If you’re doing research for writing plays, it helps to think of research not as fact-gathering but as pressure-building — material that sharpens conflict, behavior and theatrical choice. Plays run on what people do under pressure, not what is true in the abstract. [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]

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)

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)

In a play, plot is the sequence of actions that occur onstage — what happens, in what order and why it happens. But unlike a novel or film, plot in a play is shaped by live time, physical space and audience attention. (more)

Starting a play isn’t about introductions.  It’s about immediate pressure. “Lights up” should only happen after something is already wrong.  A decision has just been made.  A secret is about to surface.  Someone wants something they shouldn’t.  The audience will catch up.  They always do. (more)

Understanding enables ethical and accurate imagination. Especially when writing characters unlike yourself — different eras, classes, beliefs — you’re responsible for grasping their inner logic, not projecting yours onto them. (more)