I love it when my sources write my intros for me. So I'll let playwright Rosemary Parrillo take it away:

So, you're a writer. And a really fine one, you have to admit.
But you want to stretch your creative boundaries, and you think playwriting might be the next territory to explore.

How to begin?

Umm, first go see a few plays. Not the $100-a-ticket mid-town action, but the $15, $25, $30 downtown mix.

Get a feel for what playwriting is about. Pay attention to exploration of character, to theatricality, conflict and plotting and, most important, to the language.

If what you're seeing is good theater, you'll quickly notice it's not like film or TV. These mediums present characters straight-on. Theater turns characters inside out -- all veins and arteries pumping blood, the heart battling the mind.

The water mark for playwriting is higher. The action more taut, the setting more intimate, the language more economical, yet lyrical and poetic.

Which is why it's so damn hard to do.

Before you head off to your first "Playwriting for beginners" class, get a copy of "The Art of Dramatic Writing" by Lajos Egri. The guy's been dead since 1967, but this book, written in 1949, is still considered the bible for anyone interested in writing for the stage or screen.

Dead even longer is Aristotle. But it doesn't hurt to reread his "Poetics," if not to just show how long we've been trying to get it right.

Next, take a playwriting class. This is important.

You need to learn how to think dramatically. Conflict, conflict, conflict. This is what creates drama. One character wants something that other doesn't want to give him or her. Without conflict, it's just two people standing around talking.

You need to learn how to write dialogue. Remember, everything the audience learns about your characters -- past, present and future -- is revealed through dialogue, in speech that is perfectly natural and conversation that rings true. Every word, every line has a purpose or it shouldn't be there.

You need to learn playwriting format. If your play isn't formatted properly, the literary manager won't even look at it.
Once you have a couple of 10-week sessions under your belt, and probably a one-act in your hand, get thee to a writer's workshop. This is a place where a group of playwrights get together weekly or monthly to read each other's work and gently critique it and make suggestions. Getting into a workshop is important, mostly because it forces you to keep working. There are only so many times you can show up to meetings without presenting work to read.

By now you've written your first full-length play and you're read to submit it to theaters and contests. Get a copy of "The Dramatists Sourcebook," for guidance. You can join the Dramatist Guild, which also sends monthly newsletters listing contest deadlines.

If you have a good script, you should be able to get a staged reading without too much effort. A full production? Well, that's like hitting the lottery.

But somebody has to. So, good luck.

I got some advice from other playwrights and theater writers on breaking into writing for the stage:

"If there were one big tip that I would give a would-be
playwright, it would be this: don't write a movie pretending to be a
play," says Kit Sanderson, veteran theater writer. "The people that judge contests and make decisions about
producing new plays see that often, and they don't like it. If your
material really needs to be expressed as a play, that's a good start.

"I've heard a lot of good things about "The Playwright's Guidebook: An
Insightful Primer on the Art of Dramatic Writing" by Stuart Spencer,
and you might want to look there. Also, I would suggest looking into
the work of Richard Nelson. He's a celebrated playwright and has just taken over the
department at the Yale School of Drama."

"Often you go to see plays in small theaters around the city and they are downright boring," says comedic playwright Ronnie Koenig. I think there is a reason for this and it's mainly that the playwright hasn't identified what's dramatic about the subject they are writing about. Ask yourself: where's the conflict? what's causing the dramatic tension? what's at stake for your characters and why should we care about them?

Playwriting is completely different from screenwriting in that while movies are all about the action, plays are about the dialogue. Each line of dialogue should drive the plot forward. You have to make sure that your characters don't all sound alike.

Once you have written (and rewritten) a script, the best way to find out if it works is to have a reading. If you're in NYC, there are so many out of work actors here - make friends with them. Get them excited about your work and through them you'll meet directors, stage managers, maybe even a rich producer!

My best tip is to write about your own experiences. I was the editor-in-chief of Playgirl magazine and I turned that experience into a one-woman show which is now a multi-character play called Dirty Girl.

Getting a production is one of the most difficult things to achieve. That's why my long-time collaborator Kate Kolendo and I started our own theatre company, Firecracker Productions

"My experience is that if you start from zero, no clue how to write a play, the best thing to do is to study plays," says Susan Weinstein, play producer and theater critic. "I had graduated with a degree in sculpture and was without the wherewithal to make them, when I became interested in plays. I began to read them, at first classics, Greeks, Ibsen, Strindberg, Ubu Roi (Jarry), Shaw, and a lot from around the world Africa (Soyinka), as well as American classics from O'Neil to Williams and Shepherd, Albee, etc. I found a good how-to book that taught the arc of a well-made play, the "gun that's shown in the first act that has to go off in the second," and other cliches of the craft. But this gave me the idea of how plots work.

I did a lot of diagramming of plots of well-made plays (how the exposition builds to the climax, the denouement, the basic structure) as well as the more circular structures of european (Giradoux) and asian theater. Then I began to write my own.

So I am probably odd in that I'm self-taught. My first plays were workshopped a lot, which means that I found informal groups of actors looking for material. At one point, I took a good method class, so that I understand how emotions work to push drama. Coming from visual arts, a person can have more developed objective sense and need some work in the subjective area.

I think a person can begin to write a play from having a vague intuitive sense of an atmosphere, a character or a theme and then begin for a while and stop. An outline can be written beforehand as a direction to go in, or at the first stop point, to see or discover where the play is going. Then the outline can be revised to work with the new direction.

I believe the process is half intuitive half analytical. For many years I was in a playwrights workshop, a co-operative where we found actors who liked to do readings. Then we critiqued each other's work, but only at the playwright's direction--what he wanted us to look for. (Is the opening weak, do you get the point of the scene, does the ending make it too pat, etc.) That process I found the most helpful, since it didn't deteriorate into open-ended criticism sessions, it was solely to help the playwright.

I personally like labs, where there is less a sense of competition than cooperation. It's also important if a playwright can align himself with a functioning company, so he can benefit from seeing the show "up on it's feet.) The writing process goes much faster in this kind of pre-rehearsal situation than readings.

I haven't written a play for a long time, because the reality is it's very hard to get a play produced. At the time I was actively working, I had many readings of scripts because there were grants for "development" but not for production. So I write fiction now, though I miss writing plays and hope to go back to it some time.

The other advice I can think of is philosophical--make sure a play you write is something you feel passionate about, because you'll need to sustain the emotion through rewrites. And don't if possible fall in love with an abstract idea that's divorced from emotion, because it will probably not come together.

On a practical level, if you can't find a group to align yourself with, do join the dramatists guild, which has practical contacts, lists of theaters looking for new work, grants, and I believe they had a director/playwrights night where you could pitch directors. But the best is to be a member of a talented group of people who are excited about theaters and love new plays. And submit your work constantly and if possible, don't take rejection personally. My first play was produced because I entered a contest and was discovered. It was a great experience. Any opportunity you can find, playwrights conferences, directors looking for work, offer doors."

What about going to school for playwriting, though? It's not always worth it, warns Weinstein. "It might be useful for new playwrights to know that the programs can give you the time to work and a community. But some people go into debt thinking the "contacts" will be worth it and are quite bitter years later when they have to pay it off. The Master's in playwrighting means several years of accruing debt and scarce jobs later on. I think, and maybe you'd agree, that a playwright could get the same growth elsewhere without the debt. I was fortunate in that I had a scholarship. Out of my year at Iowa, one person became well known and he was the favorite of the academic in charge of the workshop. I think that's not atypical."