How to Write a Puppet Show Skit
- 1). Identify the objective of your puppet skit. In most cases, it will be to entertain your audience with a visual story along the lines of a fairy tale, myth or fable. It may even include sing-along tunes, rhymes and clapping to encourage viewer participation. Puppet skits can also fill an educational purpose such as depicting important events in history, teaching letters, numbers and colors, or imparting lessons and parables from religious origins.
- 2). Determine the length of your skit. Skits can be as short as two minutes or as long as 15 minutes. The younger your audience, the shorter your script should be in order to hold their attention. Likewise, the shorter the script, the less complex the story and the fewer characters, dialogue and backdrops are needed to convey it. Each page of your script is equal to one minute of playing time. A six minute script, for example, would only be six pages.
- 3). Divide the estimated running time of your script by three. This tells you how many pages you can allocate to the beginning, middle and ending of your skit. Even simple puppet skits follow the same three-act structure as short stories, novels and movies. Specifically, the conflict and main characters are introduced in the first act, complications ensue in the second act and everything is resolved by the third. Using the example of a six minute skit, each act would be two minutes long.
- 4). Derive inspiration from classic children's stories, regional folklore, Greek, Roman and Norse mythology, history books and current events. Whatever source material or original concept you decide to develop, distill it to its core elements. If, for example, you adapt a skit from the story of "Sleeping Beauty," six minutes of performance time won't accommodate multiple backdrops and a full kingdom of characters. Decide which ones are essential to the tale you're telling and omit the rest.
- 5). Emphasize action and slapstick over dialogue if you're writing for young children. Give your characters names that are consistent with their personalities. "Snidely La Grim," for instance, is better suited to a villain than a happy hero. Keep your dialogue short and snappy, not meandering or preachy. Minimize character back-story, recognizing that children live in the moment, not the past.
- 6). Read your dialogue out loud after you have written it. Oftentimes what looks perfectly fine in print will sound awkward, unnatural or long-winded when it is actually spoken.