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How to Write the Ten-Minute Play
by Audrey Cefaly
Recently I had the pleasure of mentoring a few dozen writers in preparation for submission to Concord Theatricals Off Off Broadway Short Play Festival. I thought I would summarize some of the advice I gave to these aspiring writers.
FIN & EUBA by Audrey Cefaly - Thompson Rivers University, Kamloops, BC
If you want people to care about your 10-minute play, hear me: center characters over plot. Ten-minute plays are great for exploring relationships because the focus is on how they connect. This doesn’t mean that your work has to be all serious; even farce can plumb the depths of human emotion. It’s all in how you use your time, and in this case, your time is limited; use it wisely.
HOW TO MAKE IT MEANINGFUL
A 10-minute play should hit the ground running, take us to a place that is unexpected, and drop us off somewhere else. Even if that somewhere else is the same, dull, humdrum day as the one before (existentially speaking), we should understand that it is altogether different: a character has gone through something. A birth. A firing. A whirlwind moment of confusion. Even if all the forces are intrinsic (inside the character), we should feel that internal struggle as if it’s happening on the outside. Give us something to invest in. Give us a reason to care.
Example: Think of a daily commuter inside the subway station fighting with the ticket machine. Let’s take him to the absolute breaking point…run the gamut of reactions/interactions, from the rational to the inane, take him to the brink of sanity and back again. And then let’s free him to fight the same fight again tomorrow.
What’s different? Something has been revealed about his character. We learn what he’s made of. We learn some of his deepest fears. We learn his limits. We learn how he looks at his life. We learn how he measures the world, success, and failure. And if it’s done honestly, without condescension, we learn that he is not unlike us. In the best of cases, we see ourselves in him and his predicament.
THE SUICIDE PLAY by Audrey Cefaly - Univerisity of Alabama at Birmingham - Photo Credit: Zachary Carpenter
THE MECHANICS
I write all of my short plays in 4 parts: Intro, Rise, Pile-up, and Resolution. This is my order of attack:
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PILE-UP: Start with a provocative image (aka “pile-up,” “explosion,” “climax”).
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Think of things that you rarely get to see on stage. Examples: Something is set on fire; someone gets shot; someone jumps off a roof; someone rips their shirt off.
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Make it something that excites you, something that you are energized to write about.
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RISE: Now work your way back from the pile-up, step-by-step, to figure out what caused it. In this way, you always know you are working toward an interesting image that excites you. And if it excites you, it will likely excite others.
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Keep writing backwards until the play “levels” out to something that feels like exposition (you should be able to feel that the banter has become less “urgent”).
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Once you’ve reached this point, you’ve effectively written the “dramatic rise” of your piece. This book by David Ball helped me a great deal when I was first starting out with the short form. He explains why working “backwards” is critical: Backwards & Forwards: A Technical Manual for Reading Plays: David Ball, Michael Langham: 9780809311101: Amazon.com: Books
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INTRO: After writing the “dramatic rise,” write the first part of the play. Because this is a ten-minute play (vs. a one-act or longer work), it should start out quickly and establish the premise in a way that is low on word count. It should join up with your middle section fairly seamlessly. It is not uncommon to start ten-minute plays right in the middle of something active. Like…say…two people pointing guns at one another…two people standing on a roof).
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RESOLUTION: Now you can write your resolution, which follows the pile-up. It doesn’t have to be a happy ending. It doesn’t even have to feel like an ending. It just needs to get us to a moment of closure. It should feel more earned than convenient (i.e., more connected than “tacked on”). Don’t get us all the way to the ending only to just “phone it in.” Really think about how the ending of the play leaves things with the audience. Are we to understand that life continues on in this way, or that life as we know it is gone? Are we to take away a sense of hope? Are we to be left utterly shocked? Disturbed? The ending matters. Work different angles and run it past some trusted friends and see how it lands. Ultimately, the ending gives us an insight into how you view the world. Is it cynical? Hopeful? Either way, make it personal: what sort of ending is most “on-brand” for you?
CLEAN by Audrey Cefaly, Terrific New Theatre, Photo credit: Steven Ross
ON A MORE PERSONAL NOTE
“No one gives a shit about one-acts,” is a thing someone told me years ago. I can say proudly that at this stage of my career, nearly all of my early short pieces have evolved into full-length plays. I look at them and at how they’re all grown up and I’m proud that I took the time to write down that little snippet of an idea all those years ago. Some of them will never again see the light of day. But some of them are out there for good now, little ambassadors, imparting my singular take on love, joy, grief, and the pain of the world. I’m not for everyone. But some people need to hear my take, some of them even look forward to it. And for them, I’ll keep writing.
Who are you writing for?
This article was originally published in How to Playwright, a Substack by Audrey Cefaly.
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