"Playwriting Brief and Brilliant" by Julie Jensen

• Remember that dialogue is action.
• Disguise exposition. A piece of expositional dialogue, which is only exposition, should be cut. Expositional dialogue should, therefore, have at least one other function besides exposition, besides telling us what has happened before the play began.
• The other secret about exposition is not to off-load it all at once. Sprinkle it around. That gives me a better shot at disguising it.
• Characters should sound different from one another. Each must be unique and different.
• Characters should want something from a scene. And what they want should be pretty specific and definable. What’s more, those wants should be at least slightly at odds with the wants of others.
• Make dialogue lean. As lean as you can get it.
• Sometimes dialogue is not spoken. I try to give characters the option of occasionally saying nothing, and doing something instead. Doing something often has greater power.
• Characters are what they say and of course what they do, dialogue, merely one of the conveyances.
• Dialog:
• Dialog is action.
• Exposition should be disguised.
• Characters should sound different from one another.
• Characters should want something.
• Dialogue should be lean.
• Sometimes dialogue is not spoken.
• Characters should be interesting.
• They’re off balance in some way. They’re excessive in one direction, deficient in another. And they are tenacious; they don’t easily give up their imbalance.
• They gotta want something. And they also gotta want something specific.
• They gotta have a well-defined rhythm or tempo.
• Characters need to be moving. For my money, they should be working.
• They have blind spots. Blind spots are the habitual behaviors that result in both tragedy and comedy. Blind spots enable a character to move from zero to sixty in a single breath. Blind spots are automatic responses; they make characters funny and tragic.
• Characters, like the rest of us, have always just come from somewhere else. And when they were there, they did somthing. That means that characters come to any scene with some baggage, with an attitude.
• I also like characters who surprise me, who surprise themselves. Surprise, by the way, is one of our best weapons, far too underused in my opinion.
• Now a human truth and also a character truth. Characters, like the rest of us, almost never tell the truth.
• Characters ought to have a nice mix of traits.
• I like characters best when they cannot help but be themselves, when I as a writer just have to relent and let them do their thing.
• Too much complication in a minor character can be a dangerous thing.
• Character:
• Characters should be interesting.
• They should be off balance.
• They must want something.
• They have a definite rhythm and tempo.
• They have blind spots.
• They have just been somewhere else and done something.
• Characters are surprising.
• They don’t tell the truth.
• They have a mixture of traits.
• They are what they are, in spite of themselves and you.
• First of all, plays are heard and seen but once. They must communicate in real time. No chance to stop and ponder. Second, it is a terrible mistake even to try not to communicate. Third, plays and works of art in general communicate emotionally; getting intellectual on your end of things is a mistake.
• The first way to think about plot is that it answers a question. What’s more, this question that the play poses needs to be clear by the 10 percent point.
• At about this same point you’ll want to accomplish something else -- the inciting incident. That’s the event that gets it all going.
• The easiest way to work on plot is to keep asking yourself, “And then what? And then what?” That keeps you focused on events and outcomes. And it keeps the story moving.
• Another way to think about plot is to ask the Stanislavski character question: what does the character want, and what will she do to get it? His question also implies the necessary element of conflict. And no plot is possible without it.
• Conflict in all its myriad possibilities is simple essential to plot.
• A plot looks to me like a long slope up a hill. The climax is the peak. As you progress up the long slope, however, there are several impediments or plot points.
• These plot points are challenges or complications, things that impede the progress of the hero or heroine, things that cause danger, things that go bump. These things get bigger as the play goes on. Then by the end, either the things win or the hero does. And that’s the plot.
• A guy I used to know in television, a sitcom writer, said that a plot was getting someone up a tree by the first commercial, throwing things at him till the second commercial, and getting him down by the end.
• By the halfway point or somewhere thereabouts, I like to put a big X. That’s the point of no return. After that point, the character can’t go back.
• Finally, the resolution occurs after the climax. The climax answers the question, and the resolution is a moment of quiet, a settling in, getting used to the answer.
• A settling in does not need to take very long. IN a shorter play, it can be a quiet line and a pause.
