What is Playwriting?

Playwriting is a type of writing that is written for the purpose of theater and stage production. Play writing consists of acts, scenes, and stage direction that set the tone and settings for characters in a play.

Plays are a form of art that has been around for centuries. The Greeks considered plays to be either tragedies or comedies---polar opposite emotions generally achieved in writing. Plays were basically written works put onto the stage where the audience already knew the plot and outline of the play, but wanted to see how different interpretations of a story would be.
The acting in a play is constricted to a single stage, therefore, a change in scenery is necessary when a change in setting is needed for characters to interact.

Act: consists of several scenes that set an overall change in tone or conclusion at the end of each one.
  

Scenes: Scenes are several minutes long and are part of an act. 

A scene describes the setting and the atmosphere characters are in:

• Where are the characters:In a room, in a field, an office, park?

• How do they feel: Are they angry? Happy? Do they feel awkward? 

The scene is usually italicized and before character dialogue right sided on the page, while the character dialogue is on the left.

Stage Direction: Stage direction is necessary because it describes character positions and movement through out the play:

For stage performance:  

• It shows the actor his or her position in relation to the audience.

For written/book form:

• the stage direction gives the reader a visual of what is happening in the setting and character movement, opposed to novel forms where an important character describes the setting from his or her own perspective.

WHAT IS A MONOLOGUE: 

• A monologue is a personal dialogue usually out of place from the play, directed towards an audience where the actors are unaware of the speech. Monologues help to understand a characters emotions or feelings that are not known to the rest of the characters in the play.

-In a stage performance, the monologue is obvious because lighting is usually focused on the speaker, or the other characters usually stop speaking. 

-In a playwriting novel a monologue is an uninterrupted speech noted in italics before the character delivering the monologue speaks.
 

What I think of playwriting: 

Playwriting is a great style of writing and is effective because of the way settings are depicted through use of scenes and and acts. It's not much different than trying to write a chapter of a book, and plays are really fun to experiment with. I recommend playwriting as a style of writing for novelists and any genre of writers because it isn't only useful in theater production. It's an effective form of writing for writers who are interested in screen writing and who want to improve their writing in character interaction because playwriting relies so heavily on dialogue and the ability to visually give the reader effective descriptions to make a play realistic.

Overall, playwriting is fun to try writing and a play in book form allows a reader's interpretation as a stage performance allows a director's interpretation.

A great book on the introduction to playwriting is: 

The Art and Craft of Playwriting