#but playwriting

[sleeprough]

i don't care.

[ancientsstudies]

[s-soulwriter]

How do we write characters authentically?

Hello, my dear writer! I assume we've all wondered at the beginning of our writing journey, "How do I find my own writing style? How do I stand out, and how do I make my characters sound authentic?" This post is dedicated precisely to the latter question. How do we write characters authentically?

Observe Different Personalities: Observe people of different age groups, from various cultural backgrounds, and with diverse life experiences. Pay attention to their language, gestures, and behaviors to develop a broad understanding of human diversity.

Take Time for Character Development: Invest time in developing your characters, including their background, motivations, goals, strengths, and weaknesses. The better you know your characters, the more authentically you can portray them.

Utilize Realistic Settings: Place your characters in realistic environments and situations that are recognizable to your readers. Describe the details of their surroundings, such as landscapes, buildings, clothing, and everyday items, to create a vibrant backdrop for your story.

Be Open to Change and Development: Allow your characters room for growth and change. People evolve over time based on their experiences and decisions. Permit your characters to learn from their mistakes, gain new insights, and undergo development.

Everyday SituationsAn additional tip is to place your character in various small situations, even if they are a fantasy figure. For instance, have your character order coffee. What happens if they encounter a ghost? What are their feelings about Christmas? Accompany them while shopping. How do they react when meeting their greatest hero? Describe everyday scenarios that aren't part of your official story but are meant for you to better understand your character.

[jacobtheloofah]

im doing normal and acceptable things in the world of playwriting. also im responding very well to reading "house of leaves" thanks very much why do you ask.

[jareckiworld]

Peter Weiss (1916-1982) — Sketch for Theatre [gouache on paperboar, 1955]

[onlyifyoubadd]

HOLY FUCK! WE WERE FED SO MUCH!

not only did we get the rj reveal and them talking about their SON, but we also got them talking about michonne's branding and how she had to kill her friend, how she almost died getting to him, michonne carressing rick's amputation, rick crying while their making love, michonne's processing guilt over leaving her kids, bickering while killing walkers then killing walkers as a team while kissing intermittently, michonne being like "i dont give a fuck if this building comes down around us, sit yo ass down!", rick crying about how the crm took carl away from him, rick saying he wouldnt survive without her, they started in the apartment fighting and returned to it to make up, then riding off into the sunset with rick taking off his uniform!!!!

DANAI OUR QUEEN!

[soniaknox]

The Power of Silence in A Story

Harold Pinter believed that what isn't said in a play can be more important than what is said. He thought that when characters face intense emotions or experiences, they often struggle to express them, or choose to stay silent. This creates mystery, tension, and deeper meaning. Pinter’s famous use of pauses and silences lets the audience read between the lines, making the unspoken just as powerful as the dialogue itself.

[earlisgrey]

hey! i'm working on a play, and i'm trying to figure out how to start, like, officially writing it in a script format. any advice?

[imastoryteller]

Free for a Limited Time: A Course for Writers!

I’m thrilled to announce that "Playwriting Mastery: From Idea to Story," a course I co-created, is available for free right now!

This course was designed for playwrights, but it’s truly universal—perfect for anyone who loves storytelling. Whether you’re crafting plays, novels, scripts, or something entirely different, these lessons will help you discover ideas, develop them, and shape them into powerful stories.

📖 What’s in the course?

Finding the central theme of your story—the heart of what you want to say.

Turning that theme into a meaningful message.

Exploring conflict to create dynamic, compelling stories.

Generating and refining ideas until they truly shine.

Choosing the right genre to elevate your vision.

Understanding conflict on a deeper level.

Taking your idea and shaping it into a clear, pitch-ready story.

This course is a labor of love, and I’m so excited to share it with you. For a limited time, it’s completely free—because I believe storytelling should be accessible to everyone.

📍 Find all the details on my Patreon page (Link in pinned post).

