When writing your new play, keep in mind that there is a difference between the story and how you choose to tell it.

Here is the story: boy meets girl, boy gets girl, boy looses girl, boy looses girl for good and everyone dies. (Bonus points if you recognized this as the plot for “Romeo and Juliet”.)

You could tell the whole story in prose, as a novel. You could write it as an epic poem. You could put it on paper as a screen play, and shoot it on film. You could write it for the stage as a musical or as a straight play. You could condense it down, take out the everyone dies part and write a play for middle schoolers. You might simplify the sets and write it for readers theater, or eliminate the sets and write it as a radio play (in German–I’ve heard they love radio dramas in Germany).

In the novel, the words you choose would be very important. In a play, any kind of play, the words can be inspiring, but they MUST be clear so your final product comes out looking the way you want it to look. In radio, you might put more of the action in the dialog, and include a narrator part that is meant to be read aloud.

These are all different ways of telling the same “boy meets girl” story. Why is this important?

Knowing you COULD tell the story any number of ways, frees up your inner creative writer and lets you put off editing till the writing is done. “Yes, yes,” says your inner writer, “I k-n-o-w I used the word poison three times in the last four lines, but this is a stage script. Relax. It’s okay.” The inner editor wants his turn. He needs his turn. He just can’t have his turn WHILE your trying to write.

So, throw your inner editor a bone and he’ll start to relax. Writing a new play doesn’t have to be hard, if everyone will just wait their turn.

Break a leg.

Novelists use internal dialog to help the audience identify with their characters. Sometimes screenwriters use close-ups to reveal what a character is thinking. Of course, playwrights use soliloquies to do the same thing. I just wonder how much of this internal conflict needs to be in the script, and how much comes alive automatically when you choose the right actor for the part.

I don’t completely believe the old adage that “if it ain’t on the page, it ain’t on the stage.” I don’t believe it because I’ve seen actors take my lines and get so much more out of them than even I dared to imagine. At the same time, there are certain gestures, movements and actions that I include in the script because they MUST be on the stage.

• I NEED Jeffery to struggle with putting cream or no cream in his coffee because I’m about to give him a line about how much trouble it is being aware of his alternate personalities.
• I NEED my reluctant porn star Richard Bigalow (Dick Big) to stumble while dancing with Nevada Jones (his love interest) because he sees the show producer and is about to ask for more rehearsal time.

The goal is to make the audience identify with the characters. So, the audience needs to be able to look in on and experience the thoughts and emotions of the characters. Sometimes that means addressing the audience directly, and sometimes it means actors taking those few MUST have moments and using that knowledge to light up their entire performance. Then, then the audience gets it and that’s the best feeling ever.