The difference between plays & fiction.

Books are about thoughts while plays are about words.

Books can be far larger in scope than plays - settings and cast for example. Try to write a play about three people in a weightless space flight with any degree of realism. Try to get a "cast of thousands" on stage for your big fight scene.

On stage all you have are the words to tell the story. Plays are usually linear without a lot of flashbacks and jumps in time which confuse the audience.

When you read a book, you can go back to look up a point you have forgotten, you can re-read a chapter to make sure you get what it meant - not so with a play.

On the other hand, a play can show what is happening in real (stage) time. I find this has a much stronger emotional impact than just reading about it.

A play is different every production and every performance. I have watched the same play a dozen times and been surprised (pleasantly) at how much it changes from night to night.

when attending a play, I have far more latitude to make my own interpretation of the play than I do in a book.

As a playwright, I try to write a play that has just one set - it costs money to make complex sets that can be changed. I try to keep my cast to six or eight. I try to make all roles significant - while an actor might be willing to spend a day or two on a bit part for a movie, they seldom want to spend all the rehearsal and performance time for a bit part in a play. Plays usually take place over a short period of time - hours or days to a few weeks.

Hope this helps.

Doug

Sometimes pace can make or break a story. A reader reads at his own leisure, while a play's pace is at the discretion of the director and actors. If you're trying to tell a story that depends on rapid-fire pacing, a play might be the right avenue for you.

Other times novels transcend well to the stage. Les Miserables, for example, is a brilliant musical as well as a brilliant novel.

Doug B said:

On stage all you have are the words to tell the story.

Click to expand...

I disagree with that. You also have the physical presence of the actors on the stage, plus the physical presence of whatever design elements the production uses. The playwright doesn't always have control over these elements, but whatever the playwright writes that is integral to the story being told should turn up in some form or other in any decent production.

Look at Samuel Beckett's Act Without Words I and II for extreme examples of a playwright using the resources of actor and staging to tell a story that doesn't involve words in the performance, although of course Beckett had to use words (as well as pictures) in the script to convey to the production team what to perform.

Most plays do involve actors speaking words, but those might not necessarily be the most important aspects of the performance.

Plays are usually linear without a lot of flashbacks and jumps in time which confuse the audience.

Click to expand...

Or, the playwright (and the director and designers) need to be very careful about what techniques they use to indicate to the audience when time has jumped forward or backward. But the same is true of film or of words on the pages of a novel. The specific techniques and conventions may differ.

E.g., the lighting designer can be your friend here.

Exir said:

What is the quality of a play that distinguishes it from a fiction?... What makes a story more suited to be present on stage than on the page?

Click to expand...

Thank you for asking these questions. All the answers are very helpful and I'm learning a lot by following all posts.

Again, thanks.

lexxi said:

Or, the playwright (and the director and designers) need to be very careful about what techniques they use to indicate to the audience when time has jumped forward or backward. But the same is true of film or of words on the pages of a novel. The specific techniques and conventions may differ.

E.g., the lighting designer can be your friend here.

Click to expand...

Agreed. I took a course on Scriptwriting while I was still a writing major and read a one act that used about three or four different time jumps, utilizing the radio. As the guy envisioned what might happen if he took the woman he picked up hitchhiking somewhere and made love to her, and then got married, and then had some kids, the song on the radio changed. The action all took place in the same car, with the same two people, but the song drove the change. It was a really neat idea, and it worked well. It took everyone a second to figure out what was happening, but by the second time, everyone smiled as they finally got it.