If you were asked to write a play when you were in school about bullying what would it read?
I do not have writers block because I am not a writer so I am asking for help to get started on writing a play on bullying.
I am asking you to respond with what your first sentence, paragraph or more would look like in your play, in hopes that it will get me started with some ideas if you have the time.
Thanks for taking the time and feel free to share your bullying experience that of your child or yourself but in a play version.
Thanks for responding Jilly!
1. who is your audience? CHILDREN AGES 6-15 and parents
2. who do you want to tell the story? -- the bullyer? the victim? the mom? observers? the teacher? all of the above? I would like the bully to tell the story and the conclusion would be how he or she matured from bullying.
3. Past or present tense? present tense
4. do you want to start from the end of the story or the beginning? I am thinking as if I am watching a movie so my thought is how I love it when a movie starts at the end and lead you to the beginning. What do you think?
@ Jennifer: awsome idea Thanks
Hi.
I love to write and I have some writerss in my family.
So some questions:
1. who is your audience?
2. who do you want to tell the story? -- the bullyer? the victim? the mom? observers? the teacher? all of the above?
3. Past or present tense?
4. do you want to start from the end of the story or the beginning?
I hope this helps.
best of luck
jilly
Just an FYI, a lot of what Jennifer suggested sounds very similar to the book Crash, which is awesome BTW. I'm sure it was not intentional, but just to be aware.
There are a couple ways I would go from here. First have the bully as an older child (let's say high school) maybe reflecting on how he could have been better. I don't think you want your main character to be an out and out bully. People won't respond. I would have the main character be maybe a bully because he was being bullied himself and he felt like that the only way to make it stop. Or he could be friends with a bully, and participate in some of the bullying, but really know it's wrong.
Either way I would start with a single person on stage, lit by a solitary light, my first line would be, "Words alone are not enough to say how sorry I am, if I could take it all back, I would."
Then you have several options.
1. He has learned the kid he bullied ran away, had thoughts of harming himself, etc feels responsible
2. He is in serious trouble, either with the law or the school and loses everything due to his bullying. (still need to put in about how he knew it was wrong to bully, but maybe went along with the crowd, and now they are all in trouble)
3. Maybe the bully moved to a new school. Now he is the victim and has first hand knowledge on how horrible he was.
I think scenarios should end with him facing the kid he bullied and offering a sincere apology. The bullied kid should accept, but let him know that bullying will only truly stop when kids stand together and not allow it to happen.
I am a writer, but not a play writer. This was just some of the scenarios I had pop in my head.
ETA: Renee, nope not intentional. Never even heard of it before. :) But, there are only so many scenarios that you can do with a bully situation and all of them have been done over and over again. It's like what we know here, there are no real new stories, just new versions to old tales. :)
In high school some friends and I wrote a play about road safety that we performed for all the local elementary schools before summer break. We kept it simple and went with Snow White and the 7 Dwarfs and Road Safety. It gave the audience characters and a basic storyline they were already familiar with but it was 'tweaked' to get our message across.
It would be very simple to do this with bullying (the evil queen is the bully) and you already have your cast of characters and basic storyline - now you just have to put words in their mouths...
Good luck
