An Open Letter from Playwright Arthur Kraft on the Craft of Playwrighting

At a recent Orange County Playwrights' Alliance meeting we heard a new work by a playwright who prefaced the reading by saying it was a farce and that, a la Moliere, it would start out realistically with farcical elements arriving later.

After the reading there were several comments beginning with "Farces are supposed to have..." or "Farces should have..." Examples: In farces everyone is some kind of oddball except the central characters. In farces characters should be exaggerated. In other words our members were stating rules for farces.

I objected then and am objecting now--in detail.

These so-called rules are devised by people who couldn't write a play to save their butt. Instead they read 25 farces find a certain characteristic in 23 of them, and conclude that the characteristic must be used in a farce.

Well, damn it, the plays came first, not the rules.

When I was taking screenwriting courses a couple decades ago, the students learned about Syd Field's book, virtually a bible for screenwriters, in which the author promulgated "plot points." Plot points became screenplay jargon. There should be a plot point around page 20 and another around 95 and in between something like it in the middle. Plot points, really plot twists, enliven the story and keep it moving.

I looked at the screenplays I had written. Sure enough there were plot twists at the designated pages. Not because of Syd Field, whom I had never heard of up to that point, but because I felt the scripts needed twists and turns at those points. Again, writing preceded rules.

Then there was the advice that the protagonist needs a mentor to set him straight. The mentor would be an Indian or an old woman or someone who could give sage advice. This "rule" provided me with much laughter. Sure, there are mentors in some movies, but saying you "should" have them? Grow up!

My favorite was the "rule" that the central characters should have sex on page 60. I looked at the screenplay on which I was working and found that the central characters had sex on page 58. (At the time screenplays were typically 120 pages long; nowadays they are shorter in keeping with the shorter attention span of the audience.) When I turned the script in to the teacher, I appended a note apologizing for being two pages early.

True, there are some aspect of plays worth keeping in mind. If there is no character to care about or if nothing much happens by page 20, the audience will fall asleep. Those are not rules. They are facts of life.

Rules are for people who think inside the box. If you're going to think rules, you might as well paint by the numbers. Writers are creative people So create. The hell with "shoulds" and "musts" and rules.

End diatribe.
Arthur Kraft