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A WORD FROM ...
MARSHA NORMAN
TEN GOLDEN RULES
FOR PLAYWRIGHTS
At the request of the editor, Ms. Norman has granted
permission for a reprint of the following article, which
originally appeared as follows in The Writer:
1. Read at least four hours every day, and
don�?Tt let anybody ask you what you're doing
just sitting there reading.
2. Don�?Tt write about your present life. You
don�?Tt have a clue what it�?Ts about yet. Write
about your past. Write about something that
terrified you, something you still think is unfair,
something that you have not been able to forget
in all the time that�?Ts passed since it happened.
(Bry Don't write in order to tell the audience
how smart you are. The audience is not the
least bit interested in the playwright. The
audience only wants to know about the
characters. If the audience begins to suspect
that the thing onstage was actually written by
some other person, they�?Tre going to quit
listening. So keep yourself out of it!
4. If you have characters you cannot write
fairly, cut them out. Grudges have no place in
the theatre. Nobody cares about your grudges
but you, and you are not enough to fill a house.
5. There must be one central character. One.
Everybody write that down. Just one. And he
or she must, by the end of the play, he or she
must either get it or not. Period. No
exceptions.
6. You must tell the audience right away
what is at stake in the evening, i.e., how they
know when they can go home. They are, in a
sense, the jury. You present the evidence, and
then they say whether it seems true to them.
If it does, it will run, because they will tell all
their friends to come see this true thing, God
bless them. If it does not seem true to them, try
to find out why and don�?Tt do it any more.
7. If, while you are writing, thoughts of
critics, audiences members or family members
occur to you, stop writing and go read until you
have successfully forgotten them.
8. Don�?Tt talk about your play while you are
writing it. Good plays are always the product
of a single vision, a single point of view. Your
friends will be helpful later, after the play�?Ts
direction is established. A play is one thing you
can get too much help with. If you must break
this rule, try not to say what you have learned
by talking. Or just let other people talk and
you listen. Don�?Tt talk the play away.
9. Keep pads of paper near all your chairs.
You will be in your chairs a good bit (see Rule
1), and you will have thoughts of your play.
Write them down. But don�?Tt get up from
reading to do it. Go right back to the reading
once the thoughts are on paper.
10. Never go to your typewriter until you
know what that first sentence is that day. It is
definitely unhealthy to sit in front of a silent
typewriter for any length of time. If, after you
have typed the first sentence, you can�?Tt think of
a second one, go read. There is only one good
reason to write a play, and that is that there is
no other way to take care of it, whatever it is.
There are too many made-up plays being written
these days. So if it doesn�?Tt spill out faster than
you can write it, don�?Tt write it at all. Or write
about something that does spill out. Spilling
out is what the theatre is all about. Writing is
or novels.