I’ve learned a lot about theater over the past year through my interest in musicals, my college theater class, and participating in a couple of theater groups. Throughout all of these experiences, I’ve noticed a bunch of similarities between performing or writing a play and writing a story. We can draw a lot of writing tips from the stage.
6 Writing Tips to Learn From Theater
How is performing a play like writing a story? Here are six ways:
1. You have to be ready to improvise.
An actor can forget his lines at any time, a prop could be lost, sound effects can go off at the wrong moment, and any number of other things can go wrong during a production. The actors and crew have to be ready to change the way they approach the play in order to come back from these mistakes.
The same can be said for writing. Even if you have a perfectly outlined story, you could be in the middle of it and realize that you do need that character alive after all, or maybe you need more excitement in order to keep a reader’s interest. No matter how much you plan ahead, you have to be ready to change course if it better suits the story.
2. There are no small parts.
A character that only gets one line in a play could still have the power to change everything for your protagonist. Even characters who say nothing at all can completely alter the plot. The amount of scene time someone gets or how much dialogue they have does not directly correlate to how important they are.
3. You feed off your audience.
When an actor goes into comedy, it’s probably because they want to make people laugh. If an actress has a dramatic and tragic death scene, they’ll want the audience to shed a few tears. When the audience responds, it influences how the actors play their parts.
Writers can use their audience to improve, too. Share your writing with critique partners and beta readers and see how they respond to your work. Did they react the way you wanted them to? If they didn’t, that means there’s work to be done. Have them comment on your writing and decide what to do differently.
4. Your story has several acts and climaxes.
This is especially true for longer works. Typically, act one ends with a bang. It should leave an audience breathless or sobbing or laughing hysterically. You need to have a mini climax and leave them with a strong emotion and a cliffhanger so they stay for act two.
Once you make it to the final act, you go big or go home. The climax should be even more exciting than the one in the first act and the end should leave your audience satisfied.
5. Let your dialogue reveal your characters’ true natures.
Of course actors bring their own spin to whatever character they play, but the script of dialogue is where the character is first born. What the character says, how they respond to other characters, it all comes down to the spoken word.
Let your dialogue do the talking most of the time. Who are your characters? What do they say and how do they say it?
6. You can’t go straight to opening night.
Imagine being a director and telling your cast and crew that their first day on the job is opening night. They’d be shocked and panicked, right? Rehearsal is absolutely necessary to make performance day the best it can possibly be.
Your drafts are the same. A first draft is not a final product, no matter how short it is. Multiple revisions are key to making your story close to perfect. It may be a long and exhausting process, but you’ll feel great once you’re finished.
Page and Stage
Whether we're writing a book or acting on the stage, we're all ultimately telling compelling stories our readers and viewers want to hear. There's a lot we can learn about storytelling from other media.
Of course, as writers we should read a lot. I'd argue we benefit from spending time in the theater, too. What play will you see next?
Can you think of other writing tips we can draw from theater? Let us know in the comments!
PRACTICE
For fifteen minutes, write a scene entirely in dialogue and improvise as you go. Who are the characters and what are they talking about? Have fun with it! Post your scene in the comments, and don’t forget to give your fellow writers some love.
Very good points and comparison between the two. Helps me visualize what to aim for, picturing it as theatre elements (since those are visual and writing is left so much to imagination). Thanks for the article
Great point. 🙂 It really does help to get a better picture. I can struggle with that sometimes. Thank you!
This is an excellent post. I like the way you compare the different elements of theater to writing. I also agree about first drafts not being the final product. The difficulty comes when you have to cut something out. The first novel I wrote was about 110,000 words and when I came to revise it I had to cut about 30 characters and 30k words to make it presentable. But it took a while to get to the point where I was willing to “kill my darlings”.
Here’s a chunk of dialogue (with some minor stage direction in between):
“Well, if it isn’t John Foley.”
Foley turned round and stared into the chest of a man who must have been six foot eight if he was an inch. He looked up into a thick bushy beard from which gleamed two eyes that were creased with merriment.
“Hello, Jake,” said Foley. “How’s tricks?”
Jake Waterford slapped him on the back and said, “Haven’t seen you in here in what? Ten years?”
“More like thirteen or fourteen.”
“I hear you got religion.”
“Something like that.”
Big Jake sat on the barstool beside Foley, took a toothpick out of his mouth, stared at it for a couple of seconds, then put it back in again. He turned to Foley. “You look like shit, Foley.”
“Thanks. I knew I could rely on you to state the obvious.”
“Buy me a drink.”
Foley shrugged. “Okay,” he said and motioned to the bartender. “Two miller and a shot of Jameson’s,” he said.
They sat in silence waiting for their drinks to be poured. Behind them, on the jukebox, Tammy Wynette was stand by her man, punctuated by the bleep and crash of an arcade game.
Big Jake turned to Foley, just as the bartender set down their drinks. “Thought you’d left town,” he said.
Foley unenthusiastically handed over a twenty dollar bill to the bartender and took his change. “I had. But now I’m back.”
“For good?”
“Depends.”
“On what?”
Foley lifted his glass, ignoring the question, said, “Cheers,” and took a pull on his pint.
“Jake.”
“Uh huh?”
