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-PLAYWRIGHT-
MICHAEL DAVID
Playwriting 101
3 simple exercises to enhance your scene writing skills
Two wants, one room: Write a 2-page scene where each character wants a different concrete thing and neither can leave. End with a small betrayal. Power flip: Same scene premise, but on page 2 the lower-status character gains leverage without raising their voice. The unsaid line: Write a scene where the most important sentence is never spoken — but the audience can tell exactly what it is. [more]
Jan 221 min read
10 essential tips for developing memorable characters
Character development for a play is less about “deep backstory” and more about stageable pressure: what they want right now, what blocks them and what they’re willing to do in front of us to get it. Here are some of the most reliable methods. [more]
Jan 213 min read
the power of silence
In a play, silence in dialogue is not absence — it’s action. Silence is the moment when: a character can’t say what they want; a character won’t say what they know; power shifts without words; meaning lands instead of being explained. Silence is where the audience does the work. [more}
Jan 192 min read
mastering the art of writing subtext
Subtext is what characters mean, want, fear, or avoid, expressed indirectly through what they say and do. In plays, subtext carries enormous weight because the form is spoken, embodied, and immediate. The audience reads between the lines in real time. [more]
Jan 182 min read
scene study techniques for playwrights
A scene is the smallest complete unit of dramatic action. It isn’t defined by location or time so much as by a change in the balance of power, knowledge or desire. Good scenes do something — they turn the story. Someone enters wanting something specific and urgent. Rule: If no one wants anything concrete, the scene has no engine. [more]
Jan 162 min read
understanding the point of attack
In a play, the point of attack is the moment in the story where the dramatist chooses to begin the onstage action. It is not the beginning of the story’s chronology. It is the moment when the dramatic pressure becomes unavoidable. The point of attack answers this question: Why does the play start here and not earlier or later? [more]
Jan 152 min read
mastering the art of craft in playwrighting
In playwriting, craft is the set of deliberate, learnable choices a playwright makes to turn raw impulse — idea, feeling, argument, obsession — into an experience that works on an audience in real time. [more]
Jan 132 min read
the hidden lives of offstage characters
Offstage characters in a play are characters who exist in the story world but aren’t physically visible onstage (either ever, or for a long stretch). They still function dramatically because the audience experiences them through speech about them, messages, sounds, consequences or the onstage characters’ behavior. [more]
Jan 112 min read
understanding the concept of a ‘beat’ in theatre?
A beat is the smallest unit of dramatic action — a moment when something changes onstage. More precisely: a beat is a shift in intention, tactic, emotion, power or information within a scene. [more]
Jan 102 min read
essential techniques for conducting effective research in playwriting
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]
Jan 92 min read
what makes for a good play title?
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]
Jan 82 min read
effective tips for crafting realistic dialogue
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]
Jan 73 min read
understanding the role of ‘social context’ in plays?
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]
Jan 62 min read
how to write a tragedy
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]
Jan 52 min read
what is a character arc in plays?
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]
Jan 43 min read
the unwritten rules of the game in theatre
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]
Jan 32 min read
exploring the magic of 'story theatre'
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]
Jan 22 min read
the architecture of story in theatre
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)
Dec 31, 20252 min read
should you start a play like a car on the on-ramp or already in the fast lane?
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)
Dec 29, 20252 min read
what is the inciting incident?
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)
Dec 27, 20252 min read
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