Student Playwriting
Writing your first play can be very scary. Really, the only way to learn how to do it, is to do it! For teachers and students we provide a lesson plan below.
The
New Zealand Young Playwrights Competition is run every two years for writers aged 16 to 24. This is a great stepping stone for many emerging writers. The next deadline for scripts is
December 8 2008.
Another great start is
Flip the Script, a five minute playwriting slam. For more information on both please contact
scripts@playmarket.org.nz.
Of course you can go to writing classes and read books (and websites like this. See Playwrights resources also) but just sit down and get going. Don't worry if your first draft is terrible. Writing is re writing. Writing is going to see plays, reading plays, talking about plays, and most importantly, seeing your play read or produced.
Join us at Playmarket as a member, or make sure you're on our eBulletin list. You'll be introduced to the amazing world of playwriting in Aotearoa.
Here is a lesson plan designed for teachers to guide students through a playwriting process.
ONE WAY TO WRITE A PLAY
10 Lesson Plans
These lesson plans are designed to prepare students to enter the New Zealand Young Playwrights Competition. You can use the ten lesson plans in sequence, or pull bits out to suit.
My favourite moment on stage, anywhere, was in Stephen Sinclair's play at the Auckland Theatre Company,
The Bellbird. It was at the end. Danielle Cormack's character was holding her dead husband in her arms and the rain came down (a metre wide square of actual water from above the stage.) I cried and was drawn into the emotional world of the character. Nothing else existed.
That's what theatre is about for me. Transporting an audience right into the heart of human nature to explore what it is to be human is what theatre can do.
These lesson plans can get fairly technical, but I can't stress enough that writing a play is about great characters, imagination, creativity and trusting your own instinct as a storyteller and a craftsperson.
If you and your students get too heady about this process, drop it all and get your students to write for five minutes about butterflies, or the most beautiful thing they've ever seen, or what life could be like on another planet, or the war in Iraq. Let them write a scene about love that only uses hand puppets and lighting. Be dumb, don't care and just write magic. Always come back to the magic.
Then of course come back to reality and realize that writing plays is about 5% of this, and 95% discipline and discovering the craft. But NZYPC is for new writers so we don't expect expertly written plays. But we do hope to read original, imaginative plays with strong characters and a natural sense of story.
This group of ten lesson plans is not the definitive way to write a play - its just food for though that might lead students somewhere.
INTRODUCTION
Congratulations on starting to write your play. It's a fantastic world you're entering in to. If you get stuck, or think what you've written is terrible - ignore everything in these lesson plans. Just start writing. Them come back to the plans. Ignore them - go sit by the sea and write what you feel. Pretend you're walking down the street as your main character - what do they feel? Write for 10 minutes on what you want to say in your play. Do something else. Create space for a good idea to hit you on the head (it may be while you're doing the dishes!) Get into the world of it.
WRITING VOICE
Activity 1 - WRITING VOICE (10 minutes)
Discuss each of the following statements and questions:
- We each have our own writing ‘voice'. Only you can write the kind of play you're going to write. Voice can also be described here as the way you see the world.
- What's the most moving or beautiful thing you've ever seen on stage, or in a film?
- What magic can you create in theatre that you can't create in film?
OBSERVATION
Sometimes when you sit and observe, you see the world as it is. Being able to articulate that into a play is what being a writer is all about.
Activity 2 - OBSERVATION (45 minutes)
Spend a few minutes just writing what you see in the room - what do you notice about the people, based on their body language or what they're wearing? How do you feel? Is the light coming into the room in an interesting way? This is observation. The tiniest detail about a character's observation of the world can be beautiful on stage.
Hot Seat. Choose two people to be in the hot seat. Interview them separately for two minutes each. First decide who they are (ie. Blind woman who runs a lotto shop.) Then write a short scene using these two characters. You may introduce a third if you like. Share your scenes with the class.
LESSON 2 - Story
As humans, we've told stories since we could talk, and we all engage in storytelling in some way or another. Whether it be reading, seeing a DVD, watching a play, hearing about a friends great night out. Writers have an instinct on how to tell a story.
