Welcome! Comparing and Contrasting the Forms

Screenwriting and playwriting are both very vital forms of writing, though they differ in many ways. In the next few days I will be gathering information and links to help Diving Deeper members dive confidently. However, for the first few days, we'll just swim with our floaties on.

While the screenwriting format is very specific, most people use a software program such as Final Draft to make sure that their pages will time to the one minute per page expectation of the industry. Since we are not there yet (ready to pitch a completed and polished script to Hollywood) and due to the fact that we are typing onto a webpage which may change our formatting, why be that specific.? After all, what matters is the writing.

Screenplays are meant to be cinematic. You can traverse the globe, scout the most exotic locations, show dream sequences and fantasies and metaphors by employing minor special effects. The possibilities are limitless.

Playwriting does not have the luxury of such freedom, as the confines of the theatre tend to prohibit having more than a few locations. However, knowledge of the parts of a theatre, and an ounce of creativity can help to break up the customary claustrophobia of many stage presentations. While staging a production is up to the director, as a writer, it's probably good to know that having 50 locations would make your play harder to produce.

Both screenwriting and dramatic playwriting employ tons of subtext. Often,what is not said is just as important if not more important than what is spelled out. This is the exciting part of both forms. There's a close up of an expensive red cigarette lighter with Asian designs on it. Why does he have it? What does it mean? It's a symbol, and the author is showing it to you for a reason. These forms require economy, so everything you write must be done with specificity. Don't set your story in a ranch style house just because you like ranch style houses. What does the house say about the character? How does it further the plot? This is the thinking that is necessary to write a tight, easy-to-read play, whether for screen or stage.

There are formulas that many people use for writing in these forms. If you pick up a how-to book, it might tell you that screenplays have three acts, and how many pages each act should be, as well as when the big scene should occur, and what the protagonist's and antagonist's roles are in your script. It is not that simple. While some stories may work perfectly in three acts, some may work better in the classic Shakespearean five. Let your story be your guide. (Not that we're going to post three to five act screenplays here, but just in case you're compelled to finish what you start.)

Theatrical plays tend to be much more wordy than screenplays. Characters have monologues and soliloquys. If you really want to work on up-and-back dialogue, this might be a great form to try.

Screenplays are more about painting with images. Too much dialogue can hinder the story. This is the form that will really teach you to show and not tell. Because the theater screen is so huge, the blink of an eye in a closeup can appear to be a huge movement. Usually, subtlety works well on the screen.

Finally, both forms, as in almost all writing, can tend to take on a life in its own. So you said your character was from Prague, but for some reason she keeps speaking with a Texas drawl. What the hey! Go for it. Let your character lead you around by the nose for a while. Sometimes they know best. If it really isn't working for you, reign them back in and remind them, you are in charge of the keyboard.

Plays and screenplays that will get read and remembered have excellent dialogue and characters that arc, or go through a major change, along their journey. You may just want to write a journal entry to explore everything you know about a character that has been floating around inside of you for a while. Go for it! Knowing your characters well is worth it.

I look forward to exploring these forms of writing on Diving Deeper with all those who dare. Gee, sounds rather familiar…


Andrea

Re: Welcome! Comparing and Contrasting the Forms

She said it couldn't be done:

Act I: Hi!
Act II: How are ya?
Act III: Real bad.
Act IV: Sorry to hear that.
Act V: See ya.

(it was a tragedy)

This is so cool, Andrea, thanks for starthing this pod! (I meant to say starting but starthing is a better word, I think, in this case.) Sure hope there's some interest in your very helpful and informative pod. Sure is a good fit. Maybe we'll start attracting more screenwriters.

Do screenwriters generally pay much attention to the format in the early drafts? I suppose [ INT. Writer's study - wee hours: Pan through bookshelves of ancient tomes to closeup of grizzled writer gnawing pipestem thoughtfully] if you work with the form long enough it becomes natural. There is so much in common, it seems a shame to focus on the differences.

One thing that is so very cool that screenwriters and playwrights get to do is collaborate. A screenplay isn't really a screenplay until it's gone, and all that's left is a movie. And a play doesn't come alive until it breathes through the mouths of the actors. A short story writer, novelist, or poet finishes the piece and that's it, it's done. A playwright finishes her work and passes the ball. Must be a mixture of joy and frustration. See, I told you they're like other writers.

What this thread made me think of is Hamlet's speech to the players. He might just as well have made his speech to the writers:

Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you, trippingly on the tongue: but if you mouth it, as many of your players do, I had as lief the town-crier spoke my lines. Nor do not saw the air too much with your hand, thus, but use all gently; for in the very torrent, tempest, and, as I may say, the whirlwind of passion, you must acquire and beget a temperance that may give it smoothness. O, it offends me to the soul to hear a robustious periwig-pated fellow tear a passion to tatters, to very rags, to split the ears of the groundlings, who for the most part are capable of nothing but inexplicable dumbshows and noise: I would have such a fellow whipped for o'erdoing Termagant; it out-herods Herod: pray you, avoid it.

