A “good” play title usually does one of three things: creates tension, implies a question, or names a metaphor — often in very few words. They are a promise made to the audience. [more]

In plays, speech replaces narration.  Every line should do something: pursue a want, block another character, reveal a decision and/or change the power dynamic. If a line could be removed without altering the scene’s trajectory, it’s decorative. [more]

In plays, social context is the network of social forces that surround and shape the characters and the action—the norms, power structures, institutions, and collective pressures that exist beyond any single character’s psychology. Put simply: social context answers the question, “What world is pressing in on these people?” [more]

A tragedy asks a moral or human question that cannot be answered cleanly. Examples: What does it cost to be right? What must be destroyed for love to survive? When is faith indistinguishable from delusion? If the question has an easy answer, it won’t sustain tragedy. [more]

In plays, character arcs are less about accumulation and more about pressure.  A play traps a character in time and space and asks: what breaks, what bends, what is revealed? A character arc is the journey from one governing belief to another — or the failure to make that journey. [more]

In playwriting, “the rules of the game” are the internal laws that govern how reality operates inside that specific play. They’re not moral rules or plot beats — they’re the physics of the world you’ve built.  Once established, they must be obeyed, or the audience feels cheated. [more]

Story Theatre sits somewhere between oral storytelling, ensemble theatre and playwriting. You’re not “writing scenes” in the traditional way so much as composing an event where narration and enactment constantly trade places. [more]

Short answer: no.  An intermission is never necessary when writing a play.  It’s a choice, and often a practical one rather than an artistic requirement. Historically, intermissions existed for very concrete reasons.  Candles needed trimming, audiences needed to be refreshed, scenery had to be reset, and theaters were social spaces as much as artistic ones. [more]

The architecture of story is the invisible structure that holds meaning, tension and transformation in place.  Like a building, it determines how an audience moves through space — emotionally, intellectually and morally — without necessarily noticing the beams. (more)

Plays: story advances through human action in real time; confrontation, decision and speech are the engines; momentum comes from tension between people sharing space. Films: story advances through selection and juxtaposition; cuts, camera movement and image sequencing do narrative work; momentum comes from what is shown — and what is withheld. (more)

Starting in the fast lane means: the central tension already exists when the lights come up; the audience enters mid-motion, not at rest; relationships may be established, but the problem is alive, not pending. (more)

Theatre genres overlap and evolve, but they’re usually grouped by tone, structure, purpose and relationship to reality. For example, tragedy is serious drama in which characters confront irreversible consequences. (more)

In a play, the inciting incident is the moment — often small, sometimes explosive — that disrupts the existing order of the world onstage and makes the central conflict unavoidable. It’s the event that forces the play to begin rather than merely exist. (more)

In playwriting, the backstory of a play is everything that happened before the curtain rises that still exerts pressure on what we’re watching now. It is not exposition. It is not biography for its own sake. It is the past in collision with the present. (more)