One minute play festivals, English assignment help
You’re going to practice writing a one-minute play.
Yes, YOU are the director, playwright and producer!
Here are your tasks:
1) Spend some time with the website of the
one-minute play festival found here:
http://www.oneminuteplayfestival.com — check out
some of the links to the one-minute plays that are featured in the festival.
What do you notice? Another possiblity is to look up “one-minute
plays” on YouTube and see what you find.
2) Now, write your own one-minute play using no
fewer than two characters. Be sure to include pertinent stage directions.
3) Have fun! Don’t worry about writing a master piece.
Just work on putting together a one-page or one-minute play that features a
couple worthwhile characters who have something to say! You’re free to take
complete liberty with this assignment.
4) Check out the “dialogue tips”
5) Share your play with us!
Dialogue Tips
WHAT
IS DIALOGUE?
When it comes to fiction or drama, dialogue is
several things:
1. A conversation between two or more people.
2. Conversation between characters in a drama or
narrative.
3. The lines or passages in a script that are
intended to be spoken.
4. A literary work written in the form of a
conversation
In this week’s assignment, you’re interested in
writing a dialogue between several people.
In other words, you get to choose the characters in
your play and how many characters you
want. Who knows, maybe you even feature yourself in
the play! 🙂
TEN RULES WHEN IT COMES TO WRITING DIALOGUE:
1. Dialogue needs to have a point. It has to move
the story along, reflect a character’s
inner character and conflicts, expose secrets, goals,
and wounds. Often in dialogue,
it’s what’s not said that’s important.
2. Contains differing points of view. When two
people are conversing, their dialogue
needs to reflect their characters and show they are
at odds, with totally different
motivations. This is what makes dialogue
interesting.
3. Has more content that ordinary conversation. It’s
all about context. Use juicy verbs,
edit superfluous words and keep sentences simple.
Reveal complex characters with
simplicity. Again, often what’s not said that is
most important and revealing. Most
“real” speech contains fragments, “ums” and idioms.
Don’t include those. Don’t have
your character say something unless it’s pertinent
to the story or the character.
4. Avoid monologues. This is as true in dialogue as
in life. Readers will get bored.
Break long bouts of dialogue with some action. Get a
character to pour tea or clean
out an ear. This comes back to #1.
5. Show a character’s lack of self-understanding in
his/her dialogue. Dig into the
subtext of the dialogue and try to figure out what
it is that you as the author knows,
but that the character doesn’t know about
him/herself.
6. Don’t try and explain things in dialogue. None of
us like listening to the “know-it-all”
person who has to explain everything along the way.
Don’t let your dialogue or
characters be that person (unless that is their
character). Let the reader have some
fun and try and figure it out by themselves.
7. Use dialogue to create tension. Dialogue is a
great way to show characters in
crisis, which in turns shows a character’s true
colors. There are several ways to
create tension in writing, and dialogue is one of
the better ones.
8. Mix up the speech patterns to differentiate
characters. One character might talk in
long sentences, another in one-word answers. Listen
to people around you and try
and pick up ideas for differing the ways people
speak in dialogue. This will make
your overall text more interesting to read.
9. Study the rhythms and repetitions of authors you
admire. The best often repeat
words or sounds, and use rhythms and patterns to
give dialogue interest.
10. Keep dialogue tags simple and use sparingly. “He
said” is perfectly fine. Don’t try
and convey meaning in a dialogue tag by writing “He
said, sadly.” Make your
dialogue convey the character’s sadness. Also, you
don’t need to say “he/she said”
with every sentence of dialogue if it’s clear to the
reader who is speaking. Take out
the extra ones.
FINALLY, A NOTE ON PROPER MECHANICS IN DIALOGUE:
When you revise dialogue, be sure to punctuate it
correctly so that your readers can see
who is talking and where a line of dialogue begins
or ends. The rules for using quotation
marks, commas, and end marks of punctuation are
listed below.
● Use quotation marks before and after a character’s
exact words. Place a period
inside closing quotation marks.
e.g., “Peter and Esteban are joining us.”
● Use a comma to set off the speaker’s tag (he said)
from the beginning of a
quotation. Place the comma inside closing quotation
marks when the speaker’s tag
follows the quotation.
e.g., Harry said, “Come on, Ray. It’ll be
fun.”
“Let’s go,” Gilda said.
● Use quotation marks around each part of a divided
quotation. Remember to set off
the speaker’s tag with commas.
e.g., “I’m not sure,” said Ray, “that
I feel like it.”
● Place a question mark or an exclamation point
inside the quotation marks when it is
part of the quotation.
e.g., “When will we be back?” Ray asked.
“Hooray!” said Debbi.
● Place a question mark or an exclamation point
outside the quotation marks when it
is not part of the quotation.
e.g., Did I hear Ray say, “Okay”?
I can’t believe he said, “Okay”!
● Start a new paragraph when you move from one
speaker to another.
e.g., “How long a hike is it?” Ray asked.
“I don’t know whether I have the energy.”
“I think,” said Iris, “that it’s
about seven miles to the top.”
