 Image by Gabor [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons |
Gustav Freytag. |
Chapter I, Part 2 of Gustav Freytag’s Technique of the Drama is now available on the Technique of Drama page.
This section covers the following topics on playwriting and stage drama: What is Dramatic? — Explanation. Effects. Characters. The action. The dramatic life of the characters. Entrance of the dramatic into the life of men. Rareness of dramatic power.
 Image by Southworth & Hawes (The Metropolitan Museum of Art) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons |
Newly edited e-books of John Quincy Adams’ Lectures on Rhetoric and Oratory are now available. |
I have recently added FREE ebooks of The John Quincy Adams Lectures on Rhetoric and Oratory to the JQA Lectures page. They are available for download in both ePub and Kindle formats.
Image by Southworth & Hawes (The Metropolitan Museum of Art) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons |
The Concluding Lecture on Rhetoric and Oratory. |
The final lecture, Conclusion has been added to the John Quincy Adams Lectures on Rhetoric and Oratory page. This marks the completion of the JQA Lectures project.
Image by Southworth & Hawes (The Metropolitan Museum of Art) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons |
JQA Lecture XXXVI Delivery. |
Lecture XXXVI, Delivery, has been added to the John Quincy Adams Lectures on Rhetoric and Oratory page.
Alright, the lectures aren’t new, per se, but the text is.
I have begun the task of editing all of John Quincy Adams’ Lectures on Rhetoric and Oratory out of frustration for not having a legible and accurate copy available anywhere other than a scarce hardbound copy of Volume II on my living room shelf. Since this work is in the public domain, I am sharing it freely and asking for feedback to improve it. It can be found on my web site here.
Why, you might wonder, bother with an obscure volume like this? I would argue that Adams’ eloquence alone is worth the reading. But more than that, writers can benefit from the piece as an example of how to match form to message. Not only are his lectures on rhetoric illuminating, they are themselves rhetorical genius.
One of my first completed works, The Gulls’ Lament was written first as a poem in 1994, then expanded into a one-act that was produced as part of the 1994 Playwrights Platform Festival of New Plays.
For information on the production, click here.
For the original poem, click here.
For the script in its entirety, click here.
My one-act play The Jubjub Birds has been added to my Writing Samples page.
This was written in 1998 and received its first production by Ubiquity Stage in 1999. For more information about the original production of the show, click here.
Back in 1993, I wrote a review of the original touring company production of The Who’s “Tommy”, titled Tommy Rolls into Boston with Raves.
The review, posted on my Writing Samples page, was originally published in the December 17, 1993 issue of the Everett Advocate.
Cherry Sour with Bitters is a piece I wrote in 2007 that sat on a shelf for a while. It was subsequently entered in the 2008 OUT Short Fiction Contest.
The short story is about the relationship between a drag queen and her supportive lover the evening after a show. I particularly like the atmosphere of the piece. Originally it was a kind of character study of Avery from my novel-length manuscript Club 1692, but there are many differences, not the least of which is that Avery, a former college professor, is much more independent that Cherry, and has been through many more trials, making her much tougher than Lee press-ons.
The short story can be found on my Writing Samples page.
