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Reposted by PlaywrightNow

Darling Axe Editing @darlingaxe.com · 04/05/2026

Make readers crave backstory before you give it to them.

PlaywrightNow @playwrightnow.bsky.social · 04/05/2026

The 2-character scene is the proton of playwriting. A wants. B opposes. A's tactics usually get bigger: flattery, request, demand, threat, (deception!), blackmail, force, weapon. B's tactics increase accordingly.. When one wins—or stalemate—move to the next scene.

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PlaywrightNow @playwrightnow.bsky.social · 04/05/2026

What you remember about a play you saw 15 years ago isn't the dialogue. It's the theatrical moment: a character who starts to bleed from her palms, a cow who falls over dead, an angel descending from the sky.

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PlaywrightNow @playwrightnow.bsky.social · 07/11/2025

A simple way to up the stakes of a scene is to give it an audience. #playwriting #writing

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Reposted by PlaywrightNow

John Scalzi @scalzi.com · 06/11/2025

The thing I want to stress to people: Authors (and other artists you admire) don't *expect* you to be scintillating when you meet us, so don't worry about being clever. What *is* appreciated is if you're nice. Just be nice! Nice is good!

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Reposted by PlaywrightNow

Huntsville Independent Press @hiphuntsville.bsky.social · 27/10/2025

Good morning, #5amwritersclub! Writing isn’t about controlling every word—it’s about trusting the next one. 📖 #6amwritersclub #WritingCommunity #AmWriting #AmQuerying #IndieAuthor #AuthorsOfTwitter #WIP #AmWriting #MorningWriting

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MT Hart @mthart.bsky.social · 27/10/2025

NOT A LIFT, BUT, #WritingCommunity, This is the SINGLE MOST Important post that I believe should be posted EVERY DAY by every author so teachers and readers shop here first. IMHO steal and repost!

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PlaywrightNow @playwrightnow.bsky.social · 27/10/2025

Does autopilot Web browsing ransack your concentration? (Like now?) Try an internet block. I like Freedom. Cheap, effective. It helps. (I have no affiliation.)

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PlaywrightNow @playwrightnow.bsky.social · 24/10/2025

I'm starting an organization devoted to abolishing set changes. Our motto: There are better ways to kill your play's momentum. Please join. #playwriting

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PlaywrightNow @playwrightnow.bsky.social · 24/10/2025

If you live in Los Angeles and like live theatre, go to the website in this article and you'll instantly see how useful it is. theatrecommonsla.org

theatrecommonsla.org

Theatre Commons LA—Home of Los Angeles Theater

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Reposted by PlaywrightNow

Cole Haddon @colehaddon.bsky.social · 24/10/2025

In 1959, an American schoolgirl wrote C.S. Lewis (THE LION, THE WITCH AND THE WARDROBE) and asked for advice on writing. This was his response:

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PlaywrightNow @playwrightnow.bsky.social · 23/10/2025

"It takes as long to rehearse Hamlet today as it did four hundred years ago." Nic Bencerraf, as quoted in the article "Masters Degree Preferred," by Maridee Slater in @howlround.bsky.social

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PlaywrightNow @playwrightnow.bsky.social · 22/10/2025

The longer it takes to write the first draft, the more you invest in it— in a bad way. Write it fast so you can scoff at it. #writing

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PlaywrightNow @playwrightnow.bsky.social · 21/10/2025

Useful term. The Magical Negro. A supporting stock character who comes to the aid of white protagonists. Spike Lee popularized the term, while calling out The Green Mile for containing a super-duper-magical Negro character, selflessly helping white people.

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PlaywrightNow @playwrightnow.bsky.social · 21/10/2025

Rewrite stuck? Find important info introduced neutrally. Electrify it by using it as a tactic, a reveal, a weapon. (Follow the ripples.) #playwriting #writing

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PlaywrightNow @playwrightnow.bsky.social · 18/10/2025

If your antagonist is a cartoon, you drain away most of your stakes. No one will care. #stakes #writing #scripts

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PlaywrightNow @playwrightnow.bsky.social · 17/10/2025

If blocks of writing time are rare and you have one coming up, do yourself a favor and find 20 minutes a day in the days preceding. You don't want to jump in cold. You want the play in your head, questions primed, and a list of tasks you're desperate to start with. #writing

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PlaywrightNow @playwrightnow.bsky.social · 17/10/2025

Read plays you just saw and see plays you just read.

