Play Writing in Depth (Part 2: Middle)

If you haven’t been keeping up this a series of how to write plays in depth, this is of course part 2 and I forget to mention this is going to be a seven part series. So when you are starting the process of acutely writing the script there are a few things you need to think about. These are plagiarism, moving the plot along, and finally the climax.

First off you should probably think about this before writing but I do think that it matters here. Now I know everyone knows that plagiarism is a sin and you should never plagiarize other people’s work, ideas, characters, blah, and blah, and blah. Now don’t get me wrong, flat out stealing other people’s entire ideas or scripts is horribly wrong and I would never say to do that, but I do feel that a certain amount of plagiarism is ok. What I mean is that being inspired by someone’s work or having a similar plot to someone else’s is ok because it is really hard to come up with fully original idea  is extremely hard, even very famous plays do it from time to time. So inspired good, stealing bad.

Secondly what you want to focus on is moving the plot along. I have seen to many plays that are twenty minutes of story and the rest is just pointless filler dialogue. Now again some plays you do need a little filler dialogue here and there to help with transitions, and sometimes for comedy, but that is all it should be used for. Constant filler dialogue is boring and repetitive, and it gets way to over used. Something to ask yourself when writing your dialogue is how is this helping my story, how does it move the plot along in anyway. If doesn’t put it to the side for filler content, and don’t put it back in until you absolutely need it.

Finally the climax. When writing your play you need to make sure you are building to a goal. This also kind of ties in with moving the plot along. If you have so much filler content, and you don’t keep reminding us what your plot is, we will get to the end of the play we think, “Oh that’s it”. So just be careful to remind us your plot is.

So that’s it for your middle part of your play. So now we move onto part 3 your ending.