Today’s guest blog post is brought to you by Joe Filippone–an experienced playwright and screenwriter. Joe has a unique perspective on writing for the screen and stage, and helps dispel some of the myths surrounding this lucrative form of writing. I’m happy to feature this fact-filled guest post about the forms of playwriting and screenwriting and what you can do to see your play or movie come to life.

Playwriting vs. Screenwriting

Everyone seems to think two of the easiest ways to break into the writing world are playwriting and screenwriting. After all, those are the two easiest realms of the writing world to break into. All you need to write is dialog and a few meager stage directions or camera angles that no one cares about anyway right? You don’t need to worry about character development, writing what the character is thinking or filling the page with vivid descriptions of the environment because the audience will see it right? And you don’t need to worry about making it novel length. A play is maybe eighty pages at the most. One can easily get it written over a weekend, mail it to some theatres and just rake in the royalties. Right? Wrong. Writing for actors is one of the hardest, difficult aspects to break into. Here’s why.

First let’s start with playwriting. Theatres are poor. That is no surprise. Why do you think most Broadway actors have to work two or three day jobs to support themselves? Why do you think most of them eventually transition to Los Angeles? Theatres just can’t afford to pay actors what they used to. They also can’t afford to spend the lavish amount of money they once did.

Unless you can write a guarantee Broadway musical hit, theatres don’t want plays that call for lavish productions. And let’s be realistic, unless you are a Tony Kushner or Susan Lori-Parks the odds of your first dozen plays making it to Broadway are slim to none. For the novice playwright you will be starting off with Off-Broadway, Off-Off Broadway and local community theatres in your own hometown. And don’t expect to get rich fast. It will be a long time before you make enough money to quit that day job. In fact, some theatres can’t even afford to pay aspiring playwrights.

Still want to write? Good. You’re already way ahead of the people who have given up after reading that paragraph, because, like all writers, you will face rejections. The first thing you need to come up with is an idea that’s stageable. That’s the key word: STAGEABLE. There’s lots of great ideas out there but not all of them will find their way to the stage. To find out if your idea can live on the stage ask yourself these questions:

• 1) Are the number of characters acceptable for the size of the stage?
• 2) Are the number of scenes/sets feasible and worth the cost?
• 3) Will people come to see the play? AKA. Is it marketable?
• 4) Why now?

Let’s break each of the questions down:

Are the number of characters acceptable for the size of the stage? Are there too many
characters? Is each character necessary?
If you go through and can’t come up with a legitimate reason to have every single character, cut them out. Don’t clutter your play with characters that serve no purpose. Every character needs to have a reason why they are in the play. They all must move the story along. Take any great play, every character no matter how minute they are moves the play along. You also have to consider the size of the stage. If the stage is a small intimate space about the size of a studio apartment, you can’t have a play with a Greek Chorus of dozens.

Are the number of sets/scenes feasible and worth the cost?
Theatres no longer want three act plays. Those are expensive to produce. They are more interested in having a series of one acts to keep the audience interested and engage. Most of the playwrights who are making a living writing plays are writing shorts, one acts and ten minute plays. As I stated earlier, theatres don’t have the money to build elaborate sets or create special effects. Most of the time they reuse sets from prior productions.

The best thing to do is to make the set as simple as possible. For one of my plays it takes place in multiple locations and I specifically wrote that black boxes and blocks represented every aspect-beds, tables, chairs, etc. That way the set designer would not have to worry about obtaining a lot of furniture that wouldn’t clash with each other.

Will people come to see the play? Is it marketable?
This is simple. Know the theatre you are submitting to. Do research about what kinds of shows they produce. This also has to do with different cities. The city I currently live in, Wheat Ridge, is mostly retired folk who don’t like controversy so most of my work is not marketable in Colorado. Don’t make the theatre think you are an idiot. If they only produce children’s musicals don’t submit a graphic account about a girl that is raped by her brother. Likewise if they only like edgy and controversial subjects don’t submit a cute retelling of Little Red Riding Hood.

Why now?
This should really be the first question before you begin. You have to ask yourself why are you starting the play at that point in time? What purpose does it serve? Again, look at all the great plays, their timeframes are all relative to the action of the play.

Types of Plays You Can Write

Still interested in becoming a world famous playwright? Keep reading. So what types of plays are there? Many. There’s musicals, children’s, one acts/shorts, ten minutes and full lengths. Let’s break each of them down.

