Worksheet: Collaborative Drama Script

Cover teacher — you need no subject knowledge and no drama space

Print: this sheet, one per pupil. Pupils work in threes. If there are computers, each three shares one document (Word Online or Google Docs) and uses comments rather than talking over each other; with no computers the lesson is identical on paper — one script sheet per group, passed between the three roles. This is a writing lesson: nobody has to perform, and the room does not need to be cleared.

Run: 5 min read the commission and agree roles · 8 min beat plan — all three pupils, out loud, one sheet · 20 min draft the scene, Writer at the page, Editor commenting, Continuity checking the plan · 10 min rotate roles once and revise · 5 min read the scene aloud quietly in the group and complete the change log · 2 min tidy.

Collect: this sheet from every pupil, plus one script per group. The change log is the evidence of collaboration — a script with an empty log scores nothing for this DCF element.

What you are doing

Your group of three has been commissioned to write one scene of about two pages. You are not writing a third each and stapling it together: you are writing one scene, taking it in turns to hold the pen, with the other two doing jobs that are just as demanding as writing. Every change anyone makes gets logged, so the group can show who did what.

The commission

Title: The Last Bus

Setting: A bus shelter on the edge of a small Welsh town. Late evening, October, drizzle. The timetable in the frame is two years out of date.

Characters: two only.

JOSS (17), waiting for the 22:40, has been waiting since 21:15.
MAIR (60s), arrives at 22:35 carrying a bin bag, knows the buses better than the timetable does.

The engine: Joss has found something in the shelter that belongs to Mair. Mair does not want it back. Your group decides what it is — but it must be small enough to hold and important enough to argue about.

Rules: the scene runs in real time, nobody leaves the shelter until the last line, and the last bus does not come.

Roles — agree these before you write

Beat plan

Six beats. A beat is one change in what a character wants. Fill this in together before anybody writes a line of dialogue.

How to lay a script out

Character names on their own line in capitals. Stage directions in the present tense, describing only what an audience can see or hear. Directions for how a line is said go in brackets, indented, above the line — and you should need very few of them.

Draft the scene

Change log

Every change made by somebody who was not the Writer at the time. One line each.

Role	Who (initials)	What that person actually does
Writer		Holds the pen or the keyboard. Writes the lines. Does not stop to argue — keeps going.
Editor		Reads behind the Writer. Marks lines that are too long, on the nose, or say what the action already shows. Suggests a replacement, never just a cross.
Continuity		Guards the beat plan, the time of night, the object and the two characters' ages. Says "that contradicts beat 3" out loud when it does.

Success criteria

My group agreed roles and a six-beat plan before writing any dialogue, and the finished scene follows the plan or logs why it changed.
I did my role properly when it was not my turn to write — my comments or continuity catches are in the change log.
Every suggestion I made came with a replacement line, not just an objection.
The script uses standard layout: capitalised character names, present-tense stage directions, sparing bracketed directions.
The scene obeys the commission: two characters, one shelter, real time, the bus never comes.

Beat	What happens	What JOSS wants	What MAIR wants
1
2
3
4
5
6

Who	Role then	What they changed	Why

Collaborative drama script