You've probably seen a play before—if not on stage, then one that's been adapted for TV or film. Maybe you've read Shakespeare in English class, or had a friend who acted in a school musical.

The best way to really understand the way plays work, though, is to sit down and write your own. Which, conveniently, is what we'll be doing this April!

Starting Your Play

If you've ever glanced at the text of a play, you'll see that it's pretty much all dialogue. But before you groan and think, "I can't write that much talking!" Just remember that dialogue can be really exciting—there can be really meaty, action-packed sections where your characters battle each other with words, swords, and flames, and other times when your characters can be flowery, romantic (yuck, we know), and poetic. And examples of good (and bad) dialogue is all around you! Oh, and if people tell you all the time you talk too much, you have definitely picked the right challenge!

Elements You Will Usually Find in a Play

Characters—You're going to want some of these, or else your actors will be very confused when they arrive for auditions! Start with the basics—their age and relationship to each other. Are they enemies or friends? Are they in love with each other? Do they go to school together? You can start by making a list of these people, who are known collectively, as the Dramatis Personae (It's Latin for cast of characters). Keep this list with you during April to keep track of who loves/hates who!

As a playwright, you'll want to know what drives each of your characters: their ambitions, their fears, and anything that may get in the way of their happiness or achieving their ambitions. A great way to get to know your characters is to fill out our Script Frenzy character worksheets that are located in our Young Scriptwriter Workbooks.

The Three Things That Drive Character Interaction

Once you have filled out the character worksheets you may want to think about what your characters do once they are on the stage. There are three major elements that cause what is known as "drama" in your play. These are called the elements of Dramatic Action, but you can just think of them as cool tools that will help you tell a great story:

1. Discovery: A character finds out that he was adopted. How does this change what he believes, or how he sees his family? What will he do because of it?

2. Revelation: A character admits that she witnessed the murder of her neighbor's pet chinchilla. How does this change the story?

3. Decision: A character decides to move to London to start a rock 'n' roll band. What happens next?

Scenes can combine any number of these elements to move the plot forward.

You can find out even more about characters by thinking about:

Setting—Where and when will your play take place? Don't worry about drawing a set yet—leave that to the designer. All you need to worry about in your script is giving your actors, directors, and your collaborators what they need to know. This means you need to think of a time period, like, “in the time of the dinosaurs,” or “in Queen Elizabeth’s time,” or “yesterday at lunch.” You should also think of a place either in this world, like “Italy,” or, “the playground,” or out of it, like “Mars.”

Setting onstage can be divided into two categories:

1. Setting—This includes things like your backdrop, and whether the scenes are set inside or outside.

2. Props—These are the things that the actors pick up or work around when on stage. For example, a vase would be a prop, so in Act II, Scene III, when your main character receives roses from their secret admirer, they have a place to put them.

Stage Direction—This can be very confusing for both beginning playwrights and professionals. Stage directions are there to give the actors, designers, and directors a clue about what the playwright had in mind when he or she was writing the play, and to fill in the details between the dialogue. Stage directions are not for the audience, only the people in the play, as the audience will never get to read them.

An important thing to know is that stage directions are not narration. This is the biggest difference between a novel or short story and a play. Only a few actions, outfit or attitudes of your characters need to be described. Ditto for aspects of the mood, setting, and props. These details are part of the fun for actors, designers, and directors to fill in while producing a play!

In your stage directions, do include:

In your stage directions, do not include:

Stage directions at the beginning of the play, an act, or scene, are sometimes longer to set up the action that follows. This is an example of an acceptable opening stage direction of a play:

SCENE ONE

(A secluded glen in a dark forest at dusk. It is a cold early spring and the leaves have not yet emerged. JENNY enters in a thin jacket, shivering. She is twenty three, weak, and panting as she stops to catch her breath.)

Here's an example of a stage direction that would cause any reader of your play to throw your script across the room:

SCENE ONE

(A dark and ominous opening of trees in the deepest part of the forest outside of Monmouth, New Jersey. A light fog lifted hours ago, but the chill and dampness still clings to the not-yet-budded trees. The glade was left in this dense deciduous forest of maples and oaks when a fire, which was started by a lightning strike, swept through the forest some fifty years ago and destroyed a cottage that stood on this site. Now it is a spot for teens to gather and perform hazing rituals on their lesser peers. There is a crackling of branches and JENNY runs in, frightened out of her wits. She knows she needs to keep running, but she's cold and tired and wearing some skimpy sandals that don't stay on her feet well. Still, the fright is palpable as she gathers her thin jacket around her neck, covering the sparkling diamond necklace she once treasured as the symbol of her deep and authentic love for Howard.)

