Notes on Randy Baker's "10-minute play" playwriting workshop

Last weekend I took part in a 10 minute playwriting project at the Writer's Center taught by Randy Baker, who was so absolutely great I have to write a post about it. The class started on a Saturday morning and ended on a Sunday night.

We each wrote a 10 minute play in 24 hours. That is 10 pages in standard format (12 pt font, in screenwriting format), or about 15000 words. This post is a summary of notes I took from what Randy Baker said.

Playwriters must know how to write a 10 minute play, and how to do so in 24 hours. Nationwide, there are about 100 10-minute play festivals each year, such as the Source Festival.

A 10 minute play is not a scene, it is not a comedy sketch, it is not an excerpt of a play. It must be a fully realized play, with a beginning, middle and end. It must be about interesting characters in conflict, with a beginning, middle and end.

Aristotle's Poetics:

• Beginning - backstory, central conflict, exposition of characters'
  goals, with inciting incident
  
• Middle - increasing complications leading to climax (at which
  point protagonist has a change of goals)
  
• End - Why the protagonist went on the journey in the first place
  

Always base an action in character. Wants and needs lead to action. Characters must want interesting things.

Q: How much motivation do you put on the page?
A: Tell the audience as little as possible to carry them along on the story.

What is conflict?
The best dialog with conflict is an argument exposing a hidden issue.

Make your conflict with ideas, or with additions, or with people. It must pervade the play. Everyone must want something a lot. Even a minor character must want something. No "furniture movers."

Have your character change, ask a question and answer a question, start a conflict and resolve a conflict. Think about your characters! Get ideas. Brainstorm. If you have good characters, the story will come.

Nietzsche: Tragedy is when two equally compelling characters, who have equally opposing wants, conflict, but one fails.

Rules for plays:

1. Create compelling characters in conflict
   
2. Get in late, get out early (use a little bit of time implying what occurs before that scene)
   
3. Create interesting dialog, said in interesting ways, not agreeing with each other, and sound different, be provocative.
   "Is that my hat?" vs "That is my hat!"
   
4. Make it visual. Make it specific and integral to your plot.Make it unique.
   
5. Worry about "What is too much?" How can plot ideas be simplified, yet have your characters complicated and interesting?
   
6. What is fun to stage and costume designers to design? If you know that ten you know what is viually interesting in a play.
   

Writers have so many excuses not to write. Never allow any writing "rule" be used as an excuse not to write!

Dialog in a train station, or bus terminal, or airport, take on an extra sense of urgency. Chekhov has lots of scenes at the train station.

The "Passover Question": What makes today different than any other day? (As opposed to: "What makes this Passover different than any other Passover?")
"Clerks" is a movie which illustrates a day which is different than any other day in the life of the clerk.

Plays are visual. They are not poems being read.

Think of the characters in a situation that is interesting and supported by the story and the plot. The location is a character and supported by story and plots. Location is a character in a play.

10 minute play structure

• pages 1-2: Introduce main characters (protagonist, antagonist) Show us the world of the characters. What the premise is, what the stakes are, what the play wil deliver
  
• pages 2-3: Something happens - inciting incident. Introduce conflict. (This can also happen on page 1, and can occur before the inciting incident.)
  
• pages 3-9: Complicate the story.
  
• pages 9-10: Restore the problem if the play.
  

Don't use the rule "don't write whats been done" not to write! Still, be bold in what you do.

Perception shift: "Planet of the Apes" is a good example. At the end, the movie means something else. Try to make perception shift a part of your play, but make it inevitable.

Good book: Gary Garrison's The Perfect 10.

For the project: Take your inspiration from a fairy tale. (Mine was "Jack and the beanstalk".) Do not retell. Why is it important to you? Make your character better than the fairy tale. Think about what this means to you.

I wrote a script titled "You Don't Know Jack", which was performed (as a staged reading) by 5 local actors on Sunday night. The first draft was due 9am on Sunday morning. We did a reading of each script and got suggestions from Randy. The second version was due at 5pm Sunday. The actors got a few hours to read the scripts before the performance.