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For Librarians, The Step by Step Beginners Guide to
Creating Crowd-Pleasing Scripts
For Puppets or For Stage

TABLE OF CONTENTS Step One / Choosing the Story Step Two / Assembling the Pieces Step Three / Outlining the Plot Step Four / Writing Dialogue Step Five / Writing Stage Directions Step Six / Correct Format Step Seven / Readings and Rewrites Notes / Audience Participation Resources / Books and Sites

To Order Go To The Puppeteers of America Bookstore Link to Page

Sample
From Step Four--Writing Dialogue

What a character says and how he says it reveals his personality. Here are some lines from and adaptation of H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine. The purpose here is to provide clues to the personalities of the three men, the relationships between them and their attitude toward their host.

FILBY This looks like the laboratory. Lord Lyndhurst, this way.

LORD LYNDHURST Most irregular, I’m accustomed to drinking my brandy in the library.

FILBY Well, the chairs look comfortable enough. George, close the door.

LORD LYNDHURST (A rattling cough) Strange bird this friend of yours, Filby. What does he dabble in, science of some kind? Not a Darwinist is he?

FILBY No. I don’t know. He’s an inventor actually.

GEORGE That’s interesting. What does he invent?

FILBY I haven’t the slightest idea. (They all laugh)

Here’s another “Who” line; one of the greatest.

SCROOGE Merry Christmas? Every idiot who goes about with “Merry Christmas” on his lips should be boiled in his own pudding and buried with a stake of holly through his heart!

Let’s do an exercise. Write the wolf’s opening line when he meets Red Riding Hood
for the first time. Write him as a slick, fast-talking con man.

WOLF
____________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________

Now, write him as a young, timid wolf-in-training.

WOLF
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How others react to him reveals a lot about a character too. Red’s responses to these two wolves would be very different.

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