Structure is Not a Dirty Word
Writing to Change the World
Why is structure important? If you want to drink a glass of water, you will need a glass to hold the water that you want to drink. Or use the cup of your hand to get the water from the faucet to your mouth. Without a glass, you’ll spill quite a bit. If you want your audience/reader to be able to drink all the water from your manuscript, you’ll need an appropriate container to hold all that water. Otherwise they might spill it all over themselves and resent you. Or drink a lot of water they might say you never earned…
I’m teaching a ten-week class on structure (called “Structure is Not a Dirty Word”) that starts April 1st (not as a joke, but as a real class, and it will be fun), and if I don’t fill the class, then I don’t teach it. I feel an obligation to the folks who already signed up, so if you’re wondering why you should take my class about structure, here’s why.
Unless you have an MFA in narrative structure (for screenplays or play-plays or novels or stories) you probably have what everyone else has: an intuitive sense from watching _______ (whatever you’ve been watching all your life which probably includes a bunch of Saturday morning cartoons, plenty of 22 minute sitcoms, the news, and hour-long dramatic episodics, and the occasional made-for-tv movies, plus actual movies in the movie theatres, and however many plays you’ve ever sat through. It’s a lot, and you’ve intuited so much, but have you differentiated the forms yet?
Do you know your Aristotle (linear) from your Shakespeare (episodic)? Your Brecht (epic) from your Williams (circular)? Or your other forms, like Beckett, Fornes, Churchill, Parks, etc?
Can you actually do
what you want to do
to tell the best story you can tell
using the material you want to use
in the best possible way? I am not going to make you read all these writers (you can if you want). I’m not going to burden you with any work you don’t have time to do. I’m going to tell you what each form does and show you how to do that in your own work with your own characters, and you will get to practice the forms and play with the forms (and even f*ck with the forms and invent your own) and get feedback! Fun!
WHY? Because the world - especially right now - needs every voice with as much know-how and skill as we can master in order to tell the stories that will move us forward. Sign up for “Structure is Not a Dirty Word.”
The Prompt:
Burning down the house. Accumulating reasons for action. Creating motivation. How big are your characters’ desires? Do they match the size of the events you are creating? Can you create events that will move your characters into action to do something that feels big to them? What can you create? Can you challenge yourself in a short play to change the world? What is the big event you want to move toward?
Make a list of what you want to see on stage (or in a short film or a short story, even perhaps flash). Make a long list!
Consider the big events you’ve seen, like a sorceress trapped in an unhappy marriage frees herself by murdering her children, or, as in a beautiful short play I saw last night, set during a time when being gay was illegal, Poseidon assists two young men in consecrating their love. A king becomes a blind beggar. Someone is refused belonging. Someone is accepted. Someone refused returns. The dead can be mourned. What are the big things that happen? Get very specific. A door slams (tragedy) / a door opens (comedy) / many doors (farce)…
Once you’ve got a good list, find the one with the most energy for you, and make a list of events that lead to that event. Write from event to event.
What is an event? Something that happens that can’t unhappen. An event changes the playing field, forwards the action or raises the stakes. An event in dialogue can be a revelation, a recognition, a decision, a proposal, promise/vow or a threat.
Your big climactic event (the event with the highest tension in the piece, a knife to a throat, a question that must be answered with honesty) will cause a transformation (becoming a fighter a fighting back or becoming honest and confessing) which leads to a denouement (the event at the end, usually after a transformation as a result of the way the character responded to the climax. The next thing is either a kind of forward-looking decision (“I will never go hungry again!”) or a recognition of what happened (I am a survivor - the subtext of Scarlett’s final line), or both.
