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#writing tip!

Don't just give readers the entire backstory about a character or place all at once. This is an "info dump," and it's very boring.

Instead, spread it out! Sprinkle in bits and pieces of the backstory in dialogue, descriptions, and action scenes.

#writingtips #amwriting #selfpub

If your antagonist is a cartoon, you drain away most of your stakes. No one will care.

#stakes #writing #scripts

If blocks of writing time are rare and you have one coming up, do yourself a favor and find 20 minutes a day in the days preceding.

You don't want to jump in cold. You want the play in your head, questions primed, and a list of tasks you're desperate to start with.

#writing

Read plays you just saw and see plays you just read.

Start writing. No matter what. The water does not flow until the tap is turned on.

—Louis L'Amour

Horror movies terrify us even though we know that nothing onscreen can reach out and grab us. If anything, it's plays that should be scary.

#halloween #horror #scary #writing

Jason is important to the history of horror because he's right at the border of the monsters who we pretend scare us and the people who actually do.

#scary #halloween #amwriting #writing

Theatre, especially high school theatre, needs scary plays.

What frightens us in a play is different from what frightens us in a movie. In theatre, jump cares rarely work,

Scary plays are about dread.

#scary #writing

The best way to raise the stakes of a goal is to show all the different things your protagonist does to achieve it.

#writing #writetip #writingcommunity

If a shark stops swimming, it dies. Writers are sharks. If the fingers aren't moving, the ideas don't come. Try writing while lying in bed, staring at the ceiling. Maybe, you hope, inspiration will flow past my gills.

Perhaps a sea lion will swim into my mouth.

The quiet panic attack:

"This play is too big. I don't know what I'm doing." One strategy: a list of tiny projects. Typos, smooth a scene, change problematic names. When you don't know what to do, do SOMETHING. Even small progress relaxes you, leads to bigger progress.

#writetip #writingcommunity

Pixar's 22 Rules of Storytelling Pixar's Rules of Storytelling were originally tweeted by Emma Coats, a Pixar Story Artist. Rule 1: You admire a character for trying more than for their successes.

Pixar's 22 rules of storytelling can be found all over the internet. I guarantee that you'll find at least three that are useful to you.

www.aerogrammestudio.com/2013/03/07/p...

Why I use an internet blocker, in two sentences:

I see the headline "Chrissy Teigen's fall from grace" and I'm desperate to click on it.

First, I look up who Chrissy Teigen is.

#amnotwriting #writing

I love the phrase Jump the Shark, the moment a narrative so leaves its reality that it's ruined.

In the first 10 minutes, you make a contract with the audience. Jumping = breaking the contract.The contract terms are implicit:

This is a comedy.

No one will shapeshift.

The Fonz doesn't waterski.

Weaponize your exposition.

Put another way: the best character to dole out information isn't the friend who tells it over tea; it's the enemy who's lashing out, pummeling your protagonist with it.

#writing #writetips #writingcommunity #stageandscreen

Sometimes raising the stakes is as simple as letting your characters be distraught about what's happened, instead of tough.

#playwright #playwriting #writing #writingcommunity

Take a deep breath, lasting perhaps three days, before sending out your script.

You don't want to be the writer sending follow-up notes that say "actually, throw that draft out and read this one! It's way better."

Nobody likes that writer, least of all that writer.

#writing #writingcommunity

Thanks for the response, Alex! It never crossed my mind that the Refusal was well known enough to be overrrated. (I'm not a gamer.) It seems to me that whatever the genre, it's useful to hear why the task is impossible as a prelude to attempting it. But now I'll pay closer attention. Thanks, again.

The Refusal of the Call is an underappreciated part of the Hero's Journey.

Bilbo says no to the journey.

The refusal underlines the stakes, tells us how hard this quest will be.

My favorite eg: In the Hunger Games, Katniss doesn't refuse the call. She answers someone else's.

#writing

If you've put your protagonist in a dire predicament—trapped in a lie, trapped in a well—congratulations.

Your next task is not to figure out how to rescue her.

Your next task is to ask the question: How can I make this even worse?

#writing #amwriting #writingcommunity

A play audience sees the credits before the show, in the program. You need to take that into account.

"1st policeman" could be a minor spoiler (so too the lack of a character named Godot.)

"Orderly" tells the audience the playwright is too lazy to come up with a name.

#writingcommunity

Making outlines of scripts you admire teaches you technique: transitions, entrances, keep how much time to spend with a subplot.

Two-character scene: A wants. B opposes. Everything either one does or says is a tactic. The tactics get bigger or sneakier.

It should feel like a Jackie Chan fight. A throws a garbage lid. B climbs a fire escape. A hits B's bad knee, but B has a knife in her sock...

#writing #amwriting

‘Drift’

Oil and acrylic on canvas 1.1Mx1.1M

A writer who's now under a bit of a cloud said something I've always found useful. Essentially:

Sometimes they have no idea how to write a scene. So they just jump in and tackle it, then retackle it. Years later, they don't remember which scenes were hard and which easier.

#writingcommunity #play

Get it on paper even if you don't yet know why. Three months of "She stares at the sea ..." and suddenly the ocean flows into your play.

#amwriting #stageandscreen #writing

Avoid the sad "Lost my Work" moment:

Your clipboard is easy to forget about. Reflexively hit Paste before copying to it lest you erase what's in there.

Treat “Replace existing file?”—like an electric fence.

If u do lose work, start re-creating instantly. It's still in your brain.

#amwriting

Shakespeare wrote in 5 acts, Ibsen in 4. Miller used 3 acts. Plays since the 70's mostly 2.

You see where this is going.

#theater #theatre #broadway #plays @playwriting

Put aside those character lists. ("Favorite drink: strawberry milk!") What makes your protagonist is that she's the most active character onstage.

#amwriting #writing #theatre #writingcommunity #playwright

Conflict is about the future.

Two characters arguing about an event in the past might give the audience insight into them.

But unless the debate affects what's going to happen, it's dramatically inert, lacks stakes.

It's not conflict; it's bickering.

#amwriting #theater