Worked example: Collaborative Drama Script

What this is

One group of three's completed beat plan, the opening two-thirds of their scene, and their change log. Show it after the beat plan stage. The most useful part for pupils is the change log — it is the only place their collaboration is visible, and it is the part they are most likely to leave blank. Initials S.O., B.T. and H.R. are invented.

Their beat plan

Beat	What happens	JOSS wants	MAIR wants
1	Mair arrives, refuses the wet seat, small talk about the timetable	To be left alone	To find out how long he has been there
2	Joss admits the 21:40 never came either	Someone to confirm he is not stupid for waiting	To not have to say the buses stopped in June
3	Joss produces the reading glasses he found taped inside the timetable frame	To hand them over and be done	To deny they are hers
4	Mair says they are not hers. The case has her late husband's initials on it	To be believed about where he found them	To make him put them down
5	Mair explains who taped them there, and why, and that she has walked past them for two years	To understand	To not cry in front of a teenager
6	22:40 passes. Neither of them moves. Joss puts the glasses back in the frame	To give her a way out	To stay where she is

Evidences criterion 1: six beats, and in every one the two characters want different things, which is what makes the dialogue write itself. The object is small, holdable and worth arguing about, as the commission required.

The scene they wrote (beats 1 to 4)

SCENE ONE. A bus shelter on the Pentre road. 22:35. Drizzle. JOSS sits on the flip-down seat, hood up, hands in his sleeves. A rucksack at his feet has gone dark with rain. MAIR enters with a bin bag, shakes it off, and stands. MAIR That seat's wet. JOSS I know. MAIR Long time? JOSS Twenty past nine. MAIR nods slowly. She reads the timetable in the frame without moving closer to it. MAIR Right. JOSS The twenty-one forty never came either. MAIR No. JOSS So it's definitely coming, the twenty-two forty. Because two in a row would be - MAIR Have you got someone you can ring? JOSS That's not an answer. MAIR No. Pause. JOSS takes his hands out of his sleeves. He is holding a glasses case. JOSS These are yours. MAIR (not looking) They're not. JOSS They were taped inside the timetable frame. Behind the plastic. I've been staring at it for an hour and twenty minutes, I'd have found the Crown Jewels. MAIR Put them back. JOSS There's initials on the case. MAIR I know what's on the case. JOSS holds the case out. MAIR does not take it. The drizzle gets heavier. Neither of them looks at the road.

Evidences criterion 4: names capitalised on their own line, stage directions in the present tense describing only what is visible, and exactly one bracketed direction in forty lines.

Evidences criterion 5: two characters, one shelter, continuous real time, and the bus has still not come. Mair's "No." to "have you got someone you can ring?" is beat 2 doing its job — she answers the question she was not asked.

Their change log

Who	Role then	What they changed	Why
B.T.	Editor	Cut Mair's line "I've lived here sixty years, love, I know when a bus isn't coming" and replaced it with "Right."	The long version told the audience the ending in beat 1. One word keeps it back and is more like her.
H.R.	Continuity	Changed "half nine" to "twenty past nine" in Joss's second line	Beat plan and the commission both say he arrived at 21:15, and he would round down, not up. Contradicted beat 1.
B.T.	Editor	Deleted the direction "(sadly)" on Mair's "Put them back" and added the beat of her not looking at the case instead	Told the actor how to feel. The refusal to look does the same work and the actor can play it.
S.O.	Continuity (after rotation)	Moved "the drizzle gets heavier" from beat 2 to the end of beat 4	We used weather twice in two minutes. Saving it makes the silence at the end of beat 4 land.
H.R.	Editor (after rotation)	Replaced Joss's "Please just take them" with "There's initials on the case."	Begging is weaker than evidence, and it gives Mair something she has to answer. Replacement line agreed in 30 seconds.

Evidences criteria 2 and 3: every entry names the person, their role at the time, the exact change and a reason — and every one of them offers a replacement rather than only a deletion.

Why this response is secure

The beat plan was written first and the scene follows it, so three people writing in turns still produces one scene rather than three.
The non-writing roles did real work: the strongest two lines in the extract ("Right." and "There's initials on the case.") were both Editor replacements, and the log proves it.
Subtext is carried by what is not said — Mair never answers the question about the buses, and that silence is beat 2.
Layout is conventional and consistent, which is what makes a script usable by anyone other than its authors.
The log distinguishes contributions, which is exactly what the Collaboration element is assessed on. An unlogged group scene cannot be marked for it.