In a short play, ending with those three events (climax, transformation, moment of recognition/decision) if you add three events to get you to the climax, you’re done. Everything else is world building. Wondering but what about the monologues and character? Character is action. It comes out in the doing. The doing is often in a monologue if the monologue is trying to do something (instead of merely explaining or tell a story - it must have impact on this moment - consequences, moving the action forward, which means the speaking is an event.) Now you try!
artwork by Scott Sherman at ScottShermanStudio on Instagram
Opportunities:
Are you writing poetry in solidarity against capitalism and prisons? Submit here.
April 1: The Democracy Cycle 2025 Open Call
Due April 1st, T. Schreiber Studios wants short plays on the theme “It Happened to Me.” There is a $5 submission fee, but if selected, they pay a small stipend and your work is produced in NYC in June. (I did this a few years ago with them, and they produced the plays at Theatre Row. This year I think it’s at ART/NY.)
Pittsburgh New Works seeks one-act plays for their 2025 season of world premieres. 15 to 20 plays will be selected as full productions or readings. Read their guidelines (they have changed somewhat) and if your play qualifies, submit it no later than Sunday, April 6!
Breath of Fire is offering free evenings online to write your play with the amazing Diana Burbano on Wednesdays 630 - 830pm PST. Diana is the Artistic Literary Leader of Breath of Fire, an award-winning playwright, Equity Actor and Teaching Artist for South Coast Rep. From 2/26 - 10/22/25.
Play the game of Telephone for all kinds of writers and artists, a global community of responses. (I’m loving it!)
Women in the Arts & Media have a list of opps you can sign up to get monthly.
For poets looking for UK opps, sign up for Angela T. Carr’s Wordbox with monthly opps & more!
For 10-30 min plays for The ReOrient Festival (about the Middle East Or by Middle Eastern writers) til April 30th more info / submit
The Barn’s residencies take place in Lee, Massachusetts -- we offer one residency in the spring (roughly the first full week of June) and one in the fall (roughly the second full week of October). Residents are provided with room, board, working space, and a stipend of $600 for the duration of their stay. These residencies support emerging artists in the performing arts. Reach out to info@thebarnatlee.org with any questions or for more information.
Amazing People Doing Amazing Things:
If you want to be listed here, please let me know what you’re up to and include your links!
For example, 5 of my poems will be published, 1 per week, by Eckleburg.org. The first one dropped Monday 3/24. There will be a new one every Monday for the next month. All from my manuscript in progress, Home is (Not) the Root of Human, about my history raised by zionist Jews, my documentation and research into human rights abuses during the first Intifada, and my response to the ongoing genocide, along with my reinterpretations of various biblical figures and ideas.
My short play, False Alarm, is part of a one-act in a festival at New Circle Theatre Company, directed by Bess Frankel in the theatre district (NYC) 3/26 - 4/6. My work’s in Program B but you can also check out Program A.
Gina Femia is offering her Novel Writing 101 class! April 12th - May 24th, Saturdays from 4-630pm ET via Zoom.
Nikaury Rodriguez is in the cast of Bread of Life by Frank Pagliaro, directed by Leslie Kincaid Burby, produced by Up Theatre uptown running March 26 - April 12th. Tickets here. Sit with me 4/10!
SUR: The Trojan Women Project Sat. 3/29 to 4/6 in New York @ LA MAMA'S ELLEN STEWART THEATRE. https://www.lamama.org/sur/ or more info here
JOIN 100 Days of Creative Resistance! free email of encouragement, opposition, and commiseration — a reminder of why we write and create — from 100 iconoclastic contemporary voices on each of the first 100 days of the 47th president’s regime.
Audrey Cephaly has written a great Substack on How to Write the 10 Minute Play - I highly recommend her Substack every day, and especially this one.
Take a Poetry Workshop with Only Poems.
Playwrights! If you’re not already subscribed to Mark Ravenhill’s free newsletter for his 101 exercises for playwrights, you might want to click here to do that. If you’ve missed them, reach out and I’ll send you a pdf of the 1st 53, and a pdf of 54 - now. So you won’t have to search through the endless Twitter-verse for random entries.