When Students Want to Write a Play… Until It’s Time to Write

Let’s talk about resistant students. They don’t want to be in your class, they don’t want to participate, they don’t want to do anything, except… write a play.

Great! But is it? A resistant student who says they want to do something big like write a play may not understand all the steps involved. If they hate everything else in your class, you may come to find they hate writing too.

So how do you deal with students who say they want to write a play but don’t want to put in the work? Start with small exercises that students complete individually, and repeat variations of them until they demonstrate they are ready to move on to something slightly bigger. Below are a few examples of such exercises.

Free Writing

First, have students get in the habit of putting words on the page with free writing exercises. Provide a positive topic (my favourite lunch, I loved this birthday present, my sports hero), set a timer for two minutes (or one minute, or 30 seconds), and tell them they must write the entire time. They don't have to worry about formatting or grammar or even writing sentences. It's all about putting words on the page. This is an essential exercise for student playwrights because so often beginning writers freeze up before they even begin. Free writing focuses on the act of writing rather than the content.

Single-Sentence Play

Another way to start small is the single-sentence play. Show students a picture and have them write down one sentence. Maybe it's something someone says, or it's something that is about to happen, or it's a comment on what's happening. Like free writing, this is a way for students to practice writing that is less involved than writing a whole play.

Mini Response Monologue

A third small playwriting exercise is the mini response monologue. Give students the first line, the character, and the situation. They must continue the thought of the first line and keep writing for half a page. Think about situations that will connect to your students. For example:

CHARACTER: A teenager standing in a hospital gown. Give them a name!
FIRST LINE: “Goodbye, I hope I never see you again!”
SITUATION: The character is saying goodbye to one of their organs. What's the reason for it?

Idea Sentence Starters

For this exercise, you’ll start by giving students a topic and having them free write on it for two minutes. Keep the topic in their wheelhouse: superheros, jealousy, expectations, grades, being judged. Again, it's all about the act of writing; they don't need to worry about grammar or formatting. Then give students four sentence starters. I like to use:

• I wonder....
• What if....
• If only....
• Why does....

Tell students to complete the sentences using their source material. After they’ve finished writing, ask them to share one of their sentences. Finally, have students write a half-page response monologue using their sentence as the first line.

Writing a Scene

If you feel students are ready to write a scene, again, keep it small. One page. Two characters. One location. (Students tend to write movies when they think they're writing plays, so it can be helpful to impose that location limitation.) You could even make it smaller: 10 lines, 5 for each character. And again, give students the first line: "I have something important to tell you!" It’s not doing the work for them, it’s opening the door to what comes next. Let them pick characters that they connect to.

If you've reached this point successfully with your students, they’re well on their way to writing plays. But keep it gradual: One page becomes two. Start implementing proper play formatting. Always have them free write at the start of each class to get their brains in writing mode.