• Plot:
• Plot answers a simple question.
• The question should be clear by the 10 percent point.
• An inciting incident gets things rolling.
• Ask yourself, “And the what? And then what?”
• Ask yourself, “What does the characters want and what is he doing to get it?”
• Conflict is a necessary part of any plot.
• A plot looks like a long path up a hill with obstacles along the way.
• The point of no return is reached by the midway point in the play.
• The climax answers the question of the play.
• A resolution or settling in occurs after the climax.
• An audience would much rather imagine a fire on a ditch bank then look at a light under some sticks.
• Beginning playwrights tend to overvalue elements of their craft. But the important thing to remember is that we are working in a genre that is also very visual.
• A stage at any moment is a picture. And it always says something. It’s important we know what that is.
• Plays need to take place where we live.
• Moving the play to a public space will immediately affect its tempo.
• Normally a two-person play settles on a question of who will win. When the setting suddenly opens up that question, you’ve got a much fuller plate, many more than two possibilities.
• Think about sets that provoke and surprise.
• Sets influence every aspect of a play, from tempo and rhythm to character and plot.
• Sets:
• Think simple.
• Trust the audience’s imagination.
• Notice how nature arranges things.
• Notice how people arrange them.
• Study furniture.
• Study architecture.
• Note how spaces reflect character.
• Note the emotional and expositional clues in a set.
• Think about setting your play in a surprising place.
• Image, in case you can’t remember from some class or another in literature, is a literary device that appeals to one of the five senses: touch, taste, sight, smell, or hearing.
• Images are good, deep, and trustworthy things. The deeper, more primeval they are, the better.
• Our culture over values the sense of sight. That’s one of the reasons I like to stress the other senses.
• Issue is what a play addresses besides itself, what it represents beyond its literal story. Think of the play as a light, think of the issue as what is illuminated by that light.
• Issue is what keeps a writer interested in plot or character or any of the other parts of a play. Issue is how come a writer can finish a play. Issue overcome the burden and the boredom of writing.
• In America we like to believe that art and politics are separate. They are, however, not separate and can not be separate.
• Image and Issue:
• Images appeal to one of the five senses.
• Writing into the image makes a figure of speech literal.
• Working with images other than visual yields more originality.
• Issue is what a play is about besides its characters and their story.
• It is a fully conscious aspect of writing a play.
• Issue might be political, moral, or philosophical.
• A play is sound and pure sound.
• Going after the fewest number of words to say the biggest thing, finding those very words, and then hearing them said right, sung right -- that is one of life’s great pleasures.
• Occasionally an actor will say about a line that it can’t be read, it’s hard to say. That’s another way of noting that the musical or sound element of the line is off.
• Sound:
• Plays function as pure sound.
• Dialogue can be percussive, undulating, or a hundred other things.
• A build contains implicit musical elements.
• Characters and dialogue both contain musical elements.
• Awareness of the musical elements in a play is essential.
• It doesn’t really matter which is first as long as by the end all of them have been engaged. You can’t write a good story without a god character, you don’t have a good character until you have a good story. And your play is not good anyway without an issue.
• For me the impetus for a new play is usually the issue, something I’m thinking about, or more probably, something I’m having trouble with in my own life. Frequently it’s something that pisses me off.
• The issue then goes in search of its characters.
• Story comes next. And that develops slowly. It begins with isolated scenes involving characters grappling with the issue. And it develops from there.
• I typically write dozens of scenes in quick succession.
• These scenes are often short, sometimes only a beat (the equivalent of a paragraph in a work of fiction).
• When I have a few dozen pages, maybe twenty or thirty, I try to put some kind of order on them.
• At this scene-sorting stage, the play is teaching me about itself.
• This is a more difficult stage then the last and not nearly as fun. The trick is to keep an open mind and not get judgmental or discouraged.
• The last stage is when I let in the editor. She’ll turn the genius into a retard if I let her in too soon. But she is necessary.
• Writing takes time and a lot of work.
• What comes first:
• I usually start with an issue, something that troubles me.
• Characters come next.
• The I write several dozen short scenes.