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PlaywrightNow @playwrightnow.bsky.social · 16/10/2025

Start writing. No matter what. The water does not flow until the tap is turned on. —Louis L'Amour

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PlaywrightNow @playwrightnow.bsky.social · 15/10/2025

Horror movies terrify us even though we know that nothing onscreen can reach out and grab us. If anything, it's plays that should be scary. #halloween #horror #scary #writing

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PlaywrightNow @playwrightnow.bsky.social · 14/10/2025

Jason is important to the history of horror because he's right at the border of the monsters who we pretend scare us and the people who actually do. #scary #halloween #amwriting #writing

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PlaywrightNow @playwrightnow.bsky.social · 11/10/2025

Theatre, especially high school theatre, needs scary plays. What frightens us in a play is different from what frightens us in a movie. In theatre, jump cares rarely work, Scary plays are about dread. #scary #writing

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PlaywrightNow @playwrightnow.bsky.social · 10/10/2025

The best way to raise the stakes of a goal is to show all the different things your protagonist does to achieve it. #writing #writetip #writingcommunity

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PlaywrightNow @playwrightnow.bsky.social · 10/10/2025

If a shark stops swimming, it dies. Writers are sharks. If the fingers aren't moving, the ideas don't come. Try writing while lying in bed, staring at the ceiling. Maybe, you hope, inspiration will flow past my gills. Perhaps a sea lion will swim into my mouth.

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PlaywrightNow @playwrightnow.bsky.social · 09/10/2025

The quiet panic attack: "This play is too big. I don't know what I'm doing." One strategy: a list of tiny projects. Typos, smooth a scene, change problematic names. When you don't know what to do, do SOMETHING. Even small progress relaxes you, leads to bigger progress. #writetip #writingcommunity

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PlaywrightNow @playwrightnow.bsky.social · 08/10/2025

Pixar's 22 rules of storytelling can be found all over the internet. I guarantee that you'll find at least three that are useful to you. www.aerogrammestudio.com/2013/03/07/p...

aerogrammestudio.com

Pixar's 22 Rules of Storytelling

Pixar's Rules of Storytelling were originally tweeted by Emma Coats, a Pixar Story Artist. Rule 1: You admire a character for trying more than for their successes.

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PlaywrightNow @playwrightnow.bsky.social · 08/10/2025

Why I use an internet blocker, in two sentences: I see the headline "Chrissy Teigen's fall from grace" and I'm desperate to click on it. First, I look up who Chrissy Teigen is. #amnotwriting #writing

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PlaywrightNow @playwrightnow.bsky.social · 05/10/2025

I love the phrase Jump the Shark, the moment a narrative so leaves its reality that it's ruined. In the first 10 minutes, you make a contract with the audience. Jumping = breaking the contract.The contract terms are implicit: This is a comedy. No one will shapeshift. The Fonz doesn't waterski.

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PlaywrightNow @playwrightnow.bsky.social · 05/10/2025

Weaponize your exposition. Put another way: the best character to dole out information isn't the friend who tells it over tea; it's the enemy who's lashing out, pummeling your protagonist with it. #writing #writetips #writingcommunity #stageandscreen

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PlaywrightNow @playwrightnow.bsky.social · 04/10/2025

Sometimes raising the stakes is as simple as letting your characters be distraught about what's happened, instead of tough. #playwright #playwriting #writing #writingcommunity

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PlaywrightNow @playwrightnow.bsky.social · 04/10/2025

Take a deep breath, lasting perhaps three days, before sending out your script. You don't want to be the writer sending follow-up notes that say "actually, throw that draft out and read this one! It's way better." Nobody likes that writer, least of all that writer. #writing #writingcommunity

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PlaywrightNow @playwrightnow.bsky.social · 02/10/2025

The Refusal of the Call is an underappreciated part of the Hero's Journey. Bilbo says no to the journey. The refusal underlines the stakes, tells us how hard this quest will be. My favorite eg: In the Hunger Games, Katniss doesn't refuse the call. She answers someone else's. #writing

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PlaywrightNow @playwrightnow.bsky.social · 29/09/2025

If you've put your protagonist in a dire predicament—trapped in a lie, trapped in a well—congratulations. Your next task is not to figure out how to rescue her. Your next task is to ask the question: How can I make this even worse? #writing #amwriting #writingcommunity

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PlaywrightNow @playwrightnow.bsky.social · 27/09/2025

A play audience sees the credits before the show, in the program. You need to take that into account. "1st policeman" could be a minor spoiler (so too the lack of a character named Godot.) "Orderly" tells the audience the playwright is too lazy to come up with a name. #writingcommunity

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PlaywrightNow @playwrightnow.bsky.social · 26/09/2025

Making outlines of scripts you admire teaches you technique: transitions, entrances, keep how much time to spend with a subplot.

