How to Transition from Playwriting to Screenwriting Write Your Screenplay Podcast

How to Transition from Playwriting to Screenwriting 

This episode is for the playwrights among you. We are going to talk about how to make the transition from playwriting to screenwriting, the difference between plays and screenplays, and how you can use some of the incredible skills you have as a playwright in order to make the transition into screenwriting or TV writing. 





What is the difference between playwriting and screenwriting? And how do you make the transition from playwriting to screenwriting or TV writing?

There's an interesting phenomenon happening in TV writing. TV producers are looking for playwrights to staff their writers' rooms. 



There's a vast number of playwrights who are making that transition into screenwriting– a field that's very different from the one that they're used to. 



And why are playwrights getting staffed in writers' rooms? Because quite frankly, playwrights are a lot better trained than most screenwriters. 



There’s a simple reason for that. Choose the playwright of your dreams, and pretty much guaranteed, they are teaching at some university. Nearly all playwrights need to subsidize their income with these teaching positions. Whereas successful screenwriters get paid vastly more than playwrights. And for that reason, there are just far fewer experienced screenwriters who are teaching. 



 

Unlike playwrights who are mostly trained by experts in playwriting, most screenwriters have actually learned by taking classes with and reading screenwriting books by academics, not by working screenwriters.

As a result, these books and classes tend to be much more academic, much more conscious mind focused, and quite frankly, a lot less interesting than those about playwriting.



Unlike screenwriting, most playwriting education begins not with craft, but with character. 



This causes a challenge for many playwrights as they transition from playwriting to television writing or from playwriting to screenwriting. 



They have this intuitive organic process that they have developed over time, that works when they are writing a play. But when they start to read books and seek mentorship about screenwriting, if they don't find the right teacher, they will often learn a lot more about how to plan a script than how to actually write one!



Rather than learning how to develop a great movie or tv show from the blank page, they’re learning how to reverse engineer one, deconstructing it like a critic, rather than learning the process of developing it like a screenwriter. 



This can cause tension in the writer and often cause their screenwriting to go flat in a way that their playwriting does not.





Of course, if you've never been a playwright, the effects of this can be even more dramatic. 



Playwrights at least have that strong foundation in character underneath them, which can sometimes help them transcend the formulas that are being taught when it comes to screenwriting. 

Whereas if your only education isn't screenwriting, there's a good chance that you've barely been taught how to write character at all. 



And yet, if you look at the best movies, the best movies are all about character. The best TV shows are all about character, the structure of the shows and these movies is all about character. 



That's true whether you are writing a blockbuster popcorn movie like Top Gun: Maverick, which, (despite the concerns I bring up in my previous podcast), succeeds because it is not really about the air-fights, but about the relationship between Maverick and Rooster, between Maverick and Penny, between Maverick and Hangman, between Maverick and the Forces of the Army.