Writing – Page 3 – KEVIN CRAIG

How to Write a 10-Minute Play

So, I’ve been writing the ten minute play for a number of years now. I’d like to think I’ve been doing it with a bit of success, too. Though one could never be sure. I can attest to the fact that the audiences seemed to like my work. Being in an audience when they’re laughing during the unraveling of a comedic play you wrote is extremely rewarding. I consider myself blessed to have experienced that. But I’m rather hard on myself, as a writer…so I tend to allow the actors and the directors to take the blame for the laughter. (-: After all, the script is merely the scaffolding. Right?

So, now that I have had seven 10-minute plays produced…I feel I may be able to offer some advice for others considering the 10-minute play market. It is a favourite of mine. A good 10-minute play can contain the world within its rigidly timed existence. You just have to work like hell to contain it.

1. I learned the hard way that there is a world of difference between a sketch and a play. If your characters are not transforming and going through some kind of self-revelation, you could very well have written a sketch. A play is a complete story, whether that play is 10-minutes long or two hours long. You need an arc. A conversation where nothing really happens and no wisdom is gained and no change takes place is simply a conversation. A lot of first time 10-minute playwrights make the mistake of creating a sketch when they attempt a play, myself included. Last year, during the InspiraTO Festival in Toronto…there was a last-minute call for a play in one of the festival’s satellite locations. As I already had a play in the festival, to take place on the Alumnae Theatre stage, I received the call automatically. I jumped on the opportunity. By the end of the day of the call, I sent in what I mistakenly thought of as a play. Fortunately, it seemed to have some good bones. The Artistic Director, Dominik Loncar, worked with me to flesh out my idea and bring the sketch into the realm of play. I think working with Dominik to create this play was one of the most educational experiences I had in the playwriting process. So, always make sure your play is a full story which culminates in a character change.

2. This one is so easy, it seems self-explanatory. But I have often struggled with it myself. So, I know it needs to be said. For those of you who follow guidelines to a tee, this rule should not be a surprise to you at all. For those of you who think it’s perfectly natural to send a 7,000 word story into a magazine whose submission guidelines clearly state ‘stories should be no more than 3,000 words’, please take heed. There are guidelines for a reason. Ignoring them is the first opportunity the publisher/producer/what-have-you has of culling the pack and rejecting you. Don’t make it easy for people to reject you. ALWAYS read and follow the guidelines. I know from personal experience that well over 50% of submissions are sent in by people who prefer to think of themselves as above submission guideline parameters. As a past acquisitions editor, my job was made quite easy by those who ignored guidelines. I’ve gone on long enough. I tend to get ranty when I discuss writers’ inabilities to follow guidelines. #2 of my advice is that you ensure your play is 10-minutes in running time. NOT ELEVEN. NOT TEN AND A HALF. TEN. End of story. I ‘perform’ my plays over and over again to ensure they meet this criteria.

3. Stage Direction. Use it wisely. Actors are brilliant. While developing their character, they soon learn everything about who that character is. From that place, they can see how that character moves. You don’t want to fill your play with minor business (BUSINESS is the term for what is happening within the play that is not dialogue). If there are necessary directions you feel would move your play forward, by all means include them. But please trust implicitly in the actors and director. They’ll know how to include the right business. I’m sure it infuriates these people no end to be told through stage direction each and every step and movement they are to perform.

4. Give your character a WANT/DESIRE. And then put obstacles in her way. This will create tension. Tension is good. Tension is necessary. Your character needs to propel–be propelled–into the heart of the play. Nothing moves a character more than a shiny carrot dangling just outside of their reach.

5. I think there’s a fine line between KEEP IT SIMPLE and GIVE IT PIZZAZZ. Keeping it simple is required. You only have ten minutes to tell a full story, to bring a character from one place in their life to another. This is not a movie. You can’t have extraordinary props. Your goal is to get to the audience’s raw nerve–be it through comedy, drama, fear, what-have-you. Leave the glitz of the movie world on the silver screen. But this is not to say you can’t give your play pizzazz. You want to make it theatrical, larger than life. You can do this without explosions and special effects. You need to find a perfect balance between simple and exciting. Think of simple as budget-related. Often, you’re working with bare-minimum stage props. Think of exciting as character-related. Give your characters great dialogue and a great compelling story the audience won’t be able to tear themselves away from. Make the walk to the climax a dazzling crescendo.

The best advice I could give someone who aspires to get into the 10-minute play business? Surround yourself with people in the know. Approach theatre groups. Take in 10-minute festivals in your area. Nothing teaches one more about writing than reading. Nothing teaches one more about 10-minute playwriting, than watching 10-minute plays. Don’t be afraid to write a play and submit it. There are 10-minute festivals all over the world, now. You don’t have to have the title of playwright to write a play. That comes after. Just dive in!

(I’ve had some great opportunities from people willing to take a chance on an unknown quantity. 10-Minute festivals are a great way to get your foot in the door of live theatre. Without people like Jeremy Smith of Driftwood Theatre and Dominik Loncar of InspiraTO Festival, I’d still be dreaming about being a playwright…instead of being a playwright. Go forth and find your way in.)

Suggested Reading: The Summing Up by W. Somerset Maugham

You can check out my novels at my AMAZON AUTHOR PAGE They are: The Camino Club, Book of Dreams, Summer on Fire, Sebastian’s Poet, The Reasons, Burn Baby Burn Baby, and, Half Dead & Fully Broken. The horror anthology Purgatorium, which includes a short story by me, is also listed there.