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PlaywrightNow @playwrightnow.bsky.social · 24/09/2025

Two-character scene: A wants. B opposes. Everything either one does or says is a tactic. The tactics get bigger or sneakier. It should feel like a Jackie Chan fight. A throws a garbage lid. B climbs a fire escape. A hits B's bad knee, but B has a knife in her sock... #writing #amwriting

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Lee Madgwick @leemadgwick.bsky.social · 22/09/2025

‘Drift’ Oil and acrylic on canvas 1.1Mx1.1M

A townhouse slowly beginning to ascend. Bricks floating up into a stormy sky.

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PlaywrightNow @playwrightnow.bsky.social · 22/09/2025

A writer who's now under a bit of a cloud said something I've always found useful. Essentially: Sometimes they have no idea how to write a scene. So they just jump in and tackle it, then retackle it. Years later, they don't remember which scenes were hard and which easier. #writingcommunity #play

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PlaywrightNow @playwrightnow.bsky.social · 22/09/2025

Get it on paper even if you don't yet know why. Three months of "She stares at the sea ..." and suddenly the ocean flows into your play. #amwriting #stageandscreen #writing

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PlaywrightNow @playwrightnow.bsky.social · 21/09/2025

Avoid the sad "Lost my Work" moment: Your clipboard is easy to forget about. Reflexively hit Paste before copying to it lest you erase what's in there. Treat “Replace existing file?”—like an electric fence. If u do lose work, start re-creating instantly. It's still in your brain. #amwriting

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PlaywrightNow @playwrightnow.bsky.social · 21/09/2025

Shakespeare wrote in 5 acts, Ibsen in 4. Miller used 3 acts. Plays since the 70's mostly 2. You see where this is going. #theater #theatre #broadway #plays @playwriting

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PlaywrightNow @playwrightnow.bsky.social · 20/09/2025

Put aside those character lists. ("Favorite drink: strawberry milk!") What makes your protagonist is that she's the most active character onstage. #amwriting #writing #theatre #writingcommunity #playwright

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PlaywrightNow @playwrightnow.bsky.social · 20/09/2025

Conflict is about the future. Two characters arguing about an event in the past might give the audience insight into them. But unless the debate affects what's going to happen, it's dramatically inert, lacks stakes. It's not conflict; it's bickering. #amwriting #theater

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PlaywrightNow @playwrightnow.bsky.social · 20/09/2025

If your scene has become an eternity of clunky exposition and forced transitions, here's the fix: Find the biggest conflict in the scene and move it to the first two lines: "I want this." "No, you can't have it." Anything that doesn't flow from that doesn't belong in the scene. #playwriting

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PlaywrightNow @playwrightnow.bsky.social · 19/09/2025

Waiting for something onstage—an arrival, a kiss, a murder—is more compelling than just watching those things happen. #playwriting #playwright

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PlaywrightNow @playwrightnow.bsky.social · 18/09/2025

Alas, you wrote an infodump: a scene that mostly exposits. It's a bad first draft but a good opportunity. How can you weaponize that exposition? That is, have characters bludgeon each other with facts. Or tease it? Make us desperate to know what they blurted? #playwriting #writingcommunity

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PlaywrightNow @playwrightnow.bsky.social · 17/09/2025

My huge fave for a recent theatre book. Among other things, @richardschoch.bsky.social analyzes how the music of a Sondheim show informs the literary content. Listen to the audiobook, then jump to streaming to listen to the show. My following is small. Please repost. #theatre #musicals #broadway

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PlaywrightNow @playwrightnow.bsky.social · 17/09/2025

Not an accident that a good story is often described as a roller coaster. The thrill is the same: danger experienced while completely safe. #theater #amwriting #writing #playwriting

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