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Advice from Paula Vogel (and Mr. Craddock):

Once you have chosen a time period for your setting, consider HOW you will plot your story. How many scenes will you write? How may you combine time and scenes to tell your story? Consider:

Plot: (what happens on stage) off stage is part of the story, not part of the plot

a.     Pick a historical person, or set your play in a historical time period. Your play may deal with a fictional protagonist(s) in an otherwise historical setting. 

b.     Ask: Where would you start a play? Each writer will start a plot somewhere different. Write a short play with that plot in mind. Example:

1.     Hamlet can be told from a variety of plots. Where we start Hamlet suggests a different story as varied as the writer writing the play.

2.     Fortinbras, by Lee Blessing for example, starts his play at the end of Shakespeare's Hamlet. Hamlet could also be a minor character (for example in Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead)

3.     Desdemona by Paula Vogel tells the story of Desdemona in Othello: plot can be told from the perspective of a different character

c.      Four ways of writing plot:

                                               i.     Linear (syllogistic): events happen in chronological order

                                              ii.     Circular: events start at a point in time then flashback and come back to the present by the end of the play.

                                            iii.     Pattern plot: event, event, event, then repeat 1^st event, 2^nd event, 3^rd event, etc. (The General, for example). Your plot will form a specific pattern.

                                            iv.     Genre/archetype: impose one genre or form on another. Combine mystery, romance, western, musical, realist, etc. Include a wedding, funeral, or graduation. Alternate celebrations with tragedy and vice versa. Look at Henry V as an example of this. The play ends with a wedding after a terrible battle. Take the same plot, but include elements of the generic genre or archetype.