 Drama: July 16, 2008 Issue [#2484] |
  Drama
This week: Edited by: Joy  
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"Drama is life with the dull bits cut out."
Alfred Hitchcock
Hello, this is Joy , this week's drama editor.
Drama exists everywhere,and its existence often fills us with tension and excitement. Drama can be tragedy or comedy, and it can come in the shape of a play, movie, fiction, real life story, and poetry.
Since a few of you have expressed interest in playwriting, in this issue, we shall examine plays of different lengths.
"One had the right to write because other people needed news of the inner world, and if they went too long without such news they would go mad with the chaos of their lives."
Arthur Miller from "The Shadows of the Gods"
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Welcome to the Drama newsletter
Our topic this week is playwriting and various lengths of plays.
Nowadays, people eat up stories more ravenously than they consume food, and these stories come in the forms of movies, television, stage plays, and fiction. This is because stories make up the tapestry of our existence as they reflect our own dramas or they tell us about each other's dramas.
For a writer, creating stories is like creating life, and plays bring stories to life with intensity. In a writer's life, the internal urge to do the best he can and to shine with creative ability is a fundamental emotional necessity. As a writer, you might say, " I am already a story writer; why should I bother with a play?" Surely, no one can make you write what you do not want to write; however, even a good writer can learn a lot from writing plays.
After your first successful or even not-so-successful play, you will find out that you have gained strengths you did not think were easy to obtain. The brevity of a play will grant you focusing power. It will sharpen your wit. Better yet, it will make you learn how to capture the brilliance of the English language. All these things and more will help you excel in other areas of writing.
Life experiences, self knowledge, and reliable faculties for observation of what and who is around you are certainly preconditions for writing effective plays. Then, the imperatives are: knowing the craft of the story, using the art of the story effectively in a way that it fits the requisites of the theater arts, and writing, rewriting, and revising your play many times until the final product is perfectly polished.
A good story makes for a potential good play, but failure to make the story work may bring on disaster. A playwright must first grasp the story basics. There is no getting around this, and as such, there is no successful playwriting recipe in a pill form. If anyone tells you it exists, they have a castle on Pluto to sell you.
Assuming you have learned the basics of story writing by now, let us take a brief look at writing plays. It would help if you have done some acting first, but if you haven't, don't let this stop you. Just put yourself in an actor's place as you write, and ask yourself these questions: Can the actor enunciate the lines well and easily? Is the dialogue, brief, understandable, and lifelike? Are the stage directions enough or are they so much that the actor and the director may be confused? By giving too many stage directions, am I stepping over the director's territory? Are the physical directions achievable or are they thoughtless like the stage direction (takes three steps forward) when the actor is already at the tip of the stage and has nowhere to go?
At the start,novice playwrights can practice with shorter forms of plays to not tire themselves out, A word of caution here. Short plays are not easy. Actually, they are harder to write well, but they are good teachers, since even in a short play, you need to have a fully developed story.
One very popular short play is the ten-minute play, which has a story with a beginning, middle, and an end. A ten minute play should be about ten printed script pages, since the rule of thumb is one minute per page.
Here are the links to ten minute plays. Most of them are stage-tested. While you read them, observe the format, so you can emulate it.
http://www.theatrehistory.com/plays/10minute.html
http://www.10-minute-plays.com/
Then, there are one minute plays that can be only a little more than gags or jokes on stage or a brief monologue.
Example:
http://www.oneminuteplay.com/past.htm
A one-act play is another option. It, too, has a complete story, but it comes in scenes instead of acts.
Examples:
http://www.one-act-plays.com/dramas/
http://www.theatrehistory.com/plays/oneact.html
Two-act plays were not considered legitimate for a long time, but in the modern era, they are performed just as often as full-length plays or connected two one-act plays.
Examples:
http://math.boisestate.edu/GaS/other_gilbert/html/committed.html
http://www.playsandmusicals.co.uk/plays/twoact/blkcomedy/index.htm
A full-length play has three to five acts. In general, a full-length, three-act play has forty to sixty scenes (100-130 pages of script). If you undertake a full-length play, be careful not to repeat the scenes. Since scenes make the play, construct each scene to be an original. If you don't, you'll bore the audience to death and make the theater critics sharpen their tongues and earn their money.
If you would like to read a script and see the play in its written format, your local library may carry some contemporary plays. You can also download some screenplays and movie scrips from the internet.
Here is a site to download free movie scripts and screenplays: http://sfy.ru/
Do try your hand in writing a play. Who knows? It may be your calling. If not, it will help you with your other writing projects.
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Enjoy this poetic monologue by a highly talented WC poet; it touches deep human issues while addressing an actor.
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#1169366 by Not Available. |
This is a short story, but it could be considered a monologue, also. The scene it describes is vivid with striking, unforgettable images.
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For the 5/1 Writer's Cramp Contest prompt describing the scene of a car wreck.
#1421161 by Adriana Noir  |
A screenplay about a troubled priest
A sci-fi script. As the ship speeds away from earth...
A play with mythological wisdom
A few more:
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#1277958 by Not Available. |
There is still time to enter to this playwriting contest.
An item submitted to the Drama Newsletter:
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#1424944 by Not Available. |
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Have an opinion on what you've read here today? Then send the Editor feedback! Find an item that you think would be perfect for showcasing here? Submit it for consideration in the newsletter!
https://www.Writing.Com/go/nl_form
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Before we go to the e-mails, here is an important announcement about the last contest.
These are the winning entries to the road contest in "Drama Forum"
First place 100,000 gps
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#1434622 by Not Available. |
Second place 80,000 gps
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#1298684 by Not Available. |
Third place, 60,000 gps
"Invalid Entry"
The winners were judged on the basis of items' suitability to the prompt. Thank you all for entering.
billwilcox
Good stuff, Joy! Very good indeed
Thanks, Bill. 
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Adriana Noir
Excellent study on characters and how to create a riveting drama through them. I found your notes on conflict and change exceptionally useful! I always like feeling like I am on the journey with the characters of a story and you point out great ways to do that.
Thank you, Adriana.
When you say you feel you are on a journey with your characters rings so true. The characters have to become alive in the writer's mind for the readers to feel their presence. 
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Helen McNicol
Great comments about Characters. I recently finished the first draft of my second novel, and while I knew it was 'tighter' and better written than my first attempt, my characters were just totally lacking. My character in the first book was rich and alive and she went through some pretty major changes throughout the story. My second main character was flat and lacking, so although the story may be better, it will not be appreciated without the 'flavour' of a three dimensional character.
Thank you, Helen.
First, congrats for finishing two novels.  Finishing even one is a job. It might help to rewrite another draft if you feel your novel has substance and a character or anything else is holding it back. It is surprising what a rewrite can do to any piece of work.
Best of luck to you.
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Morgul Priestess
great newsletter, I'm in the process of plotting my novel, I'll try to follow some of the tips mentioned by you.
Thank you very much, Morgul Priestess .
A novel is a daring undertaking, but I am sure you'll do wonders with it. Best of luck to you.
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tpina
Thanks a lot for the newsletter, I liked it; you've just inspired me to write another story :). Actually I've never analized that drama are the changes on a character... actually I wrote dramas as dramatic events that happen to someone that changes; but I didn't realize that the drama was on the character and not in the events. Sort of funny, right. Keep Writing :)
Thank you, too, tpina.
So glad you were inspired.
We can still have drama without the character changing, for example Sherlock Holmes does not change, and there is still drama in Doyle's mysteries. If the character changes in some way, however, our stories gain greater psychological depth. A point not to forget is that those changes come about through events in the story.
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