A More Perfect Ten: Writing and Producing the Ten-Minute Play

I picked this up for a grad class in playwriting, and it was more helpful than I ever imagined! Garrison is funny and informative, and this text helped me better understand how to craft a ten minute play.

I was able to use this guide to clean up my own attempt. I really appreciated the complete examples in one chapter.

I enjoyed this book a lot and found it very helpful to my writing process. I appreciate the inclusion of places to submit my work, but would have appreciated it if some of these places were still taking submissions. I searched over a dozen of these opportunities last night and ran into a dead end each and every single time. This situation is somewhat understandable, considering that this book came out more than six years ago, but it is still a bit disorienting. Overall, it's a great book to get you writing and editing, but personally I did not find it to be a reliable source of information for submitting my work.

"A More Perfect Ten" is as compelling a read as the10 minute play itself should be. Reading this book gives me the sense that this writer knows his subject backward and forward and is willing to share his knowledge so we might also know what we're doing when play writing. I like this book because it is concise, filled with the craft of writing, and can be read with interest. My only reservation is what seemed to be a similarity of many of the example plays. None the less, they are plays written by known playwrights. I'm adding this book to my play writing library and expect to refer back to it often, especially when I begin my next short play. I'd recommend this book as one of the few that focus on the writing and production of the 10 minute play.

I bought this book on recommendation from an old friend working on his MFA after telling him that I wanted to try my hand at writing a 10-minute play. The writing style of the author is direct and relaxed and the advise is clear and well-supported. The content corroborated much of what I thought I knew and also covered several important lessons that I'd likely only otherwise have learned through taking a course at university or through life experience (i.e., the school of hard knocks). I strongly recommend this book for anyone who wants to work in this form.

Simple clear guidelines for building high quality playwriting techniques into very short plays - and how to find producers for 10 minute plays who may like your work then ask to see your full length plays

I found the book to be fair. It was slanted to telling the writers where to send their manuscripts, and had tips on how to be a more effective script writer. It could have spent more time analyzing the samples of ten minute plays, including the author's example.I wonder if one couldn't get most of the information on-line, instead of buying this book.

Gary does a nice job of organizing lots of information into simple, easy to follow rules. The interviews with professional producers are enlightening, and the inclusion of example plays was a nice touch.