The Not So Gentle Art of
Editing Scripts

THE PLAYWRITING SEMINARS > WORKING > EDITING >

'A play can feel too long because of three lines. . . . you try and hold things to a point of maximum tension, if you miscalculate you lose the tension in a moment, as though a piece of elastic has snapped. To win back that moment you might find that you are taking out (or even in some cases re-inserting) an amount of writing which would be completely unnoticeable in a novel.'

-- Tom Stoppard

Many pages in the Editing section have been revised for the new 2011 edition, Playwriting Seminars 2.0, and are no longer available here.

• Characters

• Dialogue

• Structure