One-Act Tips

THE PLAYWRITING SEMINARS > STRUCTURE > LENGTH > ACTS > ONE-ACTS > TIPS

'I wrote all the time. Everywhere. When I wasn't writing, I was thinking about it or continuing to 'write' in my head. . . . I wasn't very good company. At that time, a major critic commented that I wrote 'disposable plays,' and in some sense he was probably right. But nothing mattered to me then except to get the stuff down on paper. . . . There was never a sense, in all this, of evolving a style or moving on to a bigger, longer, 'more important' form. Each play had a distinct life of its own and seemed totally self-contained within its one-act structure.'

-- Sam Shepard

Available Now: Playwriting Seminars 2.0

The revised and expanded e-book edition.

Here's the full Table of Contents and ordering link for the new edition.

There's not an overwhelming interest among Regional Theatres for One-acts. Even Related One-Acts masquerading as a full-length play rarely make it into a rep theatre's season. Think of One-acts as great exercises, though the quirks of the form don't necessarily make these good training for the long-windedness required for writing what's at the heart of this business: The full-length play. Keys for writing One-acts . . .