Most stories have some of these story elements:
- Have a beginning, middle and an end (story points)
- Have one idea that is like a foundation or backbone for story (central idea)
- Lead to something, usually near the end (conflict leading to crisis)
- There are usually things stopping people from getting what they want. These are called obstacles.
- Allow the storyteller and audience to go through a range of emotions, attitudes and thoughts.
Activity 1 - STORY (45 minutes)
a) As a group, decide on one play or film or children's story that you are all familiar with. Talk about what happens in the story. Decide on what the central idea of the story might be.
b) Now write down 10 plot points. These are things that happen in the story. I.e. In Cinderella an invitation comes to the house to go to the ball. Then a Fairy Godmother appears and helps Cinderella. Cinderella arrives at the ball. Etc.
c) Choose a character from a story you all know well. Identify what that character wants more than anything. This is the character's goal. Write down three or four things that may be stopping the character from getting it. These are the obstacles. I.e. Cinderella wants to go to the ball. Her step sisters are stopping her. Then the fairy godmother spell stops her.
LESSON 3 - Ideas - Sources
Ideas for plays are all around us. NZ Playwright Briar Grace-Smith says she writes the ones that keep coming back. Sources for ideas can be:
- Newspapers
- Our dreams
- Real events
- Interviews
- Conversations we eavesdrop on
- The things that make you mad
- A visual image
- Starting with structure
Activity 1 - IDEAS - SOURCES (25 minutes)
1. Work on your own. Choose one of the above sources for ideas. Write for ten minutes about this idea. Don't think too much - this is free creative writing. Explore how you feel about this idea/issue.
If it's a visual image of a painting, imagine yourself in the painting - who are you? What are you seeing/feeling/hearing? Who else will walk into the picture?
If it's a newspaper article about a meteor crashing into a couple's house, what happens next? Does NASA come and take it away so they steal it back?
If politics makes you mad, pretend you have just been accepted into parliament and you're giving your opening address. Perhaps there's a heckler in the crowd who keeps butting in.
2. In pairs, discuss your ideas.
Activity 2 - IDEAS - SOURCES
(25 minutes)
2. As a group, discuss how theatre is different from film? Then discuss how your idea could work on the stage. When you start your script for your New Zealand Young Playwrights Competition, it might take you three or four goes to find something you really want to write about. Remember that the initial premise or idea is only a small part of it. It's how you write it that's going to be interesting.
LESSON 4 - Ideas - Structure
Most plays are divided into acts, and scenes. Each scene should build on the next one - increasing conflict, tension, character development, and head towards the crisis.
Writing a play is a like mathematics: You've been inspired to write, you have strong characters, a strong central idea, you have snippets of dialogue running through your head, you have a strong visual image for the end. You can either just get down and write your play without thinking of any of the technical elements, and work them out later, or you can start with structure. Every writer is different and there is definitely no right or wrong.
Story can come from structure too. Think of structure as the first stage of building a house. It holds the play together.
Activity 1 - IDEAS - STRUCTURE (50 minutes)
WORK IN PAIRS. Come up with as many ideas for structure as possible.
Examples:
1. If you want to write something on the seven deadly sins, write something with seven scenes.
2. Or falling in love - if there are four stages to falling in love, write a four-act play revealing these four stages.
3. Or something about an old steam engine and its original driver - the steam engine train has seven carriages so write about the politics of the seven decades with which the train has been running, or the seven suburbs it stops off at.
4. A house with four floors and four very different people live on each floor - write a four-act play.
5. You have an idea for a play about auditioning for drama school. Lets say you have six characters. You want to include their audition pieces in your script. Create a structure to work from. Act one has six different scenes (each character has a scene where they walk to the audience about why they want to audition, then we see their audition pieces.). Act two is the first day of drama school - we see who got in and who didn't, and how they all get on.
Share with the class.
LESSON 5 - Creative Elements
Plays can be made up of many different elements.
