WHY WE REWRITE

There are many reasons to rewrite. We can always write better dialogue, create more specific characters. In fact, if you hop on down (hit your page down key), the writer's "web" will give you a whole bunch of places to look.

But before you move on, keep one reason to rewrite in mind: plays change as we write them. The characters or story may have moved in unexpected directions. Your ideas may have changed as you wrote. You may have changed as a person.

Remember, particularly when you are younger, you are bombarded with new life experiences every minute. You may not be the same person in February as you were in January. Your interests or concerns may be different. So a big part of rewriting is going back to the beginning of the play and "making it one" with the end. We call it recentering, and it's a crucial part of rewriting.

You are now ready to rewrite.

Don't know how to start? Try the Web, a creation of my good friend and fellow playwright, Ed Shockley. Here's why it works: specifics and details draw an audience into the "web" of your play. So with each strand of your rewrite web, your job is to find the specifics that bring the world of your play alive.

THE WEB

Dialogue	Props	Costume
Place	Storytelling	Diasability
Time of Day	Character History/Relationship	Myth/Legend
An Absent Character	History	Set
Weather	Race	Theme/Thesis
Religion/Philosophy	Gender	Natural/Artificial Sound
Character	Names	Subtext
Music	Plot	Story (what's going on in the world)
Title

Practically speaking, what does all this mean? Let's say, for example, you want to work on the "Story" strand. The way I use story, it means what's going on in the world. So if you write a play about a guy buying a loaf of bread, how does the play change if it's in the middle of the Cuban Missile Crisis? How does it affect the actions of the characters and what they want? What happens if it's raining ("Weather)? Or they're stuck in a store that's snowed in for the night? Or the temperature is ninety degrees? What if one of the characters is deaf ("Disability")? See how adding a strand of specifics can really change your play.

I'll add more web strands as I weave them. Have an idea for a new web strand? E-mail me.

Need more rewriting help? Visit my troubleshooter's checklist to find out some specific questions you should be asking yourself about your play.