Writing for Stage and Screen

Sherry Kramer is a playwright who has won numerous awards for her work and has written more than thirty plays, including David’s RedHaired Death, When Something Wonderful Ends and The Wall of Water. She teaches playwriting at Bennington College, USA, and taught regularly in the MFA programs of The Michener Center for Writers UT Austin, TX, and the Iowa Playwrights’ Workshop, where she was previously head of the workshop. She was the first national member of New Dramatists.

List of Illustrations

1. Works of Art Teach Us How to Read Them
First We Must Find a Way to See The World in Front of Us
There is an Old Saying in the Theatre: The First 20 Minutes Are Free
A Closer Look at The First 20 Minutes
Some Advice About the First 20 Minutes
Tone
There is Always a Clock
EXERCISE: Spend Some Time With Structured Time
Attention

2. The Perception Shift
Insight: The Eureka Moment
Attention and Insight
The Power of a Moment’s Newness
How Newness Drives Insight
A Joke is a Small Play
The Perception Shift in Three Plays: Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, The Beauty Queen of Leenane, A Streetcar Named Desire
EXERCISE: Experience a Small Perception Shift in the Comfort of Your Own Home
Hiding in Plain Sight

3. Theatre Is a Rhyme For Life
Certainty, Meaning, and Maybe
Dramatic Doubleness
The Bone Violin
The Bone Violin: A Fugue for Five Actors
EXERCISE: Track Doubling in The Bone Violin
Doubleness is Our Most Elegant Tool
The Three Surfaces of Doubleness in Three Plays : A Streetcar Named Desire, Betrayal, The Beauty Queen of Leenane
Systems
EXERCISE: Pleats
Systems and Theme
EXERCISE: Tracking Systems In A Streetcar Named Desire
The Ends of Plays Tend to Mirror Their Beginnings
Empathy and Doubleness

4. Story and Plot
Sequence = Meaning
EXERCISE: Order Makes Meaning
Breadcrumbs
Story Is Another Word for Time
How the Plot Organizes Itself Outside of Story
Futurity
The Double Track of Time (Non-linear plays)
Plot and Story are Two Different Things
Anti-Climax
EXERCISE: How Your Plot Uses Story
Conveniences
To Sum Up Story and Plot
So Here We are, Ready to Talk About the Enchantment That Is Story
Vertical and Horizontal
Vertical vs. Horizontal
EXERCISE: Draw Two Sets

5. Choice and Consequence
Why Choice Matters to the Audience
The God Who Loves You - Carl Dennis
EXERCISE: Tracking Character Desire
The And Then, The So Then, and The What If
EXERCISE: The And Then, The So Then
Repeatability
WRITING EXERCISE: A Five Minute Scene About Choice
Choice vs. Reveal
WRITING EXERCISE: Adapt A Family Story
Alternative History
WRITING EXERCISE: An Alternative History Play
Choice and Tragedy
A Tragedy is like Going Down a River
There are Two Forks of the River
The Sun has to Shine
Breaking Bad
Right vs. Right
Tragedy is the Art Form of Change
Tragedy is Made Out of Hope
Hope as Strategy
WRITING EXERCISE: The Nodes
Tragedy is a Clash of Values
What is it Worth? vs. What does it Mean?
In-Itself Value and the Evolution of the Art Form
Tragedy Is Not Simply Sad
Why Do We Take Pleasure in Tragedy
Characters Don’t Change No Matter How Much They Want To. No Matter How Much We Hope They Will.
In Comedy, People Change
It’s a Form of Magic
The Magic of Changing Without Changing
EXERCISE: Find Comedies Where People Change
But it Feels Like Someone Changes in Plays That Aren’t Comedies.
Are You Sure Someone Doesn’t Change?
But If People Can’t Change How Do We Change?
WRITING EXERCISE: Write Three Monologues About the Same Choice from Three Different Character’s Point of View

6. In Retrospect, Inevitable
In Retrospect Inevitable Outcomes
Not In Retrospect Inevitable Outcomes
EXERCISE: Write the Last Moment of Your Play As a Sonnet
Pointers
Pointers are Lies that Tell the Truth
The Attributes of Pointers: Systems and Pointers, Forwards and Pointers
How Pointers Announce Themselves
How to Write Pointers On Purpose
The Atomic Throw Is an Uncertain Kitchen
Foreshadowing and Misdirection
Titles
EXERCISE: Finding Your Title
Running Gags
A Play Tells the Truth, But It Enjoys Using a Lie To Tell It
EXERCISE: Lies
Spoilers
EXERCISE: Identifying Pointers
EXERCISE: Identify Pointers In Your Own Play

7. Convergence
It’s Never a Single Moment
EXERCISE: The End and The Beginning
Is Saying That Convergence is Everywhere in A Great Work of Timebound Art The Same Thing as Saying That a Great Work of Timebound Art is All Convergence?
To Be Human Is To Confuse a Satisfying Story With a Meaningful One
EXERCISE: Noticing Perception Shifts
The Turn
The Prestige
Reveal and Choice
Enlarging the Idea of Dramatic Event
EXERCISE: The Dramatic Future
The Difference Between What Happens on Stage and What Happens in the Audience
EXERCISE: The Last 45 Seconds Again. Endings as Different Genres
Why a Perception Shift Makes Things Weightless
How Coincidence is a Form of Rhyme
Open Endings
Mysteries are Almost All Writers’ Favorite Genre for a Reason
A Small Play To Fill Us With Wonder
Structure is Just What Happens in the End
EXERCISE: Adapt the Climax/Convergence of a Song
Hope is at the Heart of Everything in the Theatre
EXERCISE: Tracking Hope
Once Again: The Duck Rabbit

Index