I recently came across a piece of advice for submitting your play, and I think it’s a wonderfully helpful one:
* Put your wildest material up front.
* Put your quietest material in the middle.
* Put your absolute best material at the end.
There’s a lot of psychology behind this advice.
### Put your wildest material up front ###
When submitting your play to theaters or contests, the play’s beginning may be the single most important part.
The reason is simple: because if you don’t grab the reader then, there’s a good chance they’ll pass on the script before they finish it.
Remember, the people reading your submission are people who read a LOT of plays. They’ve seen all the most common openings. To grab their attention, you want to open your play with something really unique and different.
That’s why it’s smart to start your play with the wildest, most unique part of your story.
### Put your quietest material in the middle ###
The middle of any story is typically less memorable than the beginning or end. We’re far more likely to remember the beginning and the end than all the stuff smushed in between them.
So take those quiet moments, the less powerful moments in your play, and make sure they’re in the middle where they won’t get in the way of your best stuff.
### Put your absolute best material at the end ###
After the beginning of your play, the second-most important part is the ending.
In a sense, the ending is the MOST important. But when you’re submitting a play, I would argue that the beginning is more important (for the reason stated above). But in any case, the ending is still critical to how your play is received.
Because it comes at the end, it has the biggest impact on how people remember your play–so make sure it goes out with a BANG.
I also recommend making sure that ending has as much thematic resonance as possible, because that helps give your play a feeling of being complete and meaningful–two qualities that theaters and contest judges are always looking for.
These tips sound simple, but they’ve been incredibly helpful to me over the years. Give them a try and see if they don’t help make your play more compelling to readers.