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A History of Me – Writing in the Darkness Without the Secret Handshake…

My first forays into writing were stories that always seemed to end with a fridge door opening and a head being chilled on a silver platter inside said fridge. I guess when I was seven or eight, I saw myself as a sort of horror writer. After all, who scared us shitless more than Stephen King? Although, for the life of me I can’t recall if I even read his works back then. Could I have simply heard of King and aspired to write like what I imagined he wrote like? Who knows. I just knew a good severed head was best served up, well, cold.

I still remember my first ‘novel’ too. Marjoram. Great title, eh. Yep. Marjoram was a honkin’ huge used-to-be garage band. The main characters were embarrassingly fashioned after Bruno & Boots, the main characters of Gordon Korman’s Macdonald Hall series. Korman had just made an appearance in my Grade 7 or 8 classroom. This was in the late 70s. He helped reignite the love of words that Dr. Seuss and Roald Dahl had instilled in me in my earlier life. And, I suppose, Stephen King (in spirit, if not in any other way). Marjoram was painstakingly written in pen. A whole spiral notebook. I actually received an A+ for the story, so some well-meaning if exasperated teacher took pity on my Korman-bedazzled eyes and gave me the mark for effort.

Fast forward through all the trauma, joy, sorrow, bad decisions, good decisions, craziness, zaniness, depression, elation and all the other ion and ness words…somewhere along the way, I well and truly lost my way. I didn’t find my way back to writing until 2002. I’ve been writing ever since. Non-stop. Once you teach the parrot to talk, you cannot teach him to shut up. You merely await his death.

With all that writing, I still haven’t really learned the handshake. I don’t know…maybe it’s the trauma and bad life choices…the lack of strength in my early years that allowed me to fail so totally as a normalian…but something stands in my way. Is it that I didn’t get a card-carrying membership into the League of Writers through some inexplicably random series of college or university courses. Is it that I am blinded by my own stubbornness to accept failure as a default that I don’t see that I’m actually doing fairly well? I don’t know. I can’t pinpoint what feels ‘wrong’ about this. I write every day. I no longer put pen to paper, but I definitely churn words out through my fingers onto the computer screen. Christ, I’m doing it right now. I just…I guess I still don’t know why I’m doing it. I feel as though I’m constantly pushing my books on unsuspecting readers…but as I reach out to them in one way, I pull away from them in another. I hope they won’t read my words. I hope they will read my words.

I’m nearing the end of my umpteenth novel. I use the term umpteenth because I’m too lazy to actually do the counting on my fingers. I haven’t a clue how many I’ve written. You see, I’m fairly disconnected. I’m sometimes so numb, I have a hard time remembering the character names on the novel I’m actually working on. Have you ever had to scroll back to find your main character’s name? I can’t have an intelligent conversation with a reader. They asked me where I came up with the idea for, say, John Doe, and I can’t for the life of me remember what novel John Doe was a character in. I’m hopeless.

Yet, I continue. There is something in the actually laying down of words that seems to get me through. I’ll take it. You know…I’ll own it. It’s better than not writing. It’s the act of writing I need…not the outcome. The outcome is for readers—potential, constant and imagined.

It just gets to be a lot to handle sometimes. This pre-winter time seems to be the most difficult for me. But you know what…I’m gonna just keep writing. Ever forward… then you don’t have to look back at what you’ve written, right. It’s like I’m dropping all these crumbs along the forest path so I won’t get lost in the darkness. Only thing is… some bastard keeps pickin’ up the crumbs. I’m writing…but it’s too dark in here to see the words…

While the Mundane Takes Place – Write, Write, Write!

Unless you’re some all-powerful deity, you have a little mundane in your life. It’s true. Even the movers and shakers of Hollywood and the Tower of Song get to partake from the Table of Mundanity. Nobody is exempt. It’s kind of like dying–nobody gets out alive. You don’t have to be a poet to know that simple truth. Life is dying. And dying is living.

It’s the middle road between birth and death that matters. And not just the glitzy stuff. There’s more to life than podiums and celebrations. So much of our living time is filled with simple moments of non-fabulousness. As a writer, I try to pay particularly close attention to these moments. I always found that it is in the simple less spectacular events where story hides. Like a crouching lion, the details lurk under the surface of our mundane downtime. It is when I’m bored or idle or daydreaming that I ask myself, “What can be found in this time?” “What universal truth, wisdom, parallel, insight, emotion can be found within this moment?”

When a writer connects with that part of us that is universal–that humanness that we all share–that is when the fireworks go off. You don’t necessarily reread a passage in a story where the most exciting seat-of-your-pants action happens. But if you find that one special sentence that crawls down inside you…that sentence you recognize and know could have come from your very heart…that’s the sentence you’re going to read and reread. You’re gonna fully relate. You’re gonna say an emphatic, “YEAH!” or “YES!” It could be a mundane part in the story where the main character slices into an apple with a paring knife. It could be the way light comes into a room and rallies dust motes to dance. These mundane moments captured for one great big universal AHHHH! That’s what I love about writing. About reading. We share the simple moments that go into a life…the moments that connect EVENT to EVENT. Just those mundane moments that are filled with the hidden knowledge and wonder of universal commonality.

Don’t overlook a thing when you’re putting a story together. To capture the heart of the reader, you will need to capture the essence of humanity. It’s not found in the glamorous and intriguing fabulousness of the EVENTS. It’s found in the things we do every day. The minutiae. That will capture your reader and allow them to step inside your story bus…just to see where it is you’re going to take them!