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Tips For Scriptwriting
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Written by Bryn Colvin   
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Scriptwriting Tips

Script writing is quite unlike any other form of creative or functional writing and moving into it is surprisingly difficult. Don't be surprised then if it doesn't come easily. As with all things literary, one of the best ways to learn is to read the work of others. I would strongly recommend a combination of reading plays and seeing the same ones performed on the stage as the centre of your learning process.

The production of a play is a collaboration between writer, director and performers but by the time you reach that point, you have little say and the script is at the mercy of others. You need to convey your intentions well, or take the risk that your work will be 'radically reinterpreted."

In a script you have no narrator. You can put a narrator on a stage, some playwrights do and usually it seems clumsy. You only have the speech of characters, unframed, unexplained. You can suggest their key actions but cannot describe everything in detail. The descriptions you give have to make sense for a production - you cannot offer comments about how a character thinks, you can only tell the actor what they should do.

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Consider this scene - you are describing two people sat at a table. In a novel, you could comment that one of them is feeling anxious and hint at secrets untold, at impending conflict. In a script, you could only say that two people are sat at a table and that one of them fidgets nervously. Try to avoid having characters telling the audience what they think or feel - again this tends to be clumsy. Suggestion, subtlety and implication are far more effective. Use words that suggest mood, use the rhythm of the language as well - short snappy phrases will convey anger and irritation far better than long flowery speeches. Be conscious of how your words sound when spoken.

If a piece of work is to be performed on the stage, you are limited by how rapidly it is feasible to change set. Having some consistency of time and place works well. (For a good example of how to entwine the past with the present, read Arthur Miller's "Death of a Salesman.") Equally, if you move through time, bear in mind that our players will be finite in number, will have small amounts of time for costume changes and cannot be aged dramatically without it looking false. If you need to tell a story, try to condense it.



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