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The direct and primary goal of this book is to enable a person to write a play of at least one act in length. A one-act play is usually, though not always, a piece of continuous action in one setting about 30 to 40 minutes in playing time. That, however, is merely a guideline. Some one-act plays are as short as five or ten minutes. Others use two or more different scenes or units of actions, while still others use locations that shift from one place to another.
The purposes of this book are all relatively simple. If you are interested in writing a play, this book provides a series of exercises designed in sequence to help you do that. You should read the assignment, the explanation, the examples, and the evaluations. Then you should do the assignment. Then compare your writing with the examples and look at it in light of the commentary on those examples. The one important part missing, of course, is someone with an artistic bent to provide an outside opinion. If you are using this guide on your own, you will have to provide your own objectivity.
Another purpose is to enable a teacher to provide a basic course or unit in playwriting. Most teachers of theater have the intelligence and artistic sensibility to provide helpful comments on inexperienced writers’ first attempts at playwriting. Many, however, are unsure about what assignments to use in the actual development of a play. The step-by-step orientation of this book is designed to solve that problem.
Not everyone who sets out to write a great play will be successful, but everyone who attempts the exercises here will come away with three very important, indirect benefits. First, a writer experimenting with dramatic formats will gain a greater appreciation of plays, of the ways in which they are constructed, and of the choices the playwright makes. Second, the exposure to working in a dramatic mode will help a writer in other formats; the emphasis on action, character, conflict, and dialogue will affect the way a writer thinks, even the writer who is later working in poetry or prose. Third, the writer will gain a greater awareness of human behavior, of the intricacies of personal relationships, of the reasons why people do things to each other, and of the ways they react to their environments.
People reacting to their environments: That’s one of the drama’s primary concerns, and it’s one of the reasons why the first section deals with “action.”