How to Write a 10-minute Play

Many playwrighting contests around the country focus on the 10-minute play. How do you write a full play, beginning, middle and end in 10 minutes? Very carefully. Here are some things I have learned recently about writing 10-minute plays. I hope you will also find them useful if you write a 10-minute play of your own.

The first thing to keep in mind is that, even at just 10 minutes, your play must tell a complete story. You need a character a character facing obstacles in pursuit of some specific goal. You need rising action, conflict, and a climactic moment. You don't want to write a "sketch" where a simple premise is just put on display (for example the classic SNL Celebrity Jeopardy parodies). A 10-minute play is also different than a 10-minute monologue where someone is just speaking for the entire piece. You want to tell a complete story. So eventually, you will need to figure out all the basics you'd need for any story: main character, her goal, obstacles in her way -including antagonists; setting, theme, all of that stuff.

But before you brainstorm, or after you come up with some initial ideas, do consider that you have a very limited amount of time in which to tell your story. This means simple is good, big and complicated is going to work against you. Keep the cast small. Keep the setting - both time and space - as contained as possible. In other words, your epic story idea is not the "go to" idea when you're composing a 10-minute piece. What ideas do work? There's no single answer to that. Just think over your ideas. Which can work in a short amount of time with very little exposition? Which ones can be told in a complete manner: beginning, middle, and end, in this relatively short time frame? The ideas which can fit inside these parameters are probably the ones you want to go with, though, if you're experimenting, you can try just about anything and see how it works out.

After you go through whatever your personal pre-writing process is - be it outlining, sketching characters, or writing a treatment/synopsis, and you're ready to write, keep that editing button on high. In your first draft and certainly as you revise, you will need to be more vigilant than ever about what can be cut and what needs to be kept. It's always difficult to "kill your children" in writing, but when you really love fifteen minutes of script and have to keep the script to ten minutes, a massacre will probably have to take place. Either that, or you may simply realize you cannot edit the script and you need to find a different story idea for your 10-minute piece.

After you have written the piece, make sure to read it out loud, or have it read out loud by friends or even actors (if you have some handy...). The general rule, I'm told, is that one page of play script is equal to about 90 minutes of actual stage time. Of course, dialogue and action will vary, so this rule will also vary. This is why it's important to see how much time a reading takes. (You can probably even act it out if you think the action onstage will take up enough time for a reading to be an inaccurate measure of time.) Many theatre companies and playwrighting contests actively solicit ten minute plays, but they're also quite adamant that the play ways in at ten minutes, not any longer. Other companies and contests will actually insist that the script itself is only ten pages long. You should write the play to the best of your ability and then worry about other people's parameters. If you write a 10-minute play that's eleven pages, cutting out a whole page of script may be possible, or it may ruin the story. In the case of the latter, those strict "ten pages only" contests aren't right for that particular work.

Writing a 10-minute play can be challenging, but it can also become addictive. Having a full story in such a compact form is very rewarding. While many writing projects take months, even years, to complete, a short play can more quickly give you the satisfaction of crossing the finish line. And even if you don't find homes for all your 10-minute plays, like with any kind of writing, it's always a good exercise that can benefit you in future projects in ways you might not recognize right away. So, start writing that 10-minute play. Break a leg.