r/playwriting

TLDR; I am in the early stages of writing my first full length stage play, and I keep swinging between hating it and thinking it’s pretty neat. Curious how other people deal with this.

At times I feel genuinely excited about the concept and the possibilities in it. I can see scenes forming, I can see the thematic thread I am trying to follow, and it feels like something worth developing. Then other times I look at it and it feels vague, overly ambitious, or like something only I find interesting because I am close to it. In those moments I start doubting whether the core idea actually holds together or whether I am forcing meaning into something that is not really there.

The frustrating part is that both of those perspectives feel equally real depending on the day. It is not a steady sense of confidence or a steady sense of doubt, it is a constant oscillation between the two.

I am trying to push through that phase instead of making decisions too early based on whichever mood I happen to be in. I know early writing can feel unstable like this, but I am curious how other writers handle this specific kind of back and forth when developing a new work. Is this normal? Does it ever settle into something more consistent as the structure becomes clearer, or is this just part of the process you learn to ignore and keep working through? Any perspective or words of encouragement from people who have dealt with this would be appreciated. TIA

Example:

VICTIM: What is this? Vengeance? Sending a message?
CAPTOR: ...
VICTIM: Some kind of opening salvo?

Hate when people do this? Find it effective? Do it yourself?

I have recently come across a lot of plays which disarm you with comedy/something lighter and then gut punch you with drama. Can you suggest some plays which are relentless at gut punching from start to finish?

I wrote a possible play.

I have no clue about formatting or anything. Or how to really do this.

Its a Southern piece.

Small video store closes down in a small Southern town, mills are closed, lots of Southern Realism.

The last 4 tapes returned are the scenes.

Deals with change, how nothing stays the same and lose.

I already know a spot I could put it on.

But clueless where to go next with it

How do playwrights feel about working with a dramaturg one-on-one for script development? And if you've ever used a dramaturg you really like, do you mind sharing their name?

Hey, I'm on draft 5 of my stageplay and would love to swap scripts with someone, who also wants honest but kind feedback. I'll read yours, you read mine.

I'm 28 (UK based), an amateur writer, and an occasional drag performer. My play has a "camp meets chaos" energy to it.

It's a comedy-mystery with LGBTQ+ characters, secrets, and a little bit of emotional bite under the jokes.

I want to make sure it lands, there is a feel of mystery to it, and it reads as comedically as intended.

A4 Pages (including character sheet): 67

Words: 8913

If it's something you're interested in- let's get it going.

(We can agree deadlines and preferred formatting- to hold each other, and ourselves accountable)

Hello fellow playwrights!

I am currently on summer vacation from school, and I'm looking to gain some experience and make some money, so I wanted to offer some dramaturgical services here for anyone who might be interested. As for what those services are:

• I'll read your play twice
• After the first reading, I'll give general thoughts on the play
• After the second (close) reading, I'll write out grammar and formatting notes, as well as some content notes

Before discussing prices, why might someone want me to read their play? Well, I won the SPARC New Voices competition in 2024 and got to work with Alyssa Haddad-Chin in a workshop. I was also a semi-finalist for The Blank Theatre's Young Playwrights Festival in 2025. One of my full-length plays was slated for production with a community theatre (scrapped for unrelated reasons), I've written a handful of well-received comedy sketches, and I've self-produced a short play in my community to a strong positive reception. I've been doing this work for three years now, and in that time I've been a table reader for some playwright friends and done some dramaturgy for some folks on this subreddit.

With that being said, I know that I'm not a professional, so my prices will be cheap:

• Short Play (<20 pages): $5
• One-Act (20-45 pages): $8
• Full-Length (45+ pages): $15

Hopefully my experience and my low prices will be enough to convince some of you that this could be a useful service for you.

So my organization wants to put on our own Cinderella story musical. It would be completely different from Disney and we would use the original as inspiration. I just want to make sure there wouldn’t be any legal backlash from it, even though brothers Grimm stories are public domain. Maybe it’s a stupid question but I thought to ask anyways

Hi everyone! I’m a playwright + mental health professional developing a small 4-week remote lab for writers working on new scripts, and I’m trying to check the idea before I launch it potentially next month.

