Welcome to scripts, plays, radio shows, podcasts, and on screen

Reading plays in school was a lot more fun in a group setting than when we had to sit quietly and read in our heads. In fact my 12th grade English teacher had to find a recording of Hamlet for our class to listen to since we were struggling so much (hearing the actors emotional tones helped).

Since moving back to Virginia (and the pandemic), I’ve come to miss my monthly excursion into New York City to grab a slice of pizza and a root beer before seeing a Broadway play. My current favorite is without a doubt Hadestown. But I’m also happy to recommend Come From Away, Beetlejuice, To Kill a Mockingbird, and especially The Play that Goes Wrong (I saw it three times).

I haven’t seen this on stage, but I love the miniseries adaptation.

Now writing scripts in any form is an art form. That’s why Shakespeare was known a playwright - the “wright” part indicates a type of craftsman. So Shakespeare was a crafter of plays, not just a writer.

When I was in my high school Creative writing class (because two years of this class makes me an “expert”), I learned to write stage places and scripts for movies. Going into the unit, I thought they would be very similar in formate. They are not. Placement of instructions on the page, dialogue, and even when to use italics can vary wildly.

Depending on the medium, scripts can require stage directions, camera movements, lighting, sound effects, possible instructions for special effects, emotions for the actors to express, cut scenes, music, etc.

Needless to say there are a lot of components and this is just for plays and movie scripts. Radio plays and podcasts have their own laundry list of components that don’t completely line up with the above list.

Recently, I’ve started writing a Very short radio play (about 15 minutes) - which required me look up the proper format because it doesn’t follow a stage play format at all. Part of me wants to rearrange the whole thing as a short stage play. Doing so will require me to revamp the whole [bleepin’] format.

And this isn’t even getting into genre bending performance art.

Remember how last week I was writing about poetry and lyrics. Well depending on the genre, a script might require a dance sequence, music, songs, or poetry. Now the script writer doesn’t have to give a ton of direction for this (typically) that’s the director and choreographer’s jobs to determine. For music, you’ll typically have the writer including the written music as well (or they’ll hire someone to do that writing).

I will one day see this on stage, but it’s not a play in the traditional sense. It is a choreopoem.

If you want to write scripts of any kind, I definitely recommend taking classes on it. These are not like the short story or novel forms that we’ve been exposed to since we were very young children. There are a lot of moving parts and people to work with.

(I recently watched a live stream performance of A Midsummer Night’s Dream by a YouTuber having all of the actors act via Zoom and there is a hilarious subplot that goes into a group trying to create a play and it going terribly wrong. This is one of the better examples of how the script writing process can go. Go watch it, the guy who plays Oberon is the best. Just know that it is over 3 hours long.)

However, if you just want some practice to entertain your friends or practice a bit because your still stuck in quarantine - I recommend first learning about the types of performing arts you will want to write for.

So here’s a list:

• The traditional stage play - probably the most familiar of script writing as Americans at least start learning about plays in elementary school. You’ll need a list of actors, stage directions, setting information, and informations on what the characters look like and how they feel (this list is not comprehensive).
• The stage musical - similar to the traditional play, but with the moving parts of dance sequences and musical numbers. You need a music background to properly write these.
• Movies and TV scrips - not only do you need to direct the actors, have good notes on the setting, lighting, and sounds, but you have the extra component of camera movements. Depending on the budget, you also might get to have access to a nice special effects team.
• Radio plays - lack all the visual components of the stage play, musical, and movie/TV script, but need a little direction in the audio effects and stage directions.
• Podcasts - similar to radio plays (honestly they are the new radio play).
• Experimental - I would only recommend trying to write an experimental script for an advance script writer. These scripts know all the rules of script writing and may throw all of that out the window. 

Note - most scripts have a length equivalent of one page per minute of acting or performing. This isn’t always the case.

Second note - directors might take your script and choose to toss all your directions and only keep the dialogue. Directors get to do that.

And for those of you reading this thinking that actors improvise a lot of what you see on stage or screen - I can assure you they do not. Most actors follow what the director says and the director gets final say on everything.

I’ve seen The Play that Goes Wrong three times and each time it was (almost) the exact same play each time, with different actors.

And remember, I’m not expert on this.

Until next week.

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