Playwrights make a lot of mistakes. We don’t mean to, but we don’t have a lot of successful role models to look up to. We just stumble around trying to learn what we can from screenwriters (the writing is almost the same, but the business is completely different), novelists (the writing is completely different, but the business is just as archaic) and poets (since poetry books sell in the hundreds–not the hundreds of thousands–we feel their pain). Still, those lessons aren’t really our lessons. Here are three lessons, I’ve learned, and three mistakes you can avoid.
1. The first mistake is not writing your play. Straight plays are fairly easy to write, requiring good knowledge of stage craft and theater conventions, but plot, dialog and characterization seem straight forward to me. Keep the story moving because your audience wants to be taken for a ride. Don’t worry about getting the show produced, just start writing now. Not writing your play is by far the biggest mistake you can make.
2. The second mistake is assuming your play will never be produced and writing something truly bizarre and offensive or just plain weirdly-unwatchable. Theater goers are clamoring for original plays and musicals. If you have the gumption to write something for a popular market, you will find an audience. Writing a play backwards, not using any dialog, changing points of view or asking your actors to run around naked for no good reason are not going to help you find a company to back your Gift to the Universe.
3. The third mistake is not writing for a specific audience or in a specific genre. If you write a play “for everyone,” nobody will watch it. Why not? Because your play wasn’t written for “them.” It doesn’t make THEM feel special. They won’t feel like you know them, or care about them. Also, vague, general, cardboard characters are not nearly as strong or universal as specific, unique, challenging characters. Every good play has an audience. Who is the audience for your play?
To me, those are three of the biggies. Did I miss one? What do you think? Use the Reply box below to join the conversation.