Musicals: Pretty self explanatory. These are the big Broadway extravaganzas. Probably the most expensive plays to produce and also the most difficult to write. You not only have to worry about characters and plot but also writing, or finding someone to write the lyrics and score. You also have to make sure the songs move the story forward and aren’t just useless filler.

Children’s: These can be shorts, musicals and full lengths. These are aimed to please and entertain. Nothing edgy, nothing controversial. These are mostly adaptations of popular myths and fairy tales.

One acts/shorts: These are generally over ten pages and less than forty. Limited number of characters and scenes. Even better if it can take place in the same location because remember, every time there is a scene change that pulls the audience out of that suspension of disbelief.

Ten minutes: Besides musicals the most difficult to write good. Ten minutes are usually ten pages or less. Very limited number of characters-usually no more than three and generally confined to one location. Like the short story, you have to have an engaging plot and characters that
the audience will care to and latch on to.

Full lengths: The easiest to write because you have a higher page count, you just have to be careful not to make it an epic that is five hours long. This can make the full lengths hard for the novice who will unwittingly add unnecessary back story and characters. Remember, just because you have more pages to work with doesn’t mean you have to have hundreds of characters and scenes. Most good full lengths will have no more than twelve characters and a maximum of four set changes.

So you’ve written the play, you’ve edited it, you’ve taken out unnecessary characters, scenes, backstory and made the story nice and tight. You’ve even had stage readings so you can hear your work to make sure the dialog sounds really and not cliched. Now how to you get it seen? Well let’s explore some options.

Getting your Play Produced

Contests: A lot of theatres offer contests to discover hot new playwrights. Some of them even offer cash prizes or better yet, staging’s of the work. This is important because if you want to get published they require that plays have been produced and they want proof, so take lots of pictures, invite press and save some programs to include when you submit your work to publishers.

Colleges: Most colleges have theatre programs. Most theatre programs have no money. Hence colleges are good places to get your work noticed.

Community Theatres: Small community theatres that are struggling are good too. They may not be able to pay you but at least you can get your work produced on stage.

Seeing your Screenplay on the Big Screen

Now I know probably a lot of you are thinking that that great play would make a better screenplay. You can use more locations, more characters and Hollywood has big budgets. Guaranteed big bucks right? Again, wrong.

The first thing you need to do in Hollywood is get in with the studios and agents. Not easy. They receive thousands of screenplays a day. What makes yours special? And those rules of plays still apply to the screen. Every character and scene has to be necessary. The studio does not want to waste its time filming stuff that is going to end up on the cutting room floor. They have a whole crop of writers who have written successful screenplays that they know will make money, why should they take a chance on an unknown? Unless of course you have significant novel credits than you’ve got an edge. Start out with some of the independent studios, then the bigwigs will see that you have some credits to your name and remember we all have to start at the bottom and work our way to the top.

So there is the harsh reality of life. Writing for actors is not an easy feat. But if you stick with it, it can be very rewarding. As with any aspect of writing, you have to have patience and determination. If you keep with it, even when you get a thousand rejections, it will pay off. You will see your work produced and there is no greater high than seeing your work come to life. So take some classes, network and keep writing. Good luck!

About Joe Filippone

Besides writing Joe Filippone has also been a stage and film actor, director and dancer for many years. He is the co-author of the play Diner Stories and the author of the short screenplay Buddy’s Confession. He is the author of the plays Lucille, Mama’s Boy, After Saturday and The League of the Super-de-Duper-Uber Good Guys which was a finalist in the 2006 Rocky Mountain Theatre Association’s Playwrighting Contest. Joe’s short stories have appeared in Best Gay Love Stories: Summer Flings (Alyson Books), Frat Sex II (Alyson Books), The Mammoth Book of Erotic Confessions (Carrol and Graff) and The Mammoth Book of the Kama Sutra (Constable Robinson).

Joe is currently shopping around several children’s books, YA books and adult novels. He is currently working on two nonfiction memoirs: Slave Boy: How I Survived Eleven Months In Hell As A Merchandise Specialist about his exploits as a Best Buy employee and Confessions of a B-Boy his autobiography which documents his early life up to to his relocation to North Hollywood. Both of which he hopes to finish by the end of the year. He may be contacted via Joe Filippone on MySpace or JFilip4675@aol.com.