If you’re a writer looking for inspiration or clarity, I hope this course can help you bring your unique stories to life. Let’s create together. 💡✨

Help us spread the word! If you know writers or creators who might benefit from this, please feel free to reblog this post. Let’s make sure as many people as possible can take advantage of this opportunity!

[davidhudson]

Tennessee Williams, March 26, 1911 – February 25, 1983.

[typewriter-worries]

Waiting for Godot, Samuel Beckett

[mcytplaywritingfest]

MCYT Playwriting Fest Pinch Hits!

Hello hello, everyone! While the MCYT Playfest continues, we've had a few Playwrights with finished pieces but no artists. We are looking for some awesome Pinch Hitter artists to take up their work! Previous art forms used for the fest have included digital art, typographic playbill design, playlists, set models, and costume design--the sky is the limit! We have one Life Series play and one Hermitcraft play that need Pinch Hit artists. This Pinch Hit art will be due on December 16th, 2024. Details below!

PH1:

Fandom: 3rd Life | Life Series Length: 86 Pages Relationships: Grian & Pearl & Jimmy & BigB & Martyn Characters: Major: Grian, Pearl, Jimmy, BigB, Martyn; Minor: Scar, Ren, Tango, Etho, BDubs Content Warnings: Kidnapping, Snakes, Death and murder mention (all treated unseriously) When a toppled lamp burns their barn down, Grian, Jimmy, Pearl, Martyn and BigB must set off down the Trail to Oregon!© to find a better life. Along the way, they must deal with all the dangers of the open road, such as sleeping in a wagon with four other people, starvation, Red Kings looking to build a Red Army, and omniscient gods who are aware they're all in a play. Will they reach the land of opportunity in time, or succumb to the hand of the narrative?! Based off Starkid’s A Trail to Orgeon; a satiric, comedic, parodic, and metaphysic play about existentialism, the Buddhist concept of True Self, and... fanfiction?

PH2 CLAIMED!]:

Fandom: Hermitcraft Length: 10+ Pages Relationships: GoodTimesWithScar & Cubfan135 Characters: GoodTimesWithScar, Cubfan135, The Vex Content Warnings: N/A over the hermit wall: Following the basic plot of the first episode of Over The Garden Wall, with Scar as Greg and Cub as Wirt, two best friends who find themselves in the midst of a dark and spooky wood haunted by an interesting cast of characters on the night of Halloween. On their way they meet a woodsman, False, who warns of a gaggle of mysterious spirits (the Vex), and the Vex themselves, who try their best to get Scar and Cub to stay in the woods forever. You may message this blog to claim one of these Pinch Hits, or ask a mod through our discord; either way, please be sure to join the server so your work can be showcased!

[dionysiaproductions]

Being a writer is so embarrassing. I'm going to a live production of a play I wrote (very cool) but I will spontaneously combust if anyone talks to me (ahhhhhh!)

Like they should invent a being known that doesn't make you feel so terribly vulnerable :/

[pyrotechnicarus]

What program do you write your scripts in?

Google Docs, haha. It's definitely not the preferred or industry-standard way of doing it; it gives older writers at my program hives when I drop a Docs link in the homework folder. But I was raised on it and it's a great collaboration tool, so I haven't made the switch yet (and maybe never will? Actually probably will once Google inevitably starts charging money for it. But not quite yet!).

Through my school I have a free Final Draft license, so I use that for screenwriting (which has a lot more pesky formatting rules and things), but I'm not planning on buying it once my license expires because A. I don't write films that much and B. I can probably hard-code it into Google Docs for free.

If you're insane like I am and wanna use Google Docs for scriptwriting, here's some formatting tips under the cut:

We're gonna be using a page of the Ghost Story script to demonstrate!

I use Times New Roman because Deborah Brevoort recommended it as a more readable (and slightly more condensed) font than Courier. Your font should adapt to your style; I tend to write short, snappy lines with a lot of back-and-forth, so I use Times which is a common font style for comedy writers (despite not writing comedies.) If you write a lot of long monologues, Courier New might give you a better sense of how your script flows on the page. Basically, you want to space your writing so it comes out to 1 minute of performance time = 1 page of writing.