Activity 1 - Creative Elements - Choose (50 minutes)
Read each of these other ideas for structure and choose one to present to the group.
Work in pairs. If you choose (e) Monologues, work on your own.
(a) Songs / Dance
Perhaps a song, or a dance/movement piece will best portray what you want to write about. Of course one song or dance piece in the middle of a naturalistic play may seem a bit odd - but it'll be interesting! If you have a natural instinct to do something odd like this, go with it, see where it can go. Trust yourself.
EXAMPLE: Your Nan has three songs she sings from the past. You pick your three favourite songs. Is there a connection? Perhaps one from each era is about love, and one about loss. How can you weave these songs into a play? Who are the characters? What is the problem each character has and how do they help or hinder each other?
ACTIVITY: Write lyrics to a song and perform it with simple choreography.
(b) Visual Inspiration
Some plays start because the writer loved a certain painting, or has an image of a last scene in their head, or a recurring dream.
EXAMPLE: A certain painting has always been in your living room but you know nothing about it. You imagine when the painting was created. Who's the artist? Who's in the painting? It reminds you of what it would be like to travel in the Middle East. You start to create a story about an artist who gets paid to travel to the Middle East to paint a picture. But he's just fallen in love and instead of travelling; he stays in New Zealand and paints the picture from a Hamilton garden. He delivers the painting but is found out. This may sound random, but how far can your imagination take you? Make brave decisions.
ACTIVITY: Choose a visual image. I could be a photo, painting, sculpture. Create a story and two characters from this image. Write a scene. At some point, use the image in your scene. Read the scene out to the class.
(c) Technical Magic
Some theatre has little dialogue and is made up of exploring and extending images. It can be harder to captivate your audience and hold story, but this could be part of your voice as a writer. Whichever way you want to write, remember that you're in the world of theatre where anything is possible. Through lighting and sound, you can re-create anything on stage. You can create beautiful moments. Even if your script is flawed, if you've got some special, theatre-magic moments, you may be partly excused!
Think of a moment that you might want to create on stage. I.e. A conversation you've just had with someone, the image of an old man talking down the road, the way water falls against your bedroom window. What sounds are there? What smells are there? Is it day or night? What's the feeling? How can you recreate this moment on stage, using sound and lighting? Trust what comes up, extend it.
ACTIVITY: Write a scene using the moment you want to explore on stage, using as many technical cues as possible - SFX, lighting, off-stage sounds.
(d) Monologues from Your Life
You don't need big plots, murder, foreign countries or big themes to write a good play. Only you can write like you, because no one else has had the kind of life you've had so far.
ACTIVITY: Work on your own. Write down three things that have happened in your life. It could be something sad, or something great, or something small like being given a pen when you were small and you thought it was magic.
1. Who else is in the story?
2. You could either leave what actually happened and run with your imagination (which will change the outcome of the real story), or you could continue with the facts.
3. Write a one page monologue.
4. Think about how you could turn this into a dramatic play. Where would it be set? What visual effects could you use? What images do you have throughout the story? If you had to choose a central theme for the story, what would it be?
5. Share your monologues with the class if you want to.
LESSON 6 - Three Act Structure
Read this introduction, discuss in a group then do the activity at the end.
One way of telling a story is by using the classical Hollywood three-act structure. Very basically, it goes like this:
- Plot points
- Turning Point
- Goal
- Obstacles
- Crisis
- Resolution
- Central Idea
- Conflict
- Dramatic Action
- Character Journey
- Central theme
- Subplots
THREE ACT STRUCTURE
There are infinite ways to structure a play. We're going to look at the three-act structure. The three acts, or parts of your play, have three different functions.
Act 1 is called the Set up. We are introduced to the characters and we find out what they want and what kind of conflict they have in their lives.
Act 2 is where most of the main action takes place. Here, there are plot points that stop our main character from achieve their goal. The plot points that stop them are usually obstacles. In Act 2, there is a sense that things are getting more dramatic and complicated for our main character. There may be twists and turns in the story, until we reach the end of the Act 2 which is called the crisis.