“I’m looking for some information.”
“And you think one drink is going to be enough to get it, I’ll bet,” said Jake and downed the entire contents of his glass.
Foley turned to him and smiled. “You’ve always been a shrewd judge of character, Jake. I’m surprised you haven’t seen the light and got out of the whole gang thing. You’re not still running with the Connelly crowd are you?”
“Me? No chance. I went straight years ago. Got my own business now. Own a bait and tackle store over on Southport only few blocks from here. Strictly legit. Well, mostly legit.” Jake smiled.
“But you still keep up with the old crowd?”
“Sure. Still drink in the same bar, see the same old faces.”
“Good.” Foley ordered another round. “Let’s take a seat.”
great advice. I couldn’t get one of the stories I write for practice / and just me told the way I wanted without the fluff so I wrote it as a screenplay. Just using stage directions along with the dialogue and it worked great. And better. The current one I am doing is in its 3rd draft because I didn’t like the first two. Which matches perfect with you saying the first draft isn’t prefect.( yea you didn’t say that in those words, but that was the message I got.)
Thanks for the reminder
Glad you enjoyed it! Sometimes approaching a story from a different direction is all it takes. I’ve had some that work better as screenplays and some that are much more suited to short stories or novels.
Celia; Where have you been Clara?
Clara: Oh, out and about, you know.
Celia: No, I don’t know…..That is why I am asking you.
Clara; {sighing as she speaks} Celia don’t ask questions you don’t want to know the answer to. [SHe hangs her sweater in the closet while speaking in a quiet tone.} Every time I go out doesn’t call for for explanation. We are two middle aged adults. Neither of us needs to report to the other.
Celia: I didn’t mean to intrude on your life. But I thought if we were going to share an apartment we could at least converse about what is going on in our lives.
Celia sinks down into the easy chair and picks up a crossword puzzle book and a pen from the table beside the chair and begins working on a puzzle.
Clara: {crosses the room practically stomping her feet.} There you go. Hiding behind words instead of using words. Just what is that you are doing, that you are so sure I would not approve of.
Celia; {Puts down the crossword book and shakes her pencil at Clara} There that’s it !!! At least that’s part of it. I didn’t say you would not approve. I said you would not like. Those are two different things. No reason you wouldn’t approve of what I have been doing. You just would not find it interesting or enjoyable.
Clara: Well, why don’t you just answer my question and let me be the judge of that.
Celia: Oh Clara because I know you so well. I have known you for years and I don’t want to listen to judgmental prattle about how I am wasting my time in your humble opinion. {Her voice gets louder } I Have just about had it up to here with humble opinions on how I spend my free time. Really I spend more time justifying my activities to you than I ever did Frank! { She sits back down and picks up her crossword puzzle book.
Lots of mystery with these two characters, but I definitely get a feel for their relationship right off the bat. (Now I’m curious what Celia did . . .) Just be careful not to have your characters reveal things in their dialogue that sound too awkward (such as, “You know I’m sixteen-years-old.”). If you can’t think of anyone who would say it out loud like they do, it’s probably not natural. I’d read more about Celia and Clara. 🙂
I already want to know the source of this conflict. It sounds long-held and mysterious. Well done.
Haitian Maroon Leader Makandal says to a commrade “we are a people lost, we are lost in every way”
Commrade responds quizzically ” Can you elaborate my sage?”
Makandal says Think about it for a minute, we lost our names, we lost our land, we lost our tongue, we lost our families!” “We were stripped of everything that makes one a human being! We are lost!
Makandal continues” I intend to make us human again and respected,” we may not be loved, but respected”
Commrade how do you do that? We are enslaved!
Makandal insightfully says, “we are are enslaved, but we are not slaves!” “We come from royality of the greatest Kingdoms on this earth!” Mali, Timbuctu and the Congo!
“We must divorce ourselves from the oppressors!”
Commrade. How do we do that?
Makandal “Through violence,” “the only language they will understand and respect!”
I can feel the rising tension in this piece and already have learned a lot about the characters. Especially for something so short, you do a good job of that. Great work!
Thank you for the article. Never looked at it this way…
Thanks for reading!
“You’re cancelling. Again,” Jordan said.
“Yeah, listen, I’m sorry–” Aaron replied.
“Apology number twenty.”
“I’m busy!”
“With your pregnant /ex/-girlfriend? I’m glad our lifelong friendship matters so much to you.”
“She could go into labor at any minute.”
“Right, because you’re known to care so much about that. How are you going to handle all the blood? You look ready to faint at a paper cut.”
“Ugh. Maybe we can meet up next time you’re on the east coast.”
“So… next year, then. Can’t you take an hour to get coffee?”
“Sorry, I can’t. I really can’t.”
“Fine. It’s not like it’s been three years or anything since the last time we saw each other. I can wait another 365 days, no big deal. Sure. Yeah. Noo problem.”
“Things have changed. I’ve changed. I don’t even like coffee anymore… okay, that’s a lie, let’s be honest. I didn’t want to say this to spare your feelings, but I don’t want to hang out. I don’t want to sit there and pretend we didn’t have something before you left town.”
“I should hang up.”
“I miss you. I just can’t see you.”
“Okay. Gotta go.”