Adam Szymkowicz, the author of this book offering advice about how to be a playwright, has been a student of such well-known playwrights (and teachers) as Christopher Durang, Marsha Norman, Paula Vogel and some dozen others; he’s taught playwriting himself;  he’s written more than thirty published plays, four of them published this year. But he is probably best known for the Adam Szymkowicz blog, where, since 2009, he’s interviewed 1,121 other playwrights. Some of his interview subjects have since become well-known. His fifth-ever was David Adjmi, whose “Stereophonic” just won him the Tony Award for Best Play (In his interview in June, 2009, Adjmi talked of his latest play at the time: “It’s really frightening and exciting, and I’ve never had a play on in New York before so I definitely feel the pressure. We’re all working like dogs.”) 

Even before Szymkowicz began conducting those interviews, his blog featured a post on Advice for Playwrights Starting Out, Many of the 16 items in that post are incorporated into his new book, Letters to a Young Playwright: Practical and Impractical Advice on the Art of Playwriting (Applause, 180 pages)

None of those 1,121 playwrights are mentioned in the book, an absence that surprised and somewhat disappointed me. Still, the blog indirectly led me to realize the book’s greatest strength. 

“Letters to a Young Playwright” consists of more than eighty chapters, many of them no longer than a page. Here is the entire chapter entitled You Can Do Anything You Want: “In your writing, you can do whatever you want, and no one can stop you. For example, this chapter is two sentences long” (and it’s not the shortest chapter.) That chapter reflects much of the advice in the book, which are variations on: You should figure out what works for you. There is little in-depth analysis, and few detailed examples that illustrate and clarify the points the author is trying to make. 

There is some practical advice about the actual writing of a play:  “Planning Your Play,” one of the most memorable chapters (and, at eight pages, the longest) is advice he relays from Marsha Norman about how to start a play: First, fill in the blanks “This play is about________ It takes place __________ It starts when ________ and ends when________ The main character wants____________ but____________. “
   In the chapter entitled “Look for the Theatrical,” he observes: “Theater has a unique visual language. There are fun, non-literal things that can happen in theater that don’t make sense in film.”  He tells his readers to Google “Maria Irene Fornés writing exercises.” (which I did.) But, despite the promise of the subtitle, there is relatively little concrete information about how to write a play.

There is slightly more specific advice on the business of playwriting: He recommends, for example, joining the Dramatists Guild; Among its benefits are a free boilerplate contract and the lawyers who will check your contract with a producer for you.

What may be most useful about “Letters to a Young Playwright,” though, is indicated by this unintentionally pivotal sentence: “It took me 25 years of writing plays to figure out how to make a sort of living out of it.” 

“Letters to a Young Playwright” is largely a pep talk, but it’s a persuasive one because it’s well-earned. 

Szymkowicz started his blog in 2005 (it took him four years to launch the series of interviews) and has kept at it and at it for two decades, past the point of almost everybody else.  In the same way, he makes clear that what matters most to having a life as a playwright – what has worked for him — is persistence.

He says this in many different chapters in many different ways.

“To have a career, you have to put yourself out there over and over and over again.”

“A perfect work of art doesn’t exist…don’t get stuck on being a good writer or a bad writer. Just try to be a better writer.”

“Only the very few and the very lucky get any kind of fame or a large amount of money from this. But maybe it’s enough to see your play in front of an audience.”

Indeed, this may be the single most important lesson for an aspiring playwright, but perhaps also for an established but dispirited one: For every Adjmi, there are probably 1,100 others who will never win a Tony or even get a play on Broadway. (And it took Adjmi decades.) But the other 1,100 can still write plays, and see them produced, and even make a living at it – and find satisfaction in it.

That may take some adjustments in attitude, and perhaps in your ambitions. There are for example, as Szymkowicz points out, 26,000 high schools in the U.S. and many of them do new plays by playwrights like him. An eye-opening chapter offers details about writing plays for high school.

The author offers chapters about avoiding jealousy, about getting a therapist, about having friends and activities outside the theater,  He advises several times in several ways to avoid being an asshole, not just because it might kill your career  (“The theater is a very small world and people talk.”) but also because being kind will help you keep at it.  

Nearly every page of “Letter to a Young Playwright” reenforces the point the author makes in one of the first chapters, “Why Make Art?” and that he implicitly recommends you keep in mind throughout the ups and downs of your life as a playwright. “The main thing that art does is for the artist, to make their life better.” To Szymkowicz, playwriting itself is a form of “self-care.”