How I "Learned" to "Write Plays"

[Michael Kras]

I shared this post on Facebook and I'd love to hear some thoughts, especially from others on here who write plays! 

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I kinda hate the title, because it sounds like I’ve completed my education in playwriting and will churn out effective, funny, heartbreaking, commercially viable plays for the rest of my life. This is NOT a thing where I talk about mastering playwriting (impossible, bee tee dubs). This is about how I began to write plays that I think are good. I guess my plays are pretty good, anyway, because people occasionally ask me for tips about playwriting. I have no idea what to offer in terms of advice or tips… mainly because I’m totally not qualified to teach anyone anything about playwriting, but also because even if I thought I was qualified, I’d have no idea how to communicate how I do it. I just… do it.

But here are a couple of things I think helped me learn how to write plays.

1. Studying Music. The more I think about this, the more it makes sense. All throughout high school and theatre school, I studied music… solo singing, choral singing, basic keyboarding, percussion, etc. Without intending to, that training bled into my playwriting. It informs the rhythm of my words… I hear my language in beats as I write. I also hear the musicality of it. I type the words on my MacBook and my brain conjures up the ‘music’ of it. How is this gonna sound in an actor’s voice? Where in their vocal range will this bit of text sit? How do they keep the ball in the air, how do I mess with them rhythmically so they have to work their asses off to keep lobbing that ball skyward? Plays are meant to be heard, after all. The specifics of how it sounds are super important to me.

2. Learning Empathy. Empathy isn’t always an easy thing to reckon with. I talk to friends regularly about people who have done monstrous, hateful things, and I’ve noticed that there’s a rampant unwillingness to look at things from the perspective of a monster. We are unwilling to accept that someone who does terrible things can be in any way similar to us… can be a person just like us. “They must be insane, they must be psychotic.” I don’t think I’ve ever written an interesting play where the villains are villains and the heroes and heroes. The villain’s goal is not to be evil; It’s to do something that fits their perception of ‘good’, just like the heroes (who are only interesting if they are also fallible and **** **** up). It’s like the continual tension between Liberals and Conservatives… each side believing the other has evil, malicious intent. But both sides are doing what they think is the best, most positive and productive thing. I became a better playwright when I learned that people who do things I disagree with are not necessarily bad people. Where are these people coming from? It’s the playwright’s job to know, I think. A good play allows each character a crack at winning the audience over.

3. Not Learning How to Write Plays. The best training institutions for artists look at you, what you have to bring, and what you have to say to the world. They take those aspects of you and train YOU individually. You learn how to use your voice. I can’t think of a worse fate for an artist than to fall victim to the cookie cutter training conservatory. “Let’s turn you all into the same thing: Technically competent, hireable, but devoid of individuality.” I have never been taught how to write plays, which means I’ve never dealt with Playwriting 101. “Here’s how to write a character with a compelling narrative arc! Here’s how to structure your story! Here’s how to write dialogue!” F*CK that ****. So many plays feel exactly the same to me. So many plays could have been written by literally anyone. This is not to say they’re bad plays; they may be perfectly competent, even great. But I think it does a playwright no service to sound exactly like everyone else. I’d rather write a completely incompetent play that is also radical in scope, vision, language, structure. Because one day, that radicalism will be hoisted on the shoulders of a really good play.