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From playwright to novelist

When I was a senior in high school, I kept a diary, the only time I have real­ly done so. On March 28, 1955, (I was sev­en­teen) an entry reads; “Well, I final­ly said it out loud. I intend to stay with the the­atre. In the the­atre, one can be every­thing in the world—write—that’s for me. I had a great idea for a new play…”

This was my announce­ment that I intend­ed to become a writer, a play­wright. I did write plays, not very good ones I has­ten to add. That said, my first pro­fes­sion­al pub­li­ca­tion was a one-act play that won a play writ­ing con­tent as the Uni­ver­si­ty of Wis­con­sin, where I was a col­lege stu­dent. It was sub­se­quent­ly pub­lished in a nation­al mag­a­zine. There was an off-Broad­way pro­duc­tion of a play in NYC, and at one point, some­one did indeed wish to do a Broad­way pro­duc­tion of anoth­er play. Noth­ing came of it. In time, mak­ing no progress, I gave up the play writ­ing, and turned to writ­ing books for young people.

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That said, if one takes the time to look at my work, one can see aspects of my play­writ­ing embed­ded in my many nov­els for young peo­ple. There is an enor­mous amount of dia­logue in my books. More­over, the books are often struc­tured the­atri­cal­ly, with a begin­ning, mid­dle and end, which often be defined clear­ly, rather like a three act play.

Books like Noth­ing but the Truth, derive from a form of the­atre, what was called “Liv­ing News­pa­pers.” One my books, Who Was that Masked Man Any­way?” is noth­ing but dia­logue, and is, I think the fun­ni­est of my books. Punch with Judy is about a the­atri­cal event. The Book with­out Words could, I think, eas­i­ly be turned into a play.

A few years ago, I was asked to write a one-act play, which became part of an anthol­o­gy of one-act plays by New­bery win­ners. The vol­ume is called Act­ing Out. 

One of my prin­ci­pal edi­tors once told me, “You have nev­er stopped writ­ing plays.”

Could be.

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