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What is the difference between writing films or plays?
- Hrafnkell Stefánsson
- Jun 9
- 6 min read
Most of last week was writing. But once I'd hit my deadline, I got to go and see some film school grad screenings.
They were all good. Only a few were great.
And by the third or fourth, I could tell which would be which within about two minutes. Not the budget, not the camera, not the acting.
It was simpler than that. The great ones told me what to want, fast. They made it clear what the character was after, or planted a question I needed answered, and then I couldn't look away.
The good ones made me wait to find out why I should care.
Funny how that's the same problem everywhere. On the page, on the screen, and - as this week's question reminded me - on the stage too.
So, on to it.
If you have got a question why not send it right now?
Send your question: Questions@theinsecurescreenwriter.com
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QUESTION 1
EMMA from UK:
I've written a couple of scripts. I'm thinking about trying to write a play. Have you tried that? And what's the biggest things to consider when writing a play.
Now this is a great questions, but a little outside my range of expertise. I have written a play in my early career but did that with very little knowledge of how to do it.
So to answer this, I have asked one of my friends, a colleague who taught at the Icelandic Film School while I was there, to field it.
Heiðar Sumarliðason
Heiðar Sumarliðason is a screenwriter, playwright, and director with many years of diverse experience developing dramatic work for both the stage and the screen. He holds a BA in theatre theory and practice from the Iceland University of the Arts, a diploma from the Icelandic Film School, an MA in Directing from the University of Essex, and an MA in Creative Writing, specialising in playwriting and screenwriting, from the University of Iceland. His work spans stage plays, radio dramas, and screenplays, and is characterised by a strong sense of character, dialogue, dramatic structure, and a distinctive authorial voice. Alongside his own writing, he has taught screenwriting and dramatic storytelling at the Icelandic Film School since 2018 and served as Head of Screenwriting from 2020 until the school ceased operating in its previous form. Heiðar has received screenwriting grants from the Icelandic Film Centre on three occasions and is currently working on the screenplay for the feature film Rán, while simultaneously writing a novel and a stage adaptation based on the same story. His works have been performed at the Reykjavík City Theatre, the National Theatre of Iceland, Tjarnarbíó, and the Icelandic Radio Theatre.
This is a very very interesting question that I have been dealing with for quite a long time. There are quite a few differences. Mostly:
A screenplay is a blueprint for a film or television production. The writer is not the final storyteller; directors, actors, cinematographers, editors, composers, and designers all contribute to shaping the finished work. As a result, screenwriting places a heavy emphasis on visual storytelling. Internal thoughts are usually minimised, the prose is lean and economical, and dialogue must sound natural when spoken aloud. A screenplay usually expresses emotion through observable behaviour.
Playwriting is different because a play is written for live performance in front of an audience. Unlike film, theatre cannot easily cut between locations, zoom in on a face, or rely on editing. The audience experiences events continuously and physically, sharing the same space and time as the performers. As a result, plays are generally more dialogue-driven, place a strong emphasis on character dynamics, often operate within limited settings and time periods, and generate tension through real-time interaction. Language frequently carries more weight than visuals.
But the trickiest thing about coming from screenwriting and going into playwriting has to do with choosing what is the best vehicle for an idea that you have and find one that fits into the mechanics of theatre rather than the silver screen.
Most of us are raised on reading novels and watching filmed stories, exposure to theatre being a distant third. This makes it all the more difficult for those who wish to write for theatre to gauge exactly how and what they should be writing about and the form it should take; theatre can be both the most constrictive and the most freeing form to work with. Two chairs can be a car, then turn into a plane or a space ship. But in a way that also works against you. There are certain ideas that work very well within that set up but others would be silly, so in a way that freedom can also work against you. There are certain ideas that work very well with you changing a simple chair set up from one thing to another, because the audience accepts the metaphor and participates in creating the world with you. However, there are also ideas that resist this kind of abstraction. Certain stories depend too heavily on realism, scale, constant location changes, or visual specificity. Some ideas lose tension if the audience has to imagine too much of the world rather than experience it directly.
A story built around spectacle, for example, may struggle in theatre unless the spectacle itself is transformed into something symbolic or theatrical.
Theatricality often involves making metaphor physical and visible. Rather than simply describing an emotion or idea, theatre can embody it through movement, space, objects, and performance. It frequently transforms space, allowing a simple stage to become multiple locations through suggestion and imagination. Language is often heightened, not necessarily in a poetic sense, but in the sense that speech carries dramatic weight and rhythm beyond everyday conversation. Meaning is also communicated through symbolic actions that resonate on an emotional or thematic level rather than a purely realistic one. Theatre can engage the audience directly, inviting them to become active participants in the creation of the story, and it is often comfortable acknowledging that a performance is taking place rather than attempting to hide its own artifice. In this way, theatricality emerges when the tools of the stage themselves become part of how meaning is created.
Likewise, stories that rely heavily on internal narration or psychological detail may naturally lean more towards the novel form, where thought itself can become action. Theatre tends to work best when the energy comes from presence, conflict, language, and transformation happening in real time before an audience.
The difficulty is learning to recognise when an idea is asking for metaphor and limitation, and when it is asking for immersion and realism. Not every idea benefits from theatrical minimalism. Some concepts become more powerful through suggestion and simplicity, while others require the full visual and spatial possibilities that film or prose can provide.
So if you want to write for theatre try to find an idea that can survive being stripped down to its essence, because theatre is often at its most powerful when very little is needed beyond actors, language, tension, and the audience's imagination.
Looking at a play like Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolf, it works brilliantly as theatre because it is fundamentally about verbal combat. The tension comes from people trapped in a room dismantling one another psychologically through language.
A film adaptation exists, but the material's true power comes from: sustained confrontation, live emotional escalation, claustrophobia, dialogue as action. In theatre, there is nowhere to escape. The audience becomes almost complicit.
Most enduring plays are not built around spectacle, massive world-building, or realism alone.
Instead, they are built around human tension, transformation, language, ritual, confinement, presence, ambiguity, emotional immediacy.
Theatre is strongest when the audience's imagination becomes part of the machinery of the story. A play often works best when it could almost only happen in a room full of people watching other people breathe, hesitate, lie, unravel, confess, or collide in real time.
You must also think about the venue. A certain play can work in a tight space, watched by very few people, but will be lost on a large stage. Some plays depend entirely on intimacy the audience hearing every hesitation, feeling trapped in the room with the actors, almost becoming participants in the conversation. Others require scale, distance, movement, and visual composition. Theatre is not only shaped by the text itself, but by the physical relationship between performer and audience. A line whispered in a black box theatre may carry enormous weight, while the same moment in a thousand-seat auditorium may disappear completely.
In many ways theatre is the art form most aware of its own boundaries. But those boundaries often create the conditions for its greatest inventiveness. If you do not appreciate boundaries as a writer, theatre is definitely not for you. Discussing the differences in minutiae can be endless, but I hope this helps some. But the best way to get a feeling of what works for theatre can only be brought about by watching a lot of it and trying to compare it to the more common form of film.
I hope that was useful answer to your questions. This did answer some of my questions I had on the topic.
Hope you decide to try writing that play.
So that's it for this week, if you got a question - why not send one now?
Remember there are no stupid questions - it could be about story structure, dialogue, breaking in, or even overcoming writer's block. Whatever's on your mind.
Send your question: Questions@theinsecurescreenwriter.com
And if that link doesn't work: Questions@theinsecurescreenwriter.com
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