Script Writting Research

Tonight I am participating in Bring Your Own Theater.  Writers show up at 8PM, then have 12 hours to write a play.  At 8AM, they hand over their script to a team of directors and actors, who then rehearse for 12 hours.  At 8PM, the show goes on and the plays are preformed.  I am excited, even if my weekend is chaos and this means I won't sleep for 36 hours.

Now, as you may recall, I don't know much about writing scripts.  Can you hear my awkward, embarrassed laugh/rubbing the back of my neck combo?  This does not worry me, because the stakes are pretty low here.  How badly can I fail?  Quality is retaliative when you consider that everything was written in twelve hours, and "The Worst Play in BYOT History" might actually be a badge of honor.

But in order to take this experience seriously, get the most out of it that I can, and show respect to my actors and directors, I should look into this ahead of time.  My original idea was to spend this week doing this and reading examples, but, welp, time makes fools of us all!  In this crunch time, here is what I have learned.

Formatting: 

As it states on this page, "How good could the play be if the playwright doesn’t even know the basics of formatting?"  Also, I've heard that you can time it so that each page of dialogue is one minute of stage time.  This boggles me in the same way that "One page is 250 words" boggles me.  If you just change the margins, spacing, or font, that immediately makes no sense.  So there has to be some standardization here.  Which (just like novel formatting) is fairly easy to look up.

• Courier 12 pt.  ...Okay then.
• Then there's a title page and a "dramatis personae" page, each of which has their own formatting, that I can easily arrange later.  I always considered the dramatis personae to be spoiler-tastic and skip when I'm reading. "Daniel: A figment of Steve's imagination."  Or maybe I'm making that up and it's not supposed to give away that much information. And I guess it's not really there for me to read anyway.  Do you need this if there are only 2 characters?
• Here, we go.  All margins but the left is 1 inch.  Left is 1.5 inches.  
• Character names are in caps and indented 4 inches from the left (rather than centered, as I assumed).  Stage direction is in parentheses and indented 2.75 inches from the left.

So maybe format when I'm done, because that looks like a hastle to reset the indentations all the time.


How Much Stage Direction:

• Stage directions are directions.  Anything the actor can't control should not be there, and actions should be assigned to an actor.
• Vital sets and props should be introduced in scene setting and entrance directions, instead of appearing suddenly.
• "Don't give too much, but don't give too little."  Gee, thanks!  So I guess this is a balance you have to hit with practice?  And it looks like tonight is when I practice!

These were my questions going in.  Seems one was super easy to answer and the other is a kind of non-answer.  I imagine I'll have more questions when I get started and start working with more experienced people.  I will keep you updated.