Scene headings are centered and in bold.

Stage directions that start a scene are left-aligned and in italics; in NAMT-standard style, these are center-margin aligned, like this:

But it's kind of your personal preference.

4. All names are centered and underlined

5. Any stage directions that take place during a scene and cue a line of dialogue are centered, in italics, and in parenthesis. If they can start eating whenever while they're talking, I'd put They start eating left-aligned between two lines of dialogue. However, it is important to me that Hao and Józef start eating before Hao says his next line, so I put it center-aligned.

6. When you get to a song it looks like this:

Basically, songs should be numbered and come after a stage direction (even something basic, like "He stands up.") The enter after the stage directions isn't kosher, it's a Google Docs thing I'll get into later. Then you close the parenthesis on the stage direction and put a page break. Songs should always start on a new page. This is because when you integrate the book and score, you can just take those lyric sheets out and put sheets of music in. Nifty!

7. Lyrics are always capitalized. When two people sing the same thing at the same time, you can put both their names over it:

But if they're singing something different, I usually put it in two columns (there is some debate among musical theater writers on what the proper notation for this kind of thing is. But columns are easy on Google Docs, so I use those. When I have four or more people singing different things on top of one another, I use a 1x4 table and make the lines between the cells invisible, haha.)

Google Docs Specific Formatting Stuff

Ok, so, if you're lazy like me and don't want to be hitting 800 buttons while you're writing to format everything correctly (and please, god, format while you're writing -- going back and doing it later sucks) you can use the Google Docs headings to format your writing! And it will even make a nice little outline for you!

So, the default of these settings (on the left) is useless and ugly. But mine looks like this (on the right!)

If you want yours to look beautiful and be useful like mine, you can format some kind of text the way you want it to (for example, I want all my names in 12 pt Times New Roman, centered and underlined.)

Then I go to some random heading and I hit "Update heading to match"

Now, anytime I type a name, I can go back to this menu and hit "Apply Heading 5"... and it will automatically make it centered, underlined, and 12 pt Times New Roman! I make one of these for all my categories of text: stage directions, song titles, scene headers, etc.

But, ok, you still have to open all those menus while you're writing. Well! See this thing?

All of these have keyboard shortcuts (the Windows ones will show up on a Windows computer). You can really easily hit them after each name/stage direction you type instead of fiddling around with font settings. You're a formatting machine!

And here's the bonus: If you do all this correctly, you can get a really nice outline like this one embedded in your document on the left (this is where the song titles on a new line come in; I make a heading style for them so they show up on the outline, but headings only show the start of the phrase that they are part of in the outline. Ignore the numbers being wrong, lol. There's a secret song 3 that we haven't released yet.)

And it's clickable, too-- like I can jump right to Your Face from the outline without having to scroll down 20 pages.

Is this all needlessly complicated and doing manually something Final Draft will do for you? Yes. But I'm set in my ways, and it's free, so maybe it'll be helpful to another Musical Theater writer out there working with someone else on Google Docs.

That's it! Thanks for the question.

[s-soulwriter]

Keep Writing

Hey fellow writers! 📝✨

Just a little reminder that it's totally okay to feel like your work isn't hitting the mark sometimes. We all have those moments where we question our writing skills and doubt our creations. But guess what? That's part of the journey!

Writing is a process of growth and self-discovery. Your "imperfect" work is just a stepping stone towards improvement. Embrace the messiness, the flaws, and the awkward sentences. They're all crucial parts of your unique writing journey.

Remember, every renowned author started somewhere, and the beauty of your craft lies in its evolution.

Your words have power, even on the days when they feel shaky. Share your stories, let your creativity flow, and most importantly, enjoy the ride. You've got this!

[vagante-do-abismo]

Chainsaws and hallways, we all love it

That's my piece I made for @mcytplaywritingfest that accompanies this play written by @edgarallanpoestan (go check it out!)

Thank you Mack for hosting that event I had so much fun working on it!

And Bee for being my partner for this event<3