Act 3 is our resolution. What does the crisis do to our main character and what do they do next?
Lets look at the story elements of Cinderella, within a three-act structure.
Act 1
Set up: Cinderella lives with her ugly mean stepsisters
Turning Point:Everyone gets an invitation to the ball except for Cinderella.
Goal: To get to the ball.
Act 2
Obstacle 1: Her stepsisters said she could go but set her impossible tasks to finish first.
Obstacle 2: A fairy godmother appears and casts a spell on Cinderella to allow her to go to the ball but under strict circumstances.
Obstacle 3: She meets the prince but has to flee before midnight.
Crisis: The prince comes looking for the wearer of the glass slipper but her stepsisters hide Cinderella. Cinderella is at her lowest. She manages to try the slipper on.
Act 3
Resolution: She rides off into the sunset with the prince
Conflict Jealousy with stepsisters. Cinderella feeling she has no personal power.
Character Journey - Cinderella goes from low ebb to high, back to low, up to
high for the entire story. As an audience, we want her to be happy and we take the journey with her.
Central Idea -Good always rein over evil.
The Three-Act Story Structure of Cinderella - A VISUAL DIAGRAM
Activity 1 - THREE-ACT STRUCTURE
(30 minutes)
Work in small groups. Use an existing fairytale or a film that you all know well. Create a graph like the one above using the three act structure story elements.
Remember that this is only one way of telling a story. You may never use it. But it's sometimes useful to come back to if you're stuck with where your story is going. Making strong decisions about goal, turning points and crisis can be a key to a strong story.
LESSON 7 - CHARACTER
Strong, well-rounded, interesting, contradictory, flawed and unique characters are the basis for your story and your central ideal, therefore your play. The more you know about your characters, the more interesting choices you can make about what happens in your story. In fact, you need to know more about them than what they know themselves.
Activity 1 - CHARACTER
Work in pairs. A thinks of a character they're interested in developing and makes decisions about the following questions. B is always challenging A to make the biggest, most dramatic, unusual decision. Share your most interesting decisions with the group.
- What do they want to achieve by the end of the day? I.e. Buy some chocolate
- What do they want in five years? I.e. To have finished travelling the world.
- List 51 things they can remember from their life. I.e. seeing a beheaded cat, lying about stealing money, wanting to be the Queen.
- List 21 things they want (this can free up ideas for scenes) i.e. Their sister's bike, to get their boyfriend to say ‘I love you', world peace, the government to make smoking illegal, free buses, a new car, to leave town.
- Write something that your character knows about themselves that nobody else knows i.e. they've adopted a baby before, they're scared of dark places, they've never voted, they're a millionaire.
- What's their favourite object? I.e. Pounamu from Southand, old swandry.
- How do they feel about sex? I.e. wants to be a virgin till married, hates it, and wants lots of sexual partners.
- How do they feel about religion? Is Buddhist, knows there's something out there, and thinks it creates hate.
- Who has had a big impact on their life? Their Grandpa, teacher, bus driver, Madonna, pen pal.
- Do they have any unique physical attributes? I.e. tattoos, speech impediments, their hands shake, laugh too loud, stand too close to other people.
Activity 2 - CHARACTER (for when you're underway with your play.)
a) At each moment in your play, you need to know how your character feels. If you're stuck and you don't know what to write next, become each character. Write for 10 minutes on where they are, what's just happened, how they feel about it, what they're going to do next, what they notice about the weather, the smells in the room (and how that makes them feel.) Have them recall a dream - use your imagination. Doing this may give you a little gem, a key to propel you forward. Always keep your central idea in the back of your mind.
b) What does your main character secretly dislike and like about the other characters in your play?
c) What does your main character do to the other characters to get what they want? (i.e. To achieve their goal). Could you make more dramatic decisions on this?
d) What journey does your character go on? I.e. they start hating everyone and being depressed and end up happy and doing voluntary work. Is our character journey big enough?
