13/09/2014 - I was in Chester again this morning for approximately 4 hours with Chester Micro Plays. Today we discussed what we found most helpful and what we struggled with when we wrote our last play that was performed on July 24th earlier this year. It was great to receive a collaboration of feedback from the other writers. We also reiterated what should go into a good 10 minute play: Correct timings for the problem, conflict and resolution; Interesting characters; Pauses before releasing a climax or sensitive information; No more than 5 characters, really aim for 2; Short dialogue in a conversational style; Showing a sense of place and the people around the characters in the right context; A not too complicated story line; Stage directions; Right theme and mood (showing deep emotions); A balanced play; Go straight to the action; Remove anything irrelevant as every second of writing should mean something (economy of exposition); Know what the play is about; It must be a journey based on drama/conflict or a relationship; It should be credible; Who is this play about? Character A, B or Cs perspective?; The characters have to be empathetic; There should be a character change; It must have an inciting hook; You must choose a space in which it will work; There must be character growth; and finally Keep your play simple. The workshop today made me realise how important it is to show sense of place, thats to give the impression of your surroundings and the people around you without actually spelling out where you actually are. Giving a sense of place and an awareness of setting is a skill to be mastered like any other when learning to write. One of the writing exercises that I found really interesting demonstrated this point. We had to write a short duologue with two characters. A confession had to be given by character A to B in a chosen location. We could add pauses and stage directions. Next we had to rewrite the scenes but change the location and mine was from a conversation in a car to a funeral. I had to include the new sense of place and make the reader aware of the people in it without actually saying what was actually happening i.e. funeral. The writing had to be clear to show the right context and geographical references. In a short space of time this exercise was harder than you think to get right. We did plenty of mind maps. We had to write ideas down based on a chosen theme but pull away from the obvious choices to help us write an interesting play. Next we designed the characters for the play and planned the story idea and I wrote a first draft for a play to get us back into the idea of play writing again. Lastly we came up with theme ideas and decided on an overall theme that our writing group could use to base their next play on. We have to have our 50 word play submission idea to our theatre director to discuss by 29/09/2014 before we can begin our writing. We are looking to perform our next set of plays on 27 November 2014 approximately.
Posted on: Sat, 13 Sep 2014 20:47:25 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015