16 Weeks to Great Writing!
If you learn one new thing about playwriting a week, one distinction that you actually put into action in your work, in as little as 16 weeks (four months,) you will transform your playwriting, and possibly your playwriting career too!
Here are 16 distinctions that I would like you to put into action over the next 16 weeks! I dare you.
1. Get Super-Specific about your characters. Super Specific. Make them REAL. Take the time to know everything about them.
2. Get Ultra-Personal. Write from your life. Don't hold back anything.
3. Make BIGGER CHOICES about the PROBLEM of your play.
4. Make BIGGER CHOICES about your characters' actions and emotions.
5. Create an Emotional Event Map. Each scene has at least one event that propels the action of the play, and each scene tops itself in some way, or amps things up, leading to a compelling climax. And each scene is filled with ACTION, characters trying to change other characters. Plot this out, moment by moment, scene by scene, and then write your play from this map.
6. Ask Yourself: "What do you want the Audience to do, feel or think about after seeing your play?" before you write one line of your play. How do you want your play to connect with people and help them see things in a new way?
7. Use silence in your play. There can be long moments where your characters SAY nothing, but a lot is happening on stage! Dare to say nothing at times, and let action tell your story.
8. Make your characters FOILS! Let them be very different to each other to bring out everyone's characteristics and to create more conflict.
9. Write your dialogue from what the characters are fighting for, not from what they are saying! Get clear on what is underneath the words, and then write.
10. Research, Research, Research, the topic and the world of your play, before you write one line of dialogue. Spend a full week learning all you can about the universe of your story idea! And go from there.
12. Make sure the Problem of your play ESCALATES as the play progresses. There is no down time away from the problem of a play in a great play
13. Get actors to READ your play so you can hear it when you finish a first draft. Take notes. Notice that when embodied by actors, maybe your characters don't need to talk so much.
14. Cut the things you love in your play that don't propel the dramatic action of the story.
15. Write in sentences, not paragraphs. Even write in half lines and have your characters cut each other off. No one speaks in paragraphs in life unless they are telling a dramatic story or teaching a seminar. Use sentences.
16. Don't settle for good. Great is your only option. Make that happen. You need to continually up your game.
Do you have what it take to do this over the next 16 weeks?
Do you want to be a GREAT PLAYWRIGHT?