LESSON 8 - Dialogue
Now that you've got your idea for a play, a strong structure, interesting, flawed and opposing characters, you can start writing the first draft of your play. You can start writing the dialogue.
It is not what people say that matters; it's how they say it. Your parents may ask you, ‘how was your day dear?' and you may answer with, ‘fine thanks.' You probably don't mean fine. You may mean ‘it was a totally wash out but I don't want to discuss it with you,' or maybe you mean, ‘how dare you ask me since you are the one who makes my life hell.' Sure, the actor can portray some of these things, but you need to give your actors some clues.
As a writer, you need to make sure you write very DRAMATIC dialogue. There ALWAYS needs to be something going on, behind what your characters are saying. Otherwise your play will be a bunch of statements that will be boring for an audience to watch. Even if you have something really important to say in your play, if you don't present it in an interesting and entertaining way, it'll be little more than a lecture.
Activity 1 - DIALOGUE - How People Speak
(15 minutes)
All your characters need to speak differently. Interesting characters are ones that have contradictions - so a character that left school at 14 and says "wif" instead of "with", and "barf" instead of "bath", could be incredibly intelligent and know everything thing South African butterflies.
a) Discuss how the following characters could speak:
A woman with a PHD in philosophy.
A man who left school at 14.
b) Decide three things about each of the following people, from how they speak.
Person 1: It seems you haven't the faintest idea what I'm talking about, and if you do, you're making a jolly good show of concealing it from me.
Person 2: Na.
Person 3: Oh god, please, don't let him, you see I'm not, help me.
Person 4: And, and then the big starship came down and boom blew every one up and then Mummy, well, Mummy said bad, you're so bad bad bad naughty girl.
Activity 2 - DIALOGUE - 10-Line Play
(35 minutes)
Work in pairs. Write a 10-line play where at least one line is a stage direction, and one is SFX or lighting effect. Do one draft. Decide what each character wants from the other person and whether they get it or not, then write a second draft. Act the play out to the group.
LESSON 9 - More Dialogue
Activity 1 - MORE DIALOGUE
(25 minutes)
Dramatic action is what characters do to each other to get what they want. It can also be called subtext. In every play, in every act, in every scene, in every stage direction, in every word of dialogue, there is something going on. The dialogue is ACTIVE. The characters are doing something to the other characters, or if it's a monologue, to the audience. Writing in-active dialogue is the 8th deadly sin.
Here are three examples of the same scene. Decide which has the most dramatic action in, and why.
Scenario for a play: Joe is on the verge of dropping out of school - teachers and police have given him one more chance to redeem himself. Joe loves Rani. Rani secretly love's Joe's brother Tama. They are at the local shopping mall where hoodies have just been banned. A few minutes earlier, Joe was caught on security footage wearing a hoodie.
Example 1.
Joe
| Hi
|
Rani
| Hi
|
| Joe | How are you?
|
Rani
| Good |
Joe
| What you been doing?
|
Rani
| Not much. |
Joe
| Want to get a coke?
|
Rani
| Ok. |
Example 2.
| Joe | What are you doing here?
|
Rani
| Looking for Tama. I want to tell him I love him. |
Joe
| But I want you to love me.
|
Rani
| Go away.
|
Joe
| I've just been caught with my hoodie on. They'll take me away this time.
|
| Rani | That's no good. |
Joe
| Here they come. I'm going to force you to say you love me - if you don't say you love me, then I'll get caught and it'll be your fault.
|
| Rani | I love you.
|
Joe
| Good. Bye.
|
Rani
| Bye.
|
Example 3.
Rani
| This place sucks
|
Joe
| You look nice. |
Joe tries to put his arm around Rani. Rani shrugs it off. Pause
Security
| (of stage) Hey you! |
Joe
| Do you love me?
|
Pause
Rani
| You'd better go.
|
Joe
| I need to know
|
Security
| You!
|
Rani
| Just piss off Joe.
|
Pause. Security sees Joe.