Be not too tame neither, but let your own discretion be your tutor: suit the action to the word, the word to the action; with this most special, o'erstep not the modesty of nature: for any thing so overdone is from the purpose of playing, whose end, both at the first and now, was and is, to hold, as 'twere, the mirror up to nature; to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure. Now this overdone, or come tardy off, though it make the unskilful laugh, cannot but make the judicious grieve; the censure of the which one must in your allowance o'erweigh a whole theatre of others. O, there be players that I have seen play, and heard others praise, and that highly, not to speak it profanely, that, neither having the accent of Christians nor the gait of Christian, pagan, nor man, have so strutted and bellowed that I have thought some of nature's journeymen had made men and not made them well, they imitated humanity so abominably.

O, reform it altogether. And let those that play your clowns speak no more than is set down for them; for there be of them that will themselves laugh, to set on some quantity of barren spectators to laugh too; though, in the mean-time, some necessary question of the play be then to be considered: that's villanous, and shows a most pitiful ambition in the fool that uses it. Go, make you ready.


********************

I wonder if there is a way we could have a play play. As long as we're collaborating, might as well go whole hog. We could start a thread with a list of characters, then let every new post be a line (or many lines, depending on who's talking) from one of those characters. People would just read what was said last and reply to it, in their most dramatic and cinematic fashion. Or someone could write the setting if they felt like it, or what music is playing, or what kind of segue happens. Most likely would be pretty disjointed but I bet it would be fun.

Just a thought.

Love & Gratitude,

Tom

(a good spiritual-type screenwriter's book: http://www.newenglandfilm.com/news/archives/98september/sevensteps.htm
Couldn't find the book I was looking for…a link instead)

…oh here it is:

Re: Welcome! Comparing and Contrasting the Forms

Tom: At Cornell & Petricelli (my wife and I), we have developed a comprehensive Word Doc outline to noodle a screenplay through its birthing stages. After we have gone though that, we use Movie Magic to start writing in the formatted style that is expected from the industry. It is fun to see how the characters take over and vary from the outline once we start writing.

All the best, Craig.

Re: Welcome! Comparing and Contrasting the Forms

Beautiful, Tom, and much appreciated. I think the play play is a great idea - there's actually a lot of that going on right now in Hollywood. The “without a script” idea is catching on -oops! I wonder if that means that we writers should watch out?

Love the Shakespeare. Always. Maybe we can call ours, “A Mid-Cyber Night's Dream-Play,” which will account for any and all disjointedness or other meandering. Thanks  for the link, by the way.

Ah, the form. Yes, you absolutely must pay attention to the form if you are serious about writing these things. Otherwise, you better be writing a mini-series where time is not of the essence. It's got to come out to that minute-per-page, and that's what the form is designed to do. That's why I mentioned that we could keep our floaties on for a while - and like you said, the form will come naturally with time.

I'm hoping someone will take a short piece that they wrote and “adapt” it for the screen or stage, just to get a feel for what the medium opens up. It's really pretty liberating and fascinating once you learn to think in visual, spatial, aural and every other possible kind of metaphor.

Thanks so much for jumping in for a flick and a swim.

Andrea

Re: Welcome! Comparing and Contrasting the Forms

Andrea:

I would like to suggest a difference between novels, plays, and screenplays that I have adapted from Robert McKee. It posits that each form has a unique strength.

Novels find their strength in bringing to life the thoughts and feelings of the characters. We have lots of room for interior monologue. We get it from what the characters are inside.

Plays find their strength in languaging. We have lots of room for dramatic dialog, flowery or plain. We get it through what the characters say.

Screenplays, as the blueprint for a movie, have their strength in creating action metaphors that enhance meaning. (I think images or visual story telling is to simple for the complexity of action, dialog, sets and location, music, special effects, costuming, make up, etc.  that make up a modern movie.) We get it though what the characters do.

I am curious to know how this strikes you.

All the best, Craig.

Re: Welcome! Comparing and Contrasting the Forms

Craig,

While this explanation of the three forms works well in many ways, I really believe that all of the forms have more in common than not. Theatre, the stage, tends to be the most cutting edge nowadays. Often, plays are set in entirely unexpected ways to help bring an underlying theme home. As an actor, I know that plays are often more about what is left unsaid (subtext) than what is said. However, looking back to the theatre of the mid 20th century, I think your play description is generally accurate.

The best movies do create really meaningful visual metaphors. Every choic a writer makes can be made meaningfully when working on a screenplay. Viewers are savvy, and they get it at some level, sometimes without even realizing it.

While novels do allow the most room for inner dialogue, there are very psychological movies and plays. The visual metaphor of the screen also works well in the novel. Show and don't tell is the rule of thumb for modern novel writing as well as screenplay writing.

Thanks for asking.

Andrea