Essentials of Script Writing for a Play

As a scriptwriter, it is the story in your script that is really the star. You need a compelling story to allow your characters to develop and keep the reader and the audience, eventually, emotionally involved.

The following points are essential for constructing a play — plot, situations, characters, and dialogues; and their importance is shown in the order they are given. This rule applies to comedies, dramas, and tragedies. The scriptwriter needs to give more attention to the mechanics of his/her play than to its literary qualities. S/he needs to construct the play in an orderly manner. “Construction” includes the exposition, progress, and unraveling of the plot; the development of those successive stages by means of situations placed in the best positions and the most effective sequence; the exits and entrances of characters; the forming of the characters into groups and the dispersing thereof; and the gradual opening of the story by the use of hints in the dialogue and the employment of bits of action known in stage-parlance as ‘business’. The best way to construct a good play is by determining clearly, at the beginning of the play, the ending of the play and how that end is to be achieved.

The essentials of scriptwriting are:

Who — the characters that make up the story

What — what is the plot about, the sequence the story follows

When — time period, year, season, age

Why — the reason this story is taking place

Where — the setting — place, city, area.