a post from Johnna about a Steven Dietz workshop: Don't think in images. Think in motion. Poets and prose writers can see a chair in a room and write about it. They can describe the colors of the chair, the structural composition, the physical reality of it, the ideas is evokes. But a playwright's job is to look at the chair and imagine the motion around it. Who just sat in it? How many people this week? Where did it come from? Did they buy it in China on their honey moon? Is this the last chair she held the baby in? Etc. This is how you begin to see story. You don't describe objects or locations-- you try to see the motion around them. and also this line: If someone tells you something in a scene, nothing is happening in that scene. Get in late on all your stories and even on the scenes-- it is okay to begin where other writers would put the climax-- it is often preferrable to start at the climax.