Joe:
| I'll be going away this time, if I'm caught.
|
Rani:
| Okay. I do.
|
(Joe kisses her roughly and runs off.)QUESTIONS:
A) Which example has the most dramatic action?
B) In this example, what do the characters want from each other?
C) What's wrong with example two?
Activity 2 - MORE DIALOGUE
Writing plays is a lot like poetry - every single word has to be active. Read the following scene, and edit out what isn't necessary.
Joe
| Hi
|
Rani
| Hi
|
Joe
| How are you?
|
Rani
| Good
|
Joe
| What you been doing?
|
Rani
| Not much.
|
Joe
| Want to get a coke?
|
Rani
| Ok.
|
Joe
| What are you doing here?
|
Rani
| Looking for Tama.
|
Joe
| I saw him this morning. He said he was going to break into old Bailey's place tonight. Old Bailey has this wicked helmut from, like, the 1920s or something. I saw one on Trade Me for about a thousand bucks. Did you know that the guy from Trade Me started his business in his bedroom?
|
Rani
| Wicked. I should start a business. Get me out of this dump.
|
Joe:
| Why do you want to find Tama?
|
Rani:
| I want to tell him I love him.
|
Joe
| But I want you to love me.
|
Rani
| I know you do. But I don't. Sorry.
|
Joe:
| I get really hurt when you say things like that.
|
Rani:
| Go away.
|
Joe
| I've just been caught with my hoodie on. They'll take me away this time.
|
Rani
| That's no good. I wonder what the prison cell will look like. Bet it'll be cold. And yuck, all those people lying in there. Are you allowed visitors?
|
Joe
| Not sure. Here they guys from security come. Oh my god, look at his moustache. Do you remember that maths teacher we had last year? He had one like that.
|
Rani
| I need to find Tama. |
Pause
Security
| (I) Hey you!
|
| Joe | Do you love me?
|
| Rani | I used to but not anymore. |
Joe
| The security guys are getting closer.
|
Rani
| You'd better go then.
|
Joe
| I need to know if you love me or not. Remember, I asked you a few seconds ago.
|
| Security | You!
|
Rani
| Just piss off Joe.
|
Pause. Security sees Joe.
(Joe kisses her roughly and runs off.)
Joe:
| Good. Come over tonight and we can watch TV. There's a cool movie on.
|
Rani:
| Okay. I'll bring chips. Bye.
|
LESSON 10 - Your First Draft
(50 minutes)
You should come to this lesson with one scene from the play you're going to write (this may come out of the exercises from earlier lessons.
It could be a finished scene, a collection of images, a beginning and end only.
Choose something that you really want to write.
1. On your own, write for ten minutes about the possible theme for your play. Be objective - try and express as many different opinions as possible.
2. Write for five minutes about any visual images, snippets of dialogue, possible locations you may want to include.
3. Using the three act structure exercise (HERE), write out a possible story. This will change but it will get you started. This is really hard to do so don't worry. The barest minimal you need to know in order to start your play is:
a) Who is the main character/s?
b) What do they want?
c) What could be stopping them from getting it?
4. Write the first scene, or if you've already written the first scene, write the second scene.
5. In a group, talk about how you're going to tackle writing your first draft. You might like to decide to form a writers group to support each other.
A first draft is to explore your imagination, the internal life of your characters, the possibilities for story. It may be just a random selection of images, dialogue, out of order scenes, dreams, and intense moments.
Push your characters to their limits - make them uncomfortable. You may have a scene that flows out of you and is very imaginative but doesn't seem to make sense.
Don't worry - keep writing. You can redraft later. Most writers do many drafts of a play. Some don't. If you get stuck, just remember it's only a first draft. Just keep writing. You can change anything later.
Make sure you set a deadline to finish your first draft.
It should be at least by the beginning of November if you want to enter NZYPC.
You can then leave your play for 2-3 weeks before you write your second draft. The deadline for NZYPC is 8th December.
