Advanced Playwriting: Stay on Track

"In this segment of advanced tips for writing a better play, we're going to talk about how to stay on track. Now you've already begun the writing process, you've gotten some ideas, done some writing, done some rewriting, and editing. And if you have you know that writing a play is a lot of work, so some of these pointers are just to kind of keep you going. Now the first thing you can do is go to a play if you haven't already, and choose a play that's similar to the genre you're writing. Take a look at the story line, obviously, and the characters and a lot of aspects about the play itself, but don't forget to look at the audience. It's very important to look at the audience reaction. Now another thing you might do, is to, if you haven't completely gotten an idea you're really satisfied with is write scenes, write several different scenes. It's sort of like painting a house. If you're going to decide what color, you want to paint a swatch, let it dry, look at it and then decide. You don't want to paint the whole house and then decide you don't like that color. So write some scenes, maybe including some of the characters in your play, and just see if you want to continue on and write that play actually. Now another thing you might want to do is start your own writer's salon, and that way you'll bring some other writers together and talk about different problems you may be having in the writing process and share some of the work you've been doing. Generally, people who haven't written a play really don't understand how much work goes into it. So don't ever let that get you down when coworkers or your spouse or family members don't really understand the process. Just keep working at it. Another thing you might try, and you might think this is totally crazy, but because a play is so much work anyway, but the idea is to maybe be working on several projects at the same time. I don't mean you want to scatter your energies and your efforts so nothing gets done, you want to spend ninety percent of your efforts on your one main play, but you might want to create some other projects on the side so that if you get a little writer's block or it becomes tedious that you can move onto other projects and it's not like you have to totally put writing down because you're a little stuck on your one project. Now that you've begun the writing process, you may be able to tell certain areas where you need a little extra work. Now go ahead an pick up some books in those areas, like if it's characterization, dramatic structure, dialog, whatever it might be, along with The Writer's Market, go ahead and pick those up. Also, instructional videos can be great. The playwright Steve Cavanaugh has a lot of wonderful clips that you can take a look at. Now one thing I want to leave you with is, again, the idea that playwrighting is not play writing, but it's creating. It's play wright, w-r-i-g-h-t, and w-r-i-g-h-t is not a fancy name for write, like this, it's actually derivative of the word wrought, like wrought iron. And the actual dictionary definition of wrought is formed or fashioned, elaborated with care, also decorated and ornamented. So keep that in mind. Be creative and take some of these pointers if you need to and move your play ahead forward."