Beyond Writing Plays

I'd never say that playwriting was boring. Quite the contrary, it's anything but that. But I occasionally look beyond the borders of the stage and footlights to some of the other scriptwriting opportunities.

There are movies, television scripts, corporate videos, and training opportunities, just to name a few. All of these venues need scripts written. And they need the talents required to write good scripts: a story, good characters, and interesting dialogue. They need a beginning, a middle, and an end.

So while playwriting continues, I've also set my sights on other shores, knowing that I'll not only be able to continue honing my skills mentioned above, but may develop some new perspectives, new contacts, and some new talents.

Some of the changes I see have to do with perspective. Sure, writing any script will include the basic elements of drama (theme, plot, dialogue, character, etc.), but there are expansions from what playwriting allows. Playwriting, after all, is somewhat constrained in number of settings number of characters, and shifts in time.

So one of the perspectives I've been able to work on is where movies or television allow for sudden shifts in time and space. Whereas in a play, the playwright must consider how fast costume changes can occur, or how fast a set change can occur, a screenplay gives the freedom to have multiple set changes occur seamlessly to the audience.

After years of focusing on single sets or split sets, this was kind of an eye opener for me. For some playwrights I've read, this actually may not be so difficult for them. Many beginning playwrights tend to think in terms of many quick scene changes and shifts in time that really don't allow for an actor to change costumes in 30 seconds, nor for the set crew to change the set in that time.

This way a writer can allow the story to go wherever it needs to. However, a word of caution here. Even though you hear about multi-million dollar budgets for making movies, as a writer trying to break into the field, a movie script is more likely to be made if budget considerations are built into the script. Period pieces requiring elaborate costumes will still be a hindrance, as will exotic locales and special effects. Many independent movies are made on budgets of about $5 million, and become wonderful films. Therefore, thinking in terms of modern and relatively local stories can pay off.

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