The three Fs of playwriting
I’m not a believer in “rules” for writers. Where rules exist, good playwrights know them – and break them.
We break the rules of grammar to create dialogue that sounds like normal speech.
We break the rules of spelling to hint at character and dialect. Having a character say “tuff” instead of “tough” provides an indicator for the actor.
We break the rules of punctuation by placing commas not necessarily where they go but where we need them: to serve as brief musical rests for actors speaking our lines aloud.
And most importantly, we break the unwritten and unspoken but all too obvious rules of conformity and convention when we have our characters say, do, and be things that aren’t popular or nice. Society is that construct that ostensibly helps people get along by burying what’s uncomfortable; playwriting is a mechanism by which writers unearth the unpleasant for art and entertainment.
As opposed to rules, I believe in what I call “craft techniques” – theatrical givens passed down to us about how to help dramatic writing play better. Actors, directors, writers, all have these techniques, and they’ve kept them because they work. A few examples:
- Put the punchline at the end of a joke because otherwise other words step on the joke and kill the laugh.
- Don’t have an actor cross upstage on someone else’s important line because it steals focus.
- If you have an actor play against the expressed intention of the line, you can often get a stronger reading by revealing subtext.
These aren’t “rules,” which inhibit us; these are techniques that help us succeed, and they’re generally related to the production.
When it comes to the writing, rather than keeping in mind rules, there are three notions that I hang onto, all of them starting with “F.”
Playwriting should be – needs to be – freeing. The act of writing a play frees playwrights, through their characters, to explore issues and ideas however they see fit: to see where they take us, to look at things in a new light, to find out what we think and to learn what we don’t know. This is a gift we pass on to the audience. Being free in your writing is a prerequisite to writing.
At the same it, playwriting should be frightening. If you never ever stop and wonder if you’re going too far, then you assuredly aren’t. You need to go further. If you want an audience to worry about your characters, you’d better put them in situations that make you uncomfortable while you’re writing it. This doesn’t mean putting them in oncoming traffic; it usually means they’ve said too much, too unkindly, behaved too rashly and too wrongly, been too good and are now paying for it, or are just flat-out unlucky in a truly catastrophic fashion. If everyone is safe, the play is safe – and no one wants to see a play that plays it safe. Playing within the rules of good behavior is safe.
And playwriting should be fun. This is the other reason that rules are to be understood but rejected: They usually stand in the way of the creative impulse, of the fun. If you’re having no fun writing your play, imagine how little fun actors are going to have acting in it and audiences are going to have seeing it. By “fun,” I don’t mean comic (although if you’re writing a comedy, it’s generally a good thing if at least you think it’s funny). I mean: exciting. You get up in the morning eager to work on it and go to bed feeling the same way. You think about it in odd moments. It colors your perceptions, as when you see someone in a supermarket berating a child and you realize that’s the way your protagonist would act. You feel truly alive when you’re writing the play and somewhat asleep when you aren’t. Fun is motivational. If everyone had more fun – if everyone were able to have more fun – the world would be a funner place.
Rules constrict people. In larger society, that’s often a good thing. In playwriting, not. To write plays, you don’t need rules. You need freedom, fright, and fun.