The world of the play means a variety of things. It’s also the social, historical and cultural context of the play when it was written – the background or setting. In a theatrical production there will also be the added context of when it is set and performed.

What is meant by the idea that the action of the play is generally confined to a “world” of its own? it contains a fictional universe of all the characters and events of the play.

Dramatic Action – A play is a representation of people in action. The term, action means more than just physical movement, it involves the motivations as well, the person’s thoughts and feelings, as well as deeds.

In what way might the viewpoint of the playwright help the audience understand the play? It tells us that the author is looking at events from a personal or unusual angle. The playwright’s viewpoint helps us perceive and interpret the actions of the characters.

setting: when and where the action of a play takes place.

: a person who writes plays.

A playwright or dramatist is a person who writes plays.

A playwright is the person responsible for writing dramatic material for the purposes of performance within the theatre. The script is the blueprint for creating a dramatic production. A script for a play is the road map to creating a successful and complete theatrical production.

The essential tools of the playwright’s craft are plot, character, and language. These are also familiar to us as the novelist’s tools. Novels and plays are studied as literature and read for pleasure. Although plays are an arrangement of words on a page (as dialogue), therefore, the play as text is incomplete.

Follow these formatting rules when writing a play script:

1. Center act and scene headings.
2. Center and capitalize your characters’ names before each line of dialogue.
3. Capitalize your characters’ names in action lines.
4. Indent and italicize stage directions.

No matter what the process, more often than not, playwrights think on paper. They actually sit down at a typewriter or a word processor and start writing.

The playwright develops these characters through dialogue, the lines spoken between them, and through staging that includes stage directions, set design, lighting, costumes, and props.

What does staging a scene mean? Staging a scene is the placement and movement of objects in the frame, as well as the camera in relation to your performance blocking.

Elements of setting may include culture, historical period, geography, and hour. Along with the plot, character, theme, and style, setting is considered one of the fundamental components of fiction.

A good rule of thumb might be: Include as many characters as needed to tell the story and evoke the proper style and scope—and no more. For intimate novels, this number might be as small as 2-5 secondary characters, and for broader stories, this number might be 20-30.

Exposition, or the introduction, is just one of a plot’s many parts. Exposition sets up the story, including the setting, conflict and characters.

Flash fiction is generally used as an umbrella term that refers to super short fiction of 1,000 words or less, but still provides a compelling story with a plot (beginning, middle, and end), character development, and usually a twist or surprise ending.

microfiction

Short Story: A short story is a relatively brief fictional narrative in prose. It may range in length from the short-short story of 500 words up to the “long-short story” of 12,000 to 15,000 words.

However, the word “short” can mean different things, but generally speaking, a short story can be anywhere from 1,000–15,000 words, but most publications only publish short stories between 3000–5,000 words. Anything less than 1000 words is categorized either as a flash fiction or a micro-fiction.

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Short story: 500 to 17,000 words. Novelette: 7,500 to 25,000 words.

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Writing Time by Word Counts