How to Write a Set Description

Video Transcript

"Hi, this is Laura Turner and today I am going to take with you on how to write a set description. This video clip is how to write a set description for a play that you are writing. First of all, don't be to lengthy with your set description. You are going to come across plays written by Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams in which the set descriptions before the plays are going to be pages long prior to the actual play beginning. Sometimes these were written by the play writes themselves in these published plays and sometimes they were not. Sometimes they were actually written by Stage Managers who were taking down all the information they could about the set in to their books. It may not actually be the Authors words that you're looking at. Usually you're going to want to keep you set description to the bare minimum. What do you need there in order to have the play go on. So really just set up the scene. Set up what the scene feels like for the audience. While you don't want to give to much, you also don't want to give to little. You want to give an idea of a sense of place in your play. You also do not need to indicate where everything goes in your stage directions. For example, your couch is going to be down stage center. You don't necessarily need to put that there but if it helps you and you think it will help the reader and people who want to do your play, go ahead and do as I have done in this particular example here, the Teacher is sitting at the upstage center of the room behind the large desk. You always want to give a lights up, lights down sort of feel in your stage directions. So lights up will usually be your first set description, direction. This can also very from person to person based on what you like to do. You do need to identify in your notes how obstacles in the set design are going to be tackled. For example, if you have a bed in the set and the bed needs to fly in the air, suggest that maybe you can use just simple lighting to create the affect of something super natural happening with the bed rather than actually having people rig the bed and fly it. So this is also going to protect you in some ways from having your play rejected. You need to high light what the characters are doing in the scene in your set description. So your set description is going to give you the feel of the scene, the basic things that need to be in the scene, and where the characters are when the lights come up and when the lights go down. That is basically how to write a set description."