Hall's own students. The quality of these excerpts speaks highly of his teaching gifts. One of them, an entire one-act play by Jerome Hairston titled "Cable Man", deserves special mention. The appendix, titled "Classroom Procedures," is written for the instructor. It provides, for example, the relative merits of having authors read their own plays vs. assigning parts to classmates.

I'm in the middle of my first play, and read this as a refresher course. Learned a few things are new to me. One thing that I like about this book is that it's written in easy to read manner, and exercises really help you understand the techniques. Much better than the many books that focus on abstract theoretics that are hard to understand. I was pleasantly surprised by the writing samples from the students who took the author's class - some of them are very very good, and gave me confidence to know that the person who wrote this book taught them. Recommended.

I had Dr. Hall as a professor of playwriting for two semesters. He uses this book as the text for his introductory course. The exercises and examples are an excellent place for an aspiring playwright to start. Dr. Hall introduces the ideas of conflict, character, action, etc. one at a time, and quite intensively. Following the exercises, each of your first three plays will focus on only one aspect of drama, leading to an all-inclusive one-act play; your first play. Although I have much respect for Dr. Hall, and enjoyed working with him for over a year, I would still have to rate this book "4 Stars." The title is a little misleading. Like I mentioned, you will not have a full-length written by the end of the book, but several short sketches and a one-act play. Were this called "Working Up to Your First Play," I'd give it a 5.

This book is superb for any aspiring playwright. The book is easy to comprehend and filled with wonderful exercises and examples to follow. Mr. Hall does a wonderful job of breaking down the elements of playwriting. Thumbs Up!

As Director of an International Playwrights Retreat, I have had opportunity to lead workshops in playwriting world wide. I have and value a large collection of playwriting books, and have borrowed exercises from many of them. I find Roger's opening exercise one of the best to get at the essence of what theatre is about. He has the student write a scene of action - no dialogue, no plot outline or character studies - just what we can see the character doing.The book moves swiftly on to the next essential - conflict. By now, the reader may well have become a writer, as the book progresses through character, dialogue, writing from life or from other sources, and more - all leading to completing that first play before you even realized it.The book is full of loads of useful exercises and examples. This at once opens worlds of possibilities to the creative mind, while providing achieveable writing results - all leading to an exploration of your own stories. It provides a context, a process, useful advice and practise . . . all in a very user friendly fashion. It's a great way to get a process started.