This question understandably came up last year so let’s address it before we get started:
Someone asked "Is the goal to write one full length play for the month or can we write 2 shorter plays -one act?"
The November novel writing challenge often instructs people to come with an idea, perhaps even researched prior to the beginning of November, and then the writers will spend the month cranking through churning out that first draft of a full novel by month's end.
We're not requiring the playwriting equivalent of that here.
If you'd like to set that as a goal for yourself, go right ahead.
My answer to the writer who asked this last year, which I shared with the rest, was:
"You can write whatever you want.
You can write to the prompts.
You can totally ignore the prompts and write something completely different.
You can write one play, two plays, or 30 tiny plays, or just a bunch of random scenes, it's up to you.
Hopefully, when the month is done, you have enough raw material to rewrite and play with to last you the rest of the year until next November.
(For example, I got a full-length play out of a similar writing challenge two years running - though they were just very rough drafts on December 1st in those years, they have grown since.
Also got a couple of ten minute plays out of those challenges, too.
Another year, I used the November daily challenge as an excuse to force myself to complete a first draft of a completely different play, writing every day until I got it done, and then played around with all the challenges that had been piling up the first couple of weeks for the remainder of the month.)
The point is just to write every day. We're trying to encourage writing, focusing on prioritizing your playwriting each day for a whole month. Doesn't need to be great, doesn't even need to be good, just needs to be something.
You can engage the challenge at any level you wish - as long as you're writing :)"
The first year I participated in Red Theater's writing challenge out of Chicago, about two weeks in, there was a prompt that jump-started an idea I would probably never have written otherwise (don't worry, I'll be sharing that one later).
Then, about four days later, I thought of that first scene again and thought, "Hey, I think I have another idea involving those same characters. Let's revisit them." And I ended up doing that every day for almost two weeks during that November. When I finally ran out of gas, didn't know what to write next, I looked up and I had over a hundred pages of content, and said to myself, "Well, that's a play." It didn't have a shape or structure yet, but clearly my brain wanted to tell a story with those characters.
So after a couple more days of writing prompts getting me to the end of the month of November writing other things, I returned to that play and kept rewriting until it turned into a proper script. That same year, I also accidentally wrote a nice little ten minute play as well that I still send out to theaters calling for ten minute play submissions.
Another year, I used the fact I knew I'd be expected to write something new every day for the November challenge to force myself to push through the first draft of a play I was already working on.
One year, I went back and revisited an idea I started developing for several days but abandoned during the previous year's writing challenge because I wanted to keep exploring it and the challenge forced me every day in the month of November to push myself a little harder to conjure ideas - and the writing prompts would often give me inspiration for possible scenes, encounters and conflicts between characters.
I would sometimes combine elements from two different challenges in ways that seemed more interesting to me, or revisiting a challenge later in November that I'd skipped over when it was first posted.
Use the writing challenge during each day of November to do whatever you want, accomplish whatever goals you want to set for yourself.
But the most important thing:
Just write. Something. Every day. For a month.
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