• After a few dozen pages, I see what’s there and find an order.
• Then I let the editor in to fix it, fill holes, and make the story work.
• If you could not write something, then it should not be written.
• Automatic writing. Give yourself a set amount of time. During this time you do not stop writing, not even if you repeat the same word for a whole line. You keep writing, and you try not to censor. You also don’t worry about making sense or telling a story. You just write. When you finish your allotted time, you will likely discover that you’re no longer blocked.
• The phone is one of the biggest impediments to writing. That and, of course, e-mail.
• Read. I’ve always found that reading gives me ideas, always, never fails.
• Make sure that you are, in fact, writing something that entertains you, interests you, something you think is important.
• Never let the editor in before the writer has finished. Never.
• Writer’s block:
• Do something else enjoyable and unrelated.
• Tell yourself you’re just making notes.
• Try automatic writing.
• Find your best time of day or night to write.
• Know before you quit what you’re going to do next.
• Read.
• Surprise yourself, scare yourself, be radical, daring, funny.
• Write something else.
• Playwriting is high-risk behavior.
• The theater is a collaborative art form, don’t forget. Your work depends on the contribution of several other artists.
• Just because this production worked does not mean that the next one will, that the reviewers will like it, that your life will turn around.
• My best advice is to see as much theater as you possible can, imagine new ways to use the stage, and write plays that you want to see, plays that are not like anyone else’s.
• Giving yourself enough time is important.
• A writer needs to feed that part of his soul that is alone.
• Thinking like a playwright:
• Understand that playwriting is not about fame or wealth.
• Although theater can be magical, don’t project beyond the present.
• See as much theater as possible, use the stage in new ways.
• Write plays you want to see, plays unlike other people’s.
• Feed the part of yourself that likes to be alone.
• Discover under what circumstances you write best.
• Learn how to excuse yourself from others so you can work.
• Plays should take about a minute a page to read out loud. Test yours to see that it does.
• Generally it’s the job of the playwright to suggest vividly, not to describe in detail.
• Your job is to enable other people to imagine well.
• Format:
• Make sure each page takes about a minute to read out loud.
• Include name and contact information on title page.
• Copyright your play, one way or another.
• Include list of characters, setting, and synopsis.
• Rewriting is like milk or exercise, either you like it or you don’t. Also like milk and exercise, it’s necessary.
• The best playwrights listen to advice from others. Then they cull the suggestions and make the changes they find genuinely helpful.
• Ask yourself this question: What’s the difference between the characters in the beginning of the play and at the end?
• Are the events in an arc?
• Make sure you can name each of the events that make up this structural arc.
• Go through your play very carefully, one time for each character in the piece, becoming a different character each time. The objective is to make sure the character is doing and saying what’s appropriate to him.
• Make sure you’ve written beats. Beats are the small units of a play.
• The reason you write beats is simple. You want your play to be made up of sections rather than isolated lines. It’s also easy for actors to play beats.
• Don’t think about expanding your play. Think about shortening it.
• Try packing a lot of events into a small amount of time rather than scattering a few events over a long period of time.
• Theater experiences need to be intense.
• Cut any scene not necessary to the story.
• Cut also any repeated beats, any section in which the character repeats the same tactic in pursuit of the same goal.
• Pare down the individual lines. Almost always, the most economical version is the best.
• Test your play for truth. Is what you’re saying the truth? Is what this character says and does true?
• Rewrite:
• Make sure the characters have changed during the course of the play.
• Try to make an arc of the events in the play.
• See the play from each character’s point of view.
• Make sure you’ve written beats.
• Think about shortening the play.
• Shorten individual lines.
• Make sure your play is true.
• Developing your plays:
• Understand that development is about improving your play, period.
• Be willing to experiment.
• Take advantage of the chance to work with professionals.
• Steal what you can.
• Take the advice that makes sense, discard the rest.
• Marketing:
• Check websites of theaters you’re interested in.
• See their work.
• Schedule time with people in those theaters.
• Develop relationships with directors.
• Enter contests and apply to development labs.
• Buy Dramatists Sourcebook.
• Keep in touch with your professional family.