: Re: What tips would you give to someone about to write a stage play? This is a broad and subjective question. However, I think it can be answered with advice such as: Don't include car chases,

@Samaraweera193

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There are two writing challenges that are especially sharp for playwriting: Suspension of disbelief, and understanding what is happening onstage. Accordingly, Aristotle recommended "three unities" for plays: One main action/plot, one location, one time frame. Although relatively few plays stick strictly to these rules, there are some good reasons behind them. You don't have the cinematic visuals in a play that make changing settings and timeframes compelling in a movie. And you don't have the time in a play to explain or play out all the subplots of a novel. So, the closer you stick to the three unities, the easier your play will be to produce, to understand, and to suspend disbelief for.

But what if you don't want to stick to the three unities? Death of a Salesman covers a lot of ground, but it's all mostly in Willie Loman's mind and memories. The "real world" stuff is all in the one location, within a relatively brief span of time. Man of La Mancha has a particularly clever solution, where the entire show is a play within a play. The frame story all takes place in realtime in a jail cell, while the play-within-a-play doesn't respect the three unities at all. That allows the audience to suspend disbelief and embrace the rudimentary set and visual effects.

In general I've found that the more successful realist plays I've seen stick pretty closely to the three unities. The ones that (successfully) discard the three unities are usually more memory-based or imaginative/fantastical. In either case, you want to limit your overall number of main characters and plots: if you have too many, they'll either get short shrift or make your play too long.

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