How to Write a 10-Minute Play

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How to Write a 10-Minute Play

If you're new to playwriting and want to practice playwriting, there is no better way than to learn how to write a 10-minute play. Not only is the piece short and sweet, but it makes it easy to practice over and over without wasting time. You can feel free to make errors, write dumb lines of dialogue, and tell a story that makes no sense all at the cost of 10 pages or so. (If that seems like a lot to you, remember that play pages are much shorter than fiction pages.)

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Playwriting vs. Screenwriting: What's the Difference?

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Playwriting vs. Screenwriting: What's the Difference?

To many people, a play and a movie are strikingly similar in how they tell stories. In fact, many plays are adapted into movies almost seamlessly, it’s a wonder the two aren’t interchangeable.

However, if you are someone looking to write a play or a movie and you’re not sure which to pick, just randomly selecting to write a play because you think it will be easily adapted into a movie is not only a poor idea, but will limit your creativity as a storyteller.

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Using the Stage to Tell a Story

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Using the Stage to Tell a Story

Recently I saw the movie Fences in theaters, a film based on the play by August Wilson. Everything about it was working great for me - the plot, the conflicts, the characters, but best of all the performances. Denzel Washington and Viola Davis were outstanding, moving me on so many different levels emotionally I could hardly keep up. However, despite all the things I loved about Fences and how strong the story was, I couldn't help but feel like something was off.

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How to Read a Shakespeare Play on Your Own

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How to Read a Shakespeare Play on Your Own

If you were fortunate enough to take a university level course on Shakespeare at some point in your life (with a good professor!), you'll understand the necessity in reading Shakespeare's work as a storyteller. However, since so many people tend to experience Shakespeare in high school where they either couldn't appreciate the text or their teacher did not appreciate the text, people often neglect to read Shakespeare's work. They claim he's too "hard" to read, that they lack the skills to understand him or that they think his work to be too "high brow' for them.

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What Makes Playwriting Different Than Other Types of Writing

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What Makes Playwriting Different Than Other Types of Writing

When discussing playwriting, I often tend to characterize it as screenwriting's "down-to-earth older sister." The primary reason for this is the pure freedom of playwriting, something that at first left me feeling confused as a screenwriter when I took my first playwriting class. "What do you mean I can do whatever I want and that there are no rules?" I asked my professor.

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