My first play was written almost five years ago, whilst I was studying Biochemistry. It’s called The Quest for Beauty and is the equivalent of a theatrical road movie mixed with a fairy tale, starring the personified concepts of Death and Vengeance. In the two years my production company, The Sigil Club, has been active we have produced Q4B, Stripped, an absurdist comedy about one man’s struggle to find the meaning of his life and Stand-Up Comics, a sitcom about people working in a comic store.
Basically if I can call myself a writer, anyone can.
My scripts do tend to follow a bit of a format: Elements of the fantastic juxtaposed with the mundane, quick witted exchanges with a pun every few lines, a pop culture reference followed by more quick-fire dialogue, an elaborate insult and then a long bit where a character dwells on how life isn’t what they thought it would/should be. But those are my tropes and you can’t have them. Instead I present a brief “How to” to start one on their way to creating their own theatrical masterpiece.
- Read and watch plays. Apart from being really fun to do, one should always be studying and familiarising themselves with a medium if they’re going to work in it. By reading you can see how scripts are formatted and the different devices employed by creators as well as gaining inspiration.
- Read and watch things that aren’t plays. Inspiration can come from anywhere, whether that means making a straight adaptation, like War Horse or Berkoff’s adaptations of Kafka, or picking up elements and tropes from outside influences and thinking about how you can apply them to theatre.
- Plays are brilliant; you have an empty space to fill with whatever you can imagine. Television and Film are concerned with looking real in a way that theatre doesn’t have to so there are less budget and technical constraints. You should never feel limited when writing a play, let your imagination run wild; Shakespeare often had battle scenes and fairies kingdoms and his stuff lives on. Hell, Richard III has over fifty characters.
- To aid with pacing and characterisation you should first consider the style of play you’re starting. A play can be a series of monologues, interwoven short stories or one long narrative. Full length plays can also be broken down; some are set in one location, others constantly move around. A drama will rely on emotional engaging, realistic characters but characters in satire or absurdist theatre tend to be exaggerations. If you’re writing comedy you should focus on being funny—consistently funny.
Sometimes I know exactly what I’m going to be writing from the start and sometimes I start writing one scene, either a monologue or dialogue between characters I know I want to write and that informs me of what the overall tone is. From there I can figure out what the structure of the play needs to be and how the other characters need to act and interact with what I’ve come up with. - No matter what style you write in, your characters will always need to be fully realised and with a clear motivation. These characters have to be appealing for an actor to portray, something they can sink their teeth into. Similarly, theatre is a very intimate medium, your audience will essentially spend roughly an hour listening to your characters talk, so you better make sure the audience cares what those characters are saying.
- Relish the fact that each of your characters is unique; drama and tension comes from unique viewpoints and characters with distinctive voices can be very fun to write. This is even more prevalent in theatre, a less realistic medium in which characters can be bombastic or reveal their inner monologue.
- Understand that every line is important. It should either move the plot along or reveal character, if you’re good then both at once. I personally make excuses for a good joke but this is one of my vices.
- Understand that others won’t think every line is important. Whilst producers, directors and actors are your greatest asset in bringing your crazy ideas to life, personal preferences, time constraints and other issues will cause lines to be cut. Plays are collaborative. You will always have an actor read a line differently to how it sounds in your head and if you’re really lucky you’ll be able to surround yourself with people to make you look better whilst having the most fun in the world.
- Understand that what isn’t said is important; subtext is one of those things that allows a writer to make jokes and move the plot along whilst revealing character. It’s also one of those fun things for actors and directors to interpret and bring out if they want to.
- My scripts tend to be quite sparse, very vague description of the setting every time it changes and few stage directions. Again this is to give everyone else involved in the production the freedom to adapt and create what they feel is necessary and also allows me to focus on getting the thing finished.
- And that’s the most important thing: Finish. Don’t give up; keep going until it’s done, even if you’re not happy with the ending, or really, any part of it because you can always rewrite those bits. The only way to write a play is to write a play.
Michael Eckett runs the Sigil Club production company whose website is here and facebook page is here. He blogs about all sorts of nonsense at http://letsgetcomical.blogspot.com and spends the rest of his time singing songs about juggling and telling people whether or not they have chlamydia.
