Rowe began his playwriting seminar by asking his students to read "The Poetics" by Aristotle, using the text to help students learn to identify the workings of classic structure. In Rowe's view, all successful plays built dramatically from an "attack" (the introduction of a conflict), through a "crisis," and finally to a "resolution." He applied his methods even to modern plays that were not unified in time and place; it was Rowe's contention that even non-realistic plays had the classic underlying structure.