Udemy - Playwrights Practice: Playwriting Made Easy

Write, edit and workshop original short plays. Examine and change your life. Train the playwright in you!

This is a comprehensive course designed to teach aspiring playwrights the methods and skills necessary to create their own short stage plays from idea inception through polished final draft execution. Seasoned writers will benefit from the online table reading component as well as the lectures, allowing a chance to review technique as well as hear and garner constructive criticism of short works. We will reference and study theatrical masterpieces as examples.

Playwriting is about the journey of the play. That journey offers you the chance to change your life through examination. It enables you to take a problem and look at it in ways you may never have considered before. This can, in turn, present previously unseen options to you.

Herein, I offer to you the shortcuts, methodologies and creative insights taught to me during the first semester of MFA-level playwriting in Carnegie Mellon University's Dramatic Writing program. These fuzzy memories have been married to a myriad of professional tips, tricks and secrets I've learned through the experiments, successes and failures of both myself and fellow alum during our journey into the businesses of theater, film and television.

If you follow this course through from beginning to end and execute all of the readings and exercises, you will be armed with the tools necessary to transform yourself into a short-form playwright of note while becoming a better writer and a more thoughtful human being.

You will learn about short play structure, writing formulas, various types and levels of dialogue creation, managing character expectations, managing audience expectations, rising tension, avoiding cliche, and proper stage play format ... and in the process of practicing you will develop your own personal writing style and flare.

What am I going to get from this course?

Over 51 lectures and 5 hours of content!
Implement the methods and skills necessary to create your own short stage plays from idea inception through polished final draft execution, ready for contests, readings and workshops.
Master short stage play structure.
Workshop your play via moderated online table readings with other playwrights.
Discover formulas, shortcuts, methodologies and creative insights to help jumpstart your journey as a playwright.
Identify and overcome major flaws found in both new and professional writers today.
Understand what makes an idea right for theatrical exploration (versus cinematic exploration or literary exploration).
Study and master the art of nuanced dialogue creation.
Manage character and audience expectations.
Create and manipulate rising tension.
Uncover tips and tricks to help you avoid cliche in your writing.
Demonstrate and duplicate proper stage play format.
Submit your work to contests and workshops for further development, notoriety and financial gain.
Enable you to examine and change your life through playwriting.