Successful Authors -- Unsuccessful Playwrights, Introduction

Writing for the theatre is a peculiar business…It involves a craft
that you have to learn and a talent that you must possess.
Neither are common and both are essential.
--Goethe

Noted American authors have produced some not-so-noteworthy works for the American stage. Many who have excelled in other writing genres have come up against the difficulty of writing a good play, of creating a visual and audible work that will touch and affect an audience through dialogue and action. In A Primer of Playwriting, Kenneth MacGowan puts forth the “cold fact” that “playwrights are born, not made.” He states:

It is not enough that he [the playwright] should be an inventor of good plots or a recorder and interpreter of human character. It is not enough that he should also be a master of dialogue. Besides all this, he must have a talent for the peculiar organization of plot, characters, and dialogue that creates the suspenseful and mounting excitement without which no audience is satisfied.

The ability to create a literary work that translates into a living experience that holds an audience ultimately determines whether a playwright succeeds or fails.