Like any other form of drama, your 10-minute play must have some sort of structure. Traditional structure for a ten-minute play would look something like this:
| Pages 1 to 2: | Set up the world of your main character. |
| Pages 2 to 3: | Something happens to throw your character’s world out of balance. |
| Pages 4 to 7: | Your character struggles to restore order to his world. |
| Page 8: | Just when your character is about to restore order, something happens to complicate matters. |
| Pages 9 to 10: | Your character either succeeds or fails in his attempt to restore order. |
Playwriting, however, is not an exact science, and there are many different structures you can use for your play. Another popular one is “mythic structure” as described by Christopher Vogler in The Writer’s Journey. If you don’t like any existing structure, make up your own! Just be sure to use some sort of structure in your play—because if you don’t your play will feel loose and unfocused, and we (your audience) won’t trust you to take us on a meaningful journey.
Go to 10 minute play website for more instruction about how to write a 10 minute play:
