Childrens's Plays and Stories

Posted by Peter Reeves Aug 4, 2008

Over the past year most of my writing outside of comedy had been writing for children. What I’ve learnt most from this experience so far is the value of a strong and simple storyline. As most writing for children (especially stage writing) will be of under an hour in length it’s essential to cut out any superfluous material in the plot outline. I’ve written down some of what I’ve learnt in the article Writing Drama for Theatre in Education.

As I have some further theatre in education commissions to complete in the coming months I’ve also been looking at other story ideas. In this research I’ve been watching lots of children’s films and animations. A few common story ideas and themes have shown themselves to be a good basis for a children’s story. I discuss one of the most popular modern themes in my latest article The Fear of Separation in Children’s Films.

Hopefully this week I shall complete my first draft of my Hansel and Gretel stage adaptation. I shall be talking further on the subject of adaptation in some later articles and discussing what things need to be considered when adapting a pre existing story into a screenplay and a stage script.