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.