How to format plays

We follow 3 principles.  Scripts should be:
  1. Simple
  2. Non-commercial
  3. Timeless

Simple

I personally have never seen a fancy script.  You may have trod the boards a lot more than I have, and worked with high-class, high-price, elegantly supported productions.  Maybe you've seen gilt-edged, beautifully bound, engraved, or otherwise fancy scripts.  Not I..  Scripts I see are typically beaten-up, marked-up, tattered photocopies.  Half the time I'm lucky if all pages of every copy agree.

The scripts should be maximally simple.  Straight typewriting in simple "text format" is great.  See some examples of scripts in text format on the FreePlays.org main page.

Of course, since FreePlays.org is a website, and HTML is the language of the web, plays are best formatted using HTML.  The plays should be maximally simple, without any fancy formatting or graphics.  The more tricks you use, the more troubles people will run into with browser incompatibilities and printing.  Graphics (drawings, photos, set diagrams) are OK, but should be kept to an absolute minimum, and only included when they're really needed to put on the play.  "Hansel and Gretel", available from FreePlays, is an example.   It contains a small graphic showing an outdoor oven, which a set designer could use when building a set.

Keep it simple.  After all, "it's not about the script".  Fancy formatting won't improve the performance.  The quality of the performance comes from the words you write, plus the skill, craft, dedication, and inspiration/spark of the players and others putting on your work. 

Your job:
FreePlays' job:
Their job:
 Everybody's job:

Non-commercial

"Free" really means free around here.  Freedom has a number of meanings - the classic two are
but we add in two more (we actually add in more yet, but for purposes of submitting scripts, these two are the important ones):
Commercial advertising is of course an corrosive and generally evil threat to society, human happiness, and the minds of young children, and when directed at children it is immoral.  However, a complete discussion of this is beyond the scope of this document.  For here, it's enough to say that no script distributed via FreePlays.org may contain any commercial announcement whatsoever.  Sorry, we just won't distribute a script that contains commercial content.

Would you like to get some credit for the work you've submitted?  Would you like to earn some money as a playwright?  Would you like to give away some of your plays as a way of getting exposure, hoping that maybe someone will pay you money for your other works?  You can do this at FreePlays.org; we don't mind helping you out.  We're not anti-commerce, anti-business, or anti-money.  Remember, we specifically allow people to perform these works and charge money for the performances.  We can help you out by including your contact information in the "Contributors" section.  There, you may describe what you do in brief and simple terms.  But not in the script that we publish at FreePlays.

Besides the general "free" attitude that powers this site, there's a practical reason for keeping scripts free of commercial announcements/advertisements.  Commercial content goes out of date relatively quickly.  Just as contact information goes out of date (see below) so does commercial content.  Your skills, willingness, rates, terms, and experience all change with time.  By splitting content from commerce, we avoid the hassle of having to revise a script every time you change your resume or business plan.

Timeless (no contact information in the script)

If you write a script containing a lot of current slang, of course it will soon seem dated, but that's not a problem.  Somebody that likes your script can always produce an updated version.

But, just as we "split commerce from content", we split "contact from content" as well.  Your script may not contain your address, your phone number, links to a web site, or any other personal, corporate, or institutional contact information.  You can distribute that information using the "Contributors" section of FreePlays.org.  We do want your readers to be able to contact you (if you want them to).  We just don't want that contact info in the script.  We don't want to have to revise a script every time someone's contact information changes.  Ideally these scripts will be available for decades, or maybe centuries.  In that time, your contact information will change.  Let's avoid the extra work, and/or confusion, and/or frustration that happens when people try to use contact information that is out of date.

Boilerplate

Note that all plays on this site are distributed under the Creative Commons copyright, and that every play contains "boilerplate" notice of this at the bottom.  You don't need to add in these notices; when we post the plays in the main area of the site, we'll add that stuff for you.
Creative Commons License
All works on this site are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 License.  In short:
  1. You are free to print, copy, read, use, distribute, modify, and perform any and all of these works without royalty.
  2. If you distribute these works in any form (including recordings of performances), with or without modification, you must grant these same royalty-free rights.
For details, see Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 License either here or here
This site is part of the Info Ring. Information wants to be free!  So make some free information.