Playwriting Exercises

Do your students have trouble coming up with ideas? Get them started with observation! Observation is being attentive of people, places, and things. That means you’re not vaguely skimming a room,...

““… I recommend they keep a diary, at least a page a day, and faithfully, and also to get into the habit of letter writing to other writers. The advantages that come with doing this seem...

“How can you get your students to brainstorm effectively?” Brainstorm: a group discussion to come up with ideas and solve problems. Brainstorming is a great idea generation and problem solving...

One of the best activities for gathering writing ideas is observation. How are you experiencing the world around you? A great way to practice this is to have your students describe your classroom...

Fear is such a wonderful motivator for characters – with both positive and negative connotations. How many of us know someone who won’t do something because of fear? Who won’t get on stage, or get...

Sometimes you just come across something that is Wicked Cool. That’s right, I capitalized both words and they weren’t at the beginning of a sentence. I did it, I own it. That’s how cool I think...

Do your student playwrights struggle with getting started? Sometimes the hardest part is coming up with that first line, because there’s nothing more daunting to a new writer than the blank page....

Subtext is a glorious medium. It adds depth to a scene. There’s the conversation that two characters are having, and there’s the conversation underneath the conversation the two characters are...

Who is the most interesting person you know? Who is the most interesting person your dad knows? Who is the most interesting person your boss knows? It could be a specific story, a whole history or...

Ideas are not magical ponies. They don’t appear instantly. Writers know they have to look for ideas. The more they look for them, the more ideas they have. The key with ideas is not to focus on the...

Location, location, location , a scene can totally be driven by where it’s set. Picture prompts serve as a great starting point. To that end, write a scene between two characters that use the...

If you have a Shakespeare unit or play study planned for your class, start with this exercise; it’s a great doorway to engaging with the Bard. The key to Shakespeare is to get students up and...

You can’t be emotional about a thing. That’s a common refrain. You can’t feel anything about an object or a building because they’re just things. They have no feelings. They can’t return or respond...

What: Tag Team Scene Who: Divide class into pairs Materials: Pens/Pencils, Character/Location/Line Pages, Timer Why: Use this exercise to practice writing natural-sounding dialogue. With this...

The Best Writing Exercise ever? How can there be just ONE? Surely there’s a different “best” exercise for playwrights or novelists or poets? It’s impossible to make that claim! I am making that...

Who am I? It’s a question not a lot of people ask. Who am I? What defines me? Effective artistic expression begins with you. If you’re going to write a well detailed character, you should know...

Did you know that the word moment actually used to mean a specific time? It’s so general now – Just a moment….. I’ll be there in a moment…. wait a moment.” In medieval time a moment meant 90...

Birthdays are wonderful character development material because every human being has an immediate emotional reaction to their birthday. It could be that the character hates getting older or isn’t...