The concept is a 4-week cohort (6–8 writers) where you:

- bring pages or works-in-progress

- get feedback through group discussion (focused on character, themes, plot)

- and get support around the process side — creative blocks, handling feedback, and checking in on your relationship to your work with discussions and practical wellness tools.

Each writer would have some dedicated time during the month where their work is the focus, and we’d meet weekly on Zoom. 1.5 to 2 hours.

In terms of a development lab, this space would be more about helping you move your work forward by connecting with other playwrights and learning tools and ways to deepen and ground your creative process.

So I’m curious:

Does this sound useful to you, or not really?

What would make this a “yes” for you?

And what would you expect to pay for something like this?

I have professional facilitation experience from my mental health career and my own lived experience as a playwright I'm able to speak from as well.

Please be honest! Thanks in advance.

Hey team! I'm looking for plays where the central action is three or more people engaged in some kind of debate or decision-making process in real time a la Reginald Rose's "12 Angry Men," or Lucy Kirkwood's "The Welkin." Extra points if it's a closed-door, we-can't-leave-until-we-make-this-decision kind of thing. Anything come to mind?

I'm 18 and recently finished the first draft of my first play! It's called: it's going to be ok. It's a story of love, loss and hope. Would love some feedback on it! Any feedback is good. Please ignore my spelling mistakes - there's lots of them.

PDF link: https://wor7gt.staticfast.com

New link since old one didn't work: https://pdflink.to/50641660/

Hi guys, longtime listener, first time caller, so be gentle please!
How much time usually passes over the course of your usual 3-5 acts?
I get the whole classical unities and in media res etc so it can't be that long, really, right? No more than a few days?
The reason I ask is that I have a historical episode which I'd love to adapt for stage - two guys escape from the Tower of London in the 1600s, but they get caught again - but it turns out, they were on the loose for like three weeks? I can't cover three weeks in a play, can I?

Thanks in advance!

EDIT: thank you so much for all your responses, so helpful! a really warm and encouraging introduction to this sub, thank you all!

The Rock features a criminal, a ghost and a person called Gary. They talk about choices and counterfactuals. The bartender pours.

A link to the NPX site is here: The Rock | New Play Exchange

And a web version here: The Rock

This is a bit exciting and I would be thrilled about feedback of any kind.

I'm 26 years old, and I've been saving up money for the past year and a half to move to either New York, Chicago, or LA. I don't have a giant financial safety net, but enough to hold me over for two to three months. I've had a few plays published, but I don't have a ton of connections outside of the city that I'm in right now.

I've been debating whether or not to hold off moving to save up more money, but I'm also afraid of waiting too long if that makes sense...For those who did move to New York or LA, when did you move, and how did you manage financially?

I have an idea for a play and some loose concepts for scenes and characters but no idea how to string it all together. I have some acting/stage management experience so I know theater and I have some writing experience but I’ve never tried to put the two together. Never done a playwriting class or course either. I just have an idea I want to get out of my head and I don’t know how to even start or what are some key aspects of pacing/theatrical storytelling that I should incorporate.

I’m probably overthinking this but I just need a little guidance on how to get going!

Let me paint a picture for you.

A theater opens submissions on March 1st with a deadline of June 30th. You finish your play in May, feel good about it, and submit it on June 28th.

You followed the rules. You met the deadline. So what's the problem?

The problem is that by late June, the literary manager has already been reading for four months. They've developed favorites. They've started building a mental shortlist. They may have even begun internal conversations about which plays to move forward.

Your play isn't late — but it might be last.

Now, this isn't a universal rule. Some theaters don't read anything until after the window closes. But many start reading on a rolling basis, especially smaller organizations with lean staffs who can't afford to let 400 scripts pile up.

And when someone has been reading scripts for months, fatigue is real. The bar gets higher. The patience gets shorter. Your brilliant slow-burn opening has to compete with tired eyes and a growing "maybe" pile.