While the information in the second example may be interesting, it's nothing that the audience can see, and does not inform what the actor who plays Jenny should actually be doing besides the action which was described in the first example.

Don't worry about things like upstage, downstage or left or right. Just direct your characters in relation to the objects you've placed in their world, such as "BETH goes to the refrigerator" or "AMIR closes the window by the bed."

So now you've got your basics together! You've set the scene and cast your play in your head. Now you've got to start that story.

Plot

Freytag's Pyramid is a diagram that shows the very basic structure of plot and story of modern drama.

Think of it as a picture of the ways plays have been written throughout the years. It's only a guide, and there are lots of great works that break this mold. Also remember that you can always move the parts of the pyramid around. Some plays end on the climax with no falling action. Some plays have no exposition at all.

The Parts of the Pyramid

Exposition or Beginning: In the classic diagram of Dramatic Structure, things start with the dumping of information to bring the audience up to speed. This is the scene where the maids are dusting the library discussing the impending arrival of the long-absent master of the house, or perhaps a narrator wandering the stage and introducing the characters. This provides the "backstory" of the play. As awkward as these scenes might seem, they give the audience the information they need to know about what happened before the play started. Don't worry about how clunky or obvious this part of your play might seem when you first write it—you can rewrite it later.

An important thing to note is that the exposition, or explanation, can be delivered at any point in your play. You don't have to explain it all at the beginning. Just dole it out as needed for your story to make sense.

Another note on play beginnings: It's important to remember why your play is starting here and now. The audience will want something to start happening soon, so don't get too caught up trying to bring them up to speed on everything that happened to all of your characters before the play began. Leaving them a little bit in the dark can even help create suspense.

Now we’re really getting into your play. We've talked about backstory and beginnings...now what?

Inciting Incident: This is the event that starts the play on the road to the action-packed part of the plot. It forces the main character to face his or her fears and finally start following his or her dreams. Without an inciting incident, your characters would continue to mull around talking about their backgrounds, which would make for a pretty boring play.

Rising Action: This will be the longest section of your play. Characters are developed in
great detail, conflicts are shown between them, and friendships and relationships are revealed. It might be helpful to think of your play as a rollercoaster—the higher you go, the more
suspenseful things get. Imagine you are climbing the biggest hill on a rollercoaster; the rising action is just like this. It is made up of many events (some of them unexpected), each of them building and building to the most exciting part of your play, the climax.

Climax: This is the moment where things get really exciting. The antagonist appears
from out of the blue, the lottery is won, fortunes are lost, and audiences gasp. This is the moment at the very top of the rollercoaster, right before your high-speed drop! This moment doesn’t last long, and neither should the climax in your play—it should last just long enough to make your audience ask “What’s going to happen next!?”

Falling Action: The falling action is where you find out what happens after the climax.
The conflicts and challenges in the previous scenes are worked through and resolved, and you
are finally speeding down the tracks with your hands in the air. Does your antagonist get
defeated? Do your protagonist’s dreams come true? If so, how?

Resolution: This is how things work out in the end. This is after your character realizes
they’ve gotten, or lost, what they’ve wanted.
An example: Is there a wedding or a funeral?

Remember that this structure is to help guide you through the playwriting process, but it is not the only way to do it. You may just want to forget you saw the diagram and go with the ancient philosopher Aristotle's structure of a play: a beginning, a middle, and an end!

Style

And finally, a word about style. There are many genres, or types, of plays and many different styles. Much of this is determined by the way the play is put together. Comedies usually have happy endings and short dialogue. Dramas have sad endings and can have long sections of dialogue. The action you portray on stage and the characters' reactions to the action usually determine your style. If your characters are singing, odds are, you've got yourself a musical! If everybody but your main character—or maybe even your main character#151;is dead in the end you've got yourself a tragedy.

Now you know the main elements of a play, and you’re ready to get started mapping out your own!