Playwriting 101: A Quick Guide on Writing and Producing Your First Play Step by Step From A to Z

By HowExpert

To write for the theatre you need to know about theatre. Ideas are easy to come by. Examine your background, interest, and beliefs. Examine the world around you. Exercises can help you come up with ideas. Choose the audience you want to reach and write to that audience. To learn to write dialogue listen to and record everyday conversations. Dialogue should sound like ordinary conversations but has more direction.

Know as much as you can about your central characters. Do a character analysis. Choose the character traits to emphasize. A character should come across as both typical and individual. Most plays have a plot, which involves conflict between the protagonist and the antagonist. The parts of a plot are: inciting incident, rising action, turning point, climax, and falling action. Other types of organization for a play are circular and thematic.

Before starting to write, you need to develop a central idea. Plays exist for a number of reasons—entertainment, to bring attention to something, and to teach. You need to decide what you want to accomplish. It’s easier to gain an audience’s interest if you start with a theme they agree with.

A play needs a sense of universality. A play should be unified, but it also needs contrast. Since theatre is a collaborative art, the director, actor, and designers may see the different facets differently than you do. It’s not difficult to have a well-written produced. Possible markets are schools, organizations, and professional theatre. Finished plays have to follow a particular format.

HowExpert publishes quick 'how to' guides on unique topics by everyday experts.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HowExpert
• Release date: Oct 31, 2018
• ISBN: 9781949531435

HowExpert

HowExpert publishes quick 'how to' guides on all topics from A to Z by everyday experts.

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Playwriting 101

A Quick Guide on Writing and Producing Your First Play Step by Step From A to Z

HowExpert & Marsh Cassady

Copyright HowExpert™

http://www.HowExpert.com

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Table of Contents

Recommended Resources

Introduction

Chapter 1: What’s the Big Idea?

Look, Another Good Idea!

I Used to Hate Exercising

Let’s All Get Together Soon

Chapter 2: He Said; She Said

Listen to me, Doggone It!

Talk to Me, But Don’t Converse!

Just Let It Flow…and Okay, Ebb Too

Chapter 3: What a Character!

Becoming an Analyst

The Individualistic Type

You Show me Yours; I’ll Show You Mine

Chapter 4: Stages, Genres, and Styles, Oh My!

It’s just a Stage She’s Going Through

Such a Drama Queen/Queen

Doing It with Style

Chapter 5: You’re Plotting What?

So What’s Your Problem?

A Plot Is a What?

"Plotty" Parts

Chapter 6: The Best Laid Schemes of Mice and Men

I Assume There’s a Purpose to All This

The Common Touch

So, what’s the Plan, Doc?

Chapter 7: To Market, to Market to Sell a Great Play

You Want Me to Produce What!

But I’m Not Normally Submissive

Makin’ a List; Checkin’ It Twice

About the Expert

Recommended Resources

Introduction

Why do you want to write a play? Why a play instead of any other type of writing—like a novel or a short story?

I write plays because I love theatre. I’ve been a professional actor and director, and I’m a former theatre professor. I like the here-and now sense and the direct flow between audience actor.

To write for the theatre, you need to know about theatre. If you don’t, having a successful production is probably rarer than winning a mega-million-dollar lottery.

I see a lot of plays, you might tell me, so I feel I can write one. Well, maybe. But that’s like seeing someone riding a bike and riding one yourself, with no previous experience.

Become involved. It’s not difficult. Most cities and towns have community theatres. Contact one of them and volunteer to help build the set, hang lights, build costumes, or do makeup. Audition for a role in the play; assist the director. Find out what works onstage and what doesn’t. It’s not important that you become an expert in any of these areas. Rather, it is important that you learn what is involved in a production. Learn, for instance, that makeup is usually more pronounced on the stage than in real life, or that expensive-looking costumes aren’t always made of expensive fabric, or that steps often are a little broader in a stage setting so an actor doesn’t have to concentrate on coming down a set of stairs rather than on the role itself.

Okay, let’s say you have experience, now let’s think more about that play you want to write. First consider the potential audience.

TIP 1: You need to decide the type of audience you want to reach.

Do you want to write for adults, for young kids, for teenagers? What you write and how you write it depends a great deal on the audience you choose—as well as the performance space. Of course, you also may decide to write plays for different audiences. For instance, I’ve written more than a dozen plays for teenagers. As well as those for adults. I particularly enjoy writing for teenagers, but an important reason I started writing plays for