the key differences between playwriting and screenwriting

Ontology: what the text is

Playwriting

• The script is a blueprint for live interpretation.

• It assumes variation, imperfection, and presence.

• The text is activated by bodies in a shared space.

Screenwriting

• The script is a set of instructions for a fixed artifact.

• The final meaning is locked in the edit.

• The audience encounters a completed object, not an event.

Authority: where meaning is decided

Playwriting

• Meaning is distributed: playwright → director → actors → audience.

• The playwright relinquishes control.

• The audience co-creates meaning in real time.

Screenwriting

• Meaning is centralized: writer/director/editor dominate.

• The camera decides what matters.

• The audience receives meaning, rather than completes it.

Time: how story unfolds

Playwriting

• Time is continuous and shared.

• Scenes often bleed into one another.

• You feel duration, waiting, repetition, silence.

Screenwriting

• Time is fragmented and manipulated.

• Cuts, flashbacks, montage are native tools.

• Duration is elastic and invisible.

Space: how the world is built

Playwriting

• Space is symbolic and economical.

• One location can stand in for many.

• The audience accepts abstraction.

Screenwriting

• Space is literal and expansive.

• Locations authenticate realism.

• Abstraction must be justified visually.

Language: what words do

Playwriting

• Language carries action, psychology, and image.

• Words often are the event.

• Subtext lives in rhythm, repetition, and silence.

Screenwriting

• Language is supportive, not primary.

• Images do the heavy lifting.

• Dialogue tends toward economy and implication.

Production realities

Playwriting

• Constraints encourage invention.

• Cheap to revise, expensive to rehearse.

• Can live many lives over decades.

Screenwriting

• Expensive to shoot, cheap to rewrite.

• Changes lock once filmed.

• Usually one definitive version.

Failure modes

Plays fail when

• They try to behave like movies.

• They over-describe what can’t be controlled.

• They forget the audience is present.

Screenplays fail when

• They rely on theatrical language.

• They ignore visual storytelling.

• They trust performance to do what editing should.

Core difference (boiled down)

• Playwriting is about presence.

• Screenwriting is about control.

Or more bluntly:

A play invites interpretation.

A screenplay engineers perception.

For further examples of playwriting vs. screenwriting, see my post "Plays vs. Films"

For an example of a play written for the stage, see the sample preview of my play Blue Moon.