So apparently there’s been some kinda Twitter feud between TV writers and playwrights?

Photo by Barry Weatherall on Unsplash

So apparently a playwright insulted TV writing.

I have no idea who the playwright is, and maybe that’d have been a good thing to look up before beginning this article.

But let’s just leave that sort of research about the dialectical nature of Twitter to the internet historians.

I’m just not patient enough for the world of subtweeting and subyeeting.

All that to say, this is a great opportunity to talk about the meaning of story forms like TV screenwriting and playwriting.

Playwrighting and TV writing are two of the most interesting dialogue partners because, I think, they’re both such different forms.

And yet, storyteller to storyteller, there is a great deal that we can learn from one another.

I mean this in terms of similarities and differences.

This really goes for graphic novels or TV scripts or any other narrative written or scribed with dialogue.

Playwriting is dialogue-driven.

That sounds obvious, but the most important thing to remember about playwriting is that it’s a performance art before anything else.