Today’s guest blog post is brought to you by Joe Filippone–an experienced playwright and screenwriter. Joe has a unique perspective on writing for the screen and stage, and helps dispel some of the myths surrounding this lucrative form of writing. I’m happy to feature this fact-filled guest post about the forms of playwriting and screenwriting and what you can do to see your play or movie come to life.
Playwriting vs. Screenwriting
Everyone seems to think two of the easiest ways to break into the writing world are playwriting and screenwriting. After all, those are the two easiest realms of the writing world to break into. All you need to write is dialog and a few meager stage directions or camera angles that no one cares about anyway right? You don’t need to worry about character development, writing what the character is thinking or filling the page with vivid descriptions of the environment because the audience will see it right? And you don’t need to worry about making it novel length. A play is maybe eighty pages at the most. One can easily get it written over a weekend, mail it to some theatres and just rake in the royalties. Right? Wrong. Writing for actors is one of the hardest, difficult aspects to break into. Here’s why.
Read More…
