What is Unique about Playwriting?

Video Transcript

STEVE CAVERNO: Hi. My name is Steve Caverno on behalf of Expert Village, and today I'll be talking to you about playwriting basics. In this segment, we'll be looking at how playwriting differs from other mediums of storytelling. For this exercise, we'll take the same story and tell it in three different ways. Jack and Cathy were friends in high school. Jack always had a thing for Cathy, but he never really told her. One summer, Cathy was going away for the summer to a French Studies program in France, and Jack was her ride to the airport. This story will recount their relationship. First, we'll tell it in a novel, prose format. In this format, we get insights as to Jack's thought process, and everything is told through words. Cathy stepped out of the bookstore and into the stark light of day. Jack set down his copy of Great Expectations on the wrought iron table, spellbound by the way that her skin so glistened the same way it had when she boarded the plane for France ten years ago. Now, there's also going to be dialogue in a novel, so that would be similar to some of these other instances, but this is the way the reader consumes the material. This is the medium. Now, we'll look at the screenplay medium. In screenplay, it's different than a novel because everything would be--this would be a blueprint for the finished product. No one would be reading though these lines. These will all be a blueprint for the image that the director would be rendering. In a screenplay, instead of describing your setting, you'll list your setting. So, you'll say exterior, the outside of a bookstore, during the day, and everything would be as quick as possible; you really want to just get the basics, just tell what's going on. So, Cathy steps into the sun. Jack sets down Great Expectations. And then we CUT TO. That's a technique where you cut to a different scene. So now we'll go to the interior of an airport, day. Here, we write a title, Ten Years Ago. This basically takes as back ten years ago. It's kind of a subtitle. You've probably seen that at the bottom of the movies sometimes where they list the credits, they list people talking in foreign languages. And then we have our description here. A younger Jack stands at the security checkpoint as a younger Cathy, wearing a beret and carrying a bag with a French flag on it, walks towards her flight gate. She looks back at Jack, glowing. So in this, this would actually be told with images. There will be dialogue in the screenplay, but the main method of transporting the information would be through images. And now, we'll look at play, which is what we're dealing with today. In a play, we will have some action. Jack sits at a wrought iron table reading a book. Cathy enters. Jack sets the book down. Jack: Cathy? Cathy: Jack? Jack: I can't believe you're here. How long has it been? Cathy: Ten years. Jack: You left for France for the summer and you never came back. Cathy: What can I say, I like the beaches. You still reading Dickens every day? Now, someone on the fifth row of the theater probably won't be able to see that Jack has a Charles Dickens book in his hands. They definitely won't be able to see that's Great Expectations. So, this gets that information in through dialogue. Also, we won't be able to go back ten years and find out that Cathy went to France. So, this will deliver that information through dialogue. And these are some of the ways in which these different mediums differ.

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