Playscripts.com is an online community for playwrights and for people who are seeking scripts for professional, community or school theater productions.
This website is one of many valuable resources for emerging writers. For example, in an Introduction to Creative Writing class, the assignment to write your own script is, for many students, overwhelming, especially if your exposure to live theater is limited or nonexistent. You might wonder: What makes a good story worth telling on the stage? How many actors do I need? How do I find the balance between too many stage directions and not enough? What about set design and lighting and costumes? The best way to find answers to your questions is to read what’s out there. Read work by professional playwrights, aspiring playwrights, and teenage playwrights and consider what captures your attention and holds it. Click on this link to read some scripts that are posted on Playscripts.com that are seeking production. Find a script for a one-act play and write a mini-review. Here’s a caveat: You can’t all choose the same one! That means you might have to scroll through the list past page one or even page two to answer the question: What do you like (or dislike) about this script and why?
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...can be found on the WhatWeShare page. CLICK HERE!
Click on the best option to answer this quick survey:If you picked the last choice on the list, you’re probably on the right track. You could probably make the argument that there’s not enough practice in the world to make up for a lack of talent, or that talent alone will not make up for a lack of perseverance. We could also probably add a couple of more items, such as opportunity and life experience. While not all aspiring writers are born with innate talent, there’s one item on the list that we can all benefit from, which is the pursuit of knowledge. If you navigate to the WhatWeWatch page on this site, you’ll see some videos of writers talking about their own writing. Take a few minutes and watch Junot Diaz in the video above share his thoughts on what makes a successful writer. Then, in the comment box below, imagine that you could respond to his ideas with questions of your own. What would you ask him? What didn’t you understand? What would you like to know more about?
Go ahead and google it. I’ll wait. This quote has variously been attributed to Stephen King, William Faulkner, and King quoting Faulkner. Whatever. I’m not a big fan of quotes, but this one seems appropriate for the writer’s most odious task: revision.
Writing is like falling in love. At first everything is great: you’re funny; she laughs at all your jokes. There’re sparks and rollercoaster moments and meaningful silences. Then there’s the relationship. There comes the day when she doesn’t laugh; she rolls her eyes instead. Silence is now the warning of the coming storm. That’s when you have to reevaluate: Maybe you’re not as funny as you thought you were? Revision is like that. You are not as funny as you thought you were. So what are you going to do? Throw up your hands and walk away? You? No way! Get back here. Sit down. Get to work. That’s my slightly overworked analogy for the writing process. In the comment box below, come up with one of your own. Use your imagination.
And please make sure you read the other comments so you’re not all coming up with the same one! What’s your metaphor for revision?
Sir Edmund Hillary
George Mallory Cheryl Strayed Stanley and Livingstone Christa Mcauliffe These are just a few of the people who have set out on adventures, some to conquer mountains, others to chart unseen territory, and others to explore the heavens. There’s something about human versus nature that inspires writers to tell their stories. Whose adventure story would you like to write and why? Feel free to post pictures and videos, but make sure you use your words to describe them. Each tradesperson has a unique set of tools: the carpenter has her awl, the electrician has his wire cutters, the chef has their whisk. A writer has a set of tools as well, beyond pen and paper (or keyboard and laptop screen). The more really good work a writer reads, the more to add to the toolkit. How does Stephen King make us cringe in terror, for example? How does Sylvia Plath bring the reader into a darkness between father and daughter? How does David Sedaris make us laugh and Jon Krakauer make us want to scale the world’s tallest mountain? What tools do they use and how do they use them? Now that we’re reading as writers, as writing tradespeople, we can compile a toolkit of our own.
For this post, share some of the “items” in your toolkit. If you haven’t amassed many, that’s okay; what would you like to find? What do you want to know how to do? I’ve always been a reader. As a child, I didn’t watch TV because we didn’t have a television in my house. I was also kind of an awkward kid, a little shy. So I spent a lot of time immersing myself in imagined worlds and other people’s lives. Today, my reading habit is harder to feed as it competes with multiple social network feeds, Netflix binge watches, and -- of course -- student essays.
There’re different kinds of reading: for pleasure, for information, for understanding. For a grade. In a typical English class, we’re asked to read a text and come away with an understanding of that work’s theme or its place in the literary canon. In the words of the poet Billy Collins, we “tie the poem to a chair with rope / and torture a confession out of it.” Figuring it out is like solving a puzzle. When we read as writers, however, we’re flexing a different muscle. You might never have worked this muscle before so it may be out of shape. In the comment section below, describe this means to you: What does it mean to read as a writer? |
About this blogA blog is an online conversation. This one is for students of writing and is an extension of our face-to-face classroom. Here is where we can continue a discussion started in class, ask questions, and test new ideas. Archives
March 2020
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