ADDITIONAL MATERIAL
REDRAFTING
FORMAT
A FINAL NOTE
REDRAFTING
Writing is rewriting. There's no two ways about it. Once you've got your initial ideas, it's now time to craft your play. English playwright, Simon Stephens, says, "now you've written your scenes, it's time to wrought your scenes."
You may write up to six drafts of your play. A lot of professional writers do.
Read your first draft through once without making any notes - try to get a feel for it. Then read it again and make notes.
- Is your central character interesting enough?
- Have they made dramatic decisions?
- Do something radical: Put the ending in the beginning; Throw a major conflict in the beginning; take out a boring character; rewrite it from another characters point of view
- Do the "what if" game: What if she left him earlier? What if he lied? What if scene three became scene 1"
- Perhaps there's room for a bit more really creative writing to deepen your characters. Do some of the exercises on character.
- Is your central idea a strong one? Is it apparent? Everything in your play needs to somehow connect to this backbone of your play.
- Is your main character/s interesting enough? It's not uncommon for a playwright to rewrite a play with a different central character.
- Is there another way you could structure your play?
- Is there a strong beginning?
- What can you take out? Taking things out help illuminate what should stay.
- Is the ending strong?
- Time device - you can increase the drama by putting a time frame on your main character's journey
- Character functions - does each character in your play important?
- Surprises and twists - throw something in act two that the audience won't be expecting.
- What is the central idea? Does each scene reflect this? Does each scene build towards the crises?
YOUR FINAL DRAFT
- Is each scene crisp - what's the purpose of the scene?
- Is the dialogue working really hard?
- Is their bits of dialogue that you really like, but don't fit? Edit!
FORMAT
You've put all this work into your script. Make it look professional. If it isn't in an easy to read format, it's hard to read. Use this guide:
- Double spacing
- Don't use a fancy font that's hard to read
- 12-font size is good
- Make sure your stage directions look different from your dialogue.
- Make sure the character names are well away from your dialogue.
- Do a cover page
- Put your name and page numbers on every page
- Your cover page should include; title, what draft it is, your name, contact details
- Your second page should have where your play is set, a short synopsis, and a character list.
There's an example of format on the next page.
Format example:
SETTING
This play is set in a country field, a country farmhouse, and a dream. It takes play in the 1920s and 2006.
CHARACTERS:
Leslie
| a 6 year old girl
|
Butter
| a dying butterfly
|
Camilla
| Leslie's aging grandmother
|
ACT ONE
Scene One
It's the 1920s. Leslie is lying in the field, hidden by long grass. We hear crickets and a stream.
LESLIE
| You're so bad I'm going to cut your fingers off.
|
CAMILLA
| (off stage) Arrrrggghhhhh!
|
Leslie suddenly jumps up. She's got jam smothered all over her face.
Butter enters and tries to hug Leslie. Leslie resists.
LESLIE:
| Warning, warning, warning.
|
BUTTER:
| Mmmmm, jam. |
LESLIE:
| Can you teach me to fly? |
BUTTER:
| No.
|
LESLIE:
| Why not? |
BUTTER:
| Because you'll die. Everyone who learn to fly, will die.
|
LESLIE:
| Oh. Can you teach my Granny to die? |
END OF SCENE ONE
A FINAL NOTE
You have a unique writing voice, and you have the ability to develop the craft of playwriting. Some writers take 15 years to do this. Some take one play. The New Zealand National Playwrights Competition hopes to get scripts that have imagination, rich characters and a natural sense of story. We're not expecting perfectly written scripts. There's no such thing anyway.
Read plays. Go and see plays. Know what you love seeing on stage. Try to find the balance between inspiration and imagination, and craft.
BIBLIOGRAPHY AND FURTHER READING
The Theatre Writer's Guide: Hot Tips for Good Scripts by Roger Hall. Available from Playmarket.
Let's Write Plays by Renee. Available from Playmarket.
The Hero's Journey by Joseph Campbell
Three Uses of a Knife - On the nature and purpose of drama by David Mamet
Playwriting Master Class - The Personality of Process and the Art of Rewriting by Michael Wright