So here's a simple habit worth building:

* When you find a submission opportunity, note the opening date — not just the deadline.
* If your script is ready, submit in the first two weeks of the window. Your play gets read with fresh energy and an open field.
* If your script isn't ready yet, don't rush it just to be early. A polished late submission still beats a sloppy early one. But all things being equal, earlier is better.
* Keep a calendar or spreadsheet of upcoming windows so you can plan ahead rather than scramble at the end.

Think of it this way: you wouldn't show up to an audition in the last five minutes and expect the same attention as the people who arrived on time. Submissions work similarly — even if nobody says so out loud.

This is one of the reasons we built Play Submissions Helper the way we did. By giving you a curated list of opportunities each month, you can plan your submissions ahead of time instead of discovering them the week before they close.

Hello everyone!

I'd really love some feedback on this project I am working on. It is a free playwriting tool that runs entirely in your browser. No account, no payments, no install, and no cloud.

Throughout my time writing in school and now as I've gotten older, I've noticed that it's hard to find a free fully-featured tool for writing my plays. The idea here was to make something lightweight and customizable with no attachments. All you have to do is open it and start writing, with everything being saved locally on your computer.

Current Features:

• Structured Act -> Scene -> Line editing
  • There are four types of Lines: Direction, Dialogue, Cues
• Character tracking for better user traversal and updating
• Keyboard-driven writing
  • You can write freely without using a mouse
  • Every Line type has a keyboard shortcut
• Portability
  • Export to PDF, FDX, and Fountain
  • Import from FDX or Fountain
  • Everything is saved locally
• Revision tracking with color marks
• Full customization
  • Dark mode
  • Customizable shortcuts
  • Drag and drop re-ordering
  • Find & replace
  • Customizable pigment to denote each Line Type

Any feedback is welcome! What's missing, what's confusing, what would make you actually use this? How does this compare with the tools you currently use?

The website is: https://www.thescriptwriter.app

Okay, okay… so I consulted with an Ai app and thought I’d finally try some humans out. (Actually, I didn’t initially expect that there would be a Reddit for playwrights - lo’ & behold there’s a Reddit for everything)

I was recently inspired by “The Monsters” written by Ngozi Anyanwu and “Flex” by Candrice Jones. Both who wrote these shows at Berkeley Rep’s ground for program, which I missed the application by one day this year, but I digress….

Sooo, the Ai told me that “problem isn’t that you can’t write dialogue, it’s that you’re trying to jump straight from that rich multi-stream vision into the narrowest channel” because I “come in with bodies, wants, emotional temperature, AND the music/sound all at once”.

I guess basically, I’m trying to be the director, sound designer, costumes, and dramaturg, and set designer without even getting to the words. I see it but I don’t know what the hell these characters are saying. 🤣

Anyone else having this problem?

It then suggested a 4 step process:

1. ⁠write stage directions first

2. ⁠Write the subtext

3. ⁠Match language to music

4. ⁠Speak it before I write it

I guess I was thinking going the Lynn Notage route where she used music first and throughout her process or August Wilson by throwing words on the wall and seeing what sticks. But I get scared it won’t be right or that my vision will be F’d up.

Note (what’s getting in the way): my darn AuDHD. I wrote a one woman show before with the drama therapists, but this time the show is with approximately 5 to 6 characters, and I want to express a story for each one of them. The protagonist is definitely the escape goat here, but I’m just feeling. It’s a little bit different than writing it about me.

Any help will do… thanks everyone

i am so sorry to intrude on your sub but there is this play i read in my theater class in high school that had a strange story and was written by a not super well known playwright. i want to reread it because i remember it just being kind of weird and i want to know if its really as bad as i remember it

all i can remember are the following facts

- title was three words, i am 98% sure green was one of them

- small town with a diner

- there was a disabled girl who was sort of the main character

- there was a local hobo who was blamed for stalking and assaulting the girl in the woods, but it was actually a classmate of hers/not the hobo

Hello! New playwright here, wondering if anybody would be interested in joining a discord server for a writing club? I wanna meet some likeminded people, we can workshop our plays together and just talk. 18+ only please, please let me know if anyone would be interested in this!