I have to agree with PoorFishy. Writing a script for puppets is not that different then writing for actors. Action should be a part of any script in my opinion. I personally do not want to go to a play or movie and just listen to the actors recite words. I want to also "see" them tell the story.

When I worked with StoneLion Puppet Theater we started with scripts then built the characters for them.  Yes true once we got into rehearsal we often added lines or changed things some but not that much. In fact no more then a "legit" play would. When a script is new it is not uncommon in any venue for it to be re-worked the first time it is produced. I've even worked on shows that were tweaked even on their second round being produced.

I agree with Shawn it is easier to base a new character on one you know from somewhere else or a combination.  Our main character started out as a cross between Grover's childlike misunderstandings and Ernie's silliness from Sesame Street with a voice from Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure,I have to say "Excellent" a few times to get into the voice. We have to start with the voice, of the person who will do the puppet, what are they able and comfortable doing. Recently alligator puppet tried a french accent, it was hard to write for her until I heard the puppeteer saying some lines and got a feel for her.  She did research online and listened to some french accents, here is one example. http://www.wikihow.com/Fake-a-Convincing-French-Accent 

I feel that the initial question I posed has morphed in to a discussion I can no longer meaningfully contribute to as I don't have the experience, but I'm very much enjoying reading each of your interpretations of the process and the different methods that can be applied.

A win for the Lair though! I've spent my weekend in front of a mirror with a video camera and my two favourite puppets. I think I may have had a click moment! I am far from developing dialogue but I was holding Mr Lupvet (my first puppet that stands almost as tall as me) and realised I could manipulate him in ways I hadn't before. It sounds really stupid but I had built him as a vent styled puppet to sit on my lap and due to his size, was stuck in that mind set. Picking him up and carrying him to put him down I had a light bulb moment and realised that he is far better on my hip where he can hide behind my shoulder, hug me, bury into me, basically position himself like a sloth or a monkey would. Whilst that in itself is certainly not a routine, I think I finally (four months after making him!) can see characteristics in him. He's timid, likes to hide behind me and would most likely need encouragement from an audience before he'd interact. I'm finally feeling like there is a developing character in Mr Lupvet and am very excited! Now that I've had this 'click' moment, I think I'm understanding some of what you're saying. Just need to keep playing I guess in order to get to know him better and try to develop some sort of scripted routine.

So I guess my response now to the initial question I posed would be to commence the process with an empty house, a truckload of tunes and an ample supply of beer.  Or better still, as many of you have suggested, avoid this dilemma entirely by creating a script and building puppets to fit.

And Na, if we are destined to be non-performers, I will be heart broken that I can't show others what my puppets are capable of, but will have no shame in that fact - provided I guess that my characters can bring joy to someone else who has those skill. Although now that I've written that, I'm even more determined to crack it.

Sorry I have been away from this for a while. I'll reply individually to points if I feel necessary but overall:

Thanks for all the points regarding non-performers writing scripts. PoorFishy in particular hit home that I tend to put up a mental block when writing puppetry scripts and should just approach them as I always do.

In fact, I had been thinking of an idea for a script for my super secret shadow puppet project, which will use my newly designed shadow puppets. I have gotten so engrossed over a whole year of the technical - the design, the manufacture, new materials, new building methods - that I forgot one of my initial ideas for the design.

(Not to get off track, but the new design as showcased here has a hole in the head: it was originally going to allow incorporation of symbols and text shadow props, for the purposes of showing dialogue rather than speaking it. http://puppetsandstuff.com/community/index.php/topic,6895.0.html )

In returning to the idea of writing the script first and designing the puppet second - which I think will be the best option for me - this is helping me immensely to reconnect with what I was originally planning. More to the point, I think I've finally cleared up this issue I have in my head of writing for puppets. I think I decided at some point that since puppets were inanimate and a visual medium, that writing for them somehow had different principles to playwrighting in general - I should have known better I guess.

You're all totally right in that trying to find some sort of 'trick' and ignoring what's works best for oneself is the wrong way to go about it.

The other thing is that the script idea I have been working on is an adaptation from a text. Applying simple principles, such as finding ways to extend the action, or breaking the text into actions rather than words, is helping me a lot. Particularly when it comes to designing the puppet as I can easily understand what the puppet has to do - and hand-in-hand work backwards and forwards as necessary between puppet design and script allows me to finesse anything that is easy on paper but impractical in real life.

Thanks everyone for your input, as usual invaluable and informative

Well, I'm a bit late to this topic so don't know if you really need anymore input but I'll go ahead and throw my two cents in. I agree with what you've said about how writing a play for puppets isn't really that different from writing for live actors. Obviously there may be some performance limitations that you may need to consider but really those are kind of minor details. What sort of story you want to tell is what's most important. I mean look at the Muppets. They've got bears, frogs, pigs, monsters and whatevers all working together but the stories that they tell aren't really so different from the kind told with live actors.

Addressing Lizzie's Lair's original concerns I would reference that old writing adage of "write what you know". Really I think what's at the heart of that is writing from your experiences. If you worked in an office for years you wouldn't necessarily have to write about life in an office. The politics and gossip and other things that you witnessed in that environment would be good source material for many other settings as well.

Now that being said, the one puppet play that I've actually written is based around my experiences working in a retail store in a shopping mall. I wanted to write about some of the crazy goings on that I've enjoyed in my 25 years of retail management. So for me I first came up with a basic idea for what story I wanted to tell. Then I wrote up a short synopsis. As I did this I looked at what characters needed to be a part of the story. Then I went about deciding what their look and personalities would be. I guess their personalities really were developed in the scriptwriting portion though. After I had designed all the characters I wrote up a script using Celtx and then I drew up storyboards to go with my script. Although I had already formed the characters personalities pretty well we did a couple of "table reads" with some of the cast and that helped hone my idea of some of the characters a bit more.

Glad you're both having success Na and Lizzie!

Thanks for your input. I love hearing how other people have approached this. I am still finding it an incredibly daunting and drawn out process but I guess Rome wasn't built in a day. I did a mini performance at home for some of my friends. It may have been the fact I had fed them well and then fed them alcohol but they all seemed to enjoy it! They even took photos! It's a humble beginning but hopefully I can improve with time.

I agree in using fork tales, go to the library and search for books about stories, either for children o grown ups, I have found good material to work with, exemple what about snow white or red riding hood with a little of twist on the story to make it that way you feel comfortable.

greeting to all from chicago

HI All,
I have written quite a few scripts, but for short TV things, and now a feature we are trying to do. Our first live shows many moons ago had different dynamics than doing TV, and our first TV programs we did not actually script, and then we slowly got the idea, and then years more experience and I wrote a computer program to help me organize my ideas quickly, and to inspire me to fill the gaps and make sure I had the essential elements that exist in all scripts. It took me 6 months to learn enough coding to write the first program, and then I found it would only work in Windows. So I was not able to share it, except with those I was directly in touch with here.(It is being used by an animation company my son works with, to quickly check your story ideas with.)
   Recently I have revisited the topic and I have basically put it into an HTML web page.I coded it this week and would like some feedback. I have not worked out the code to save projects yet, so you have to keep the page open whilst you work on it, and I suppose you can save the webpage to use the form on your own comp. Anyhow, anyone interested can give it a look see, and let me know what you think.
It is at http://philipstephens.webs.com/scripter.htm

It is basically a fill the boxes , in any order, form...  input how many pages you want, click the button at the end and the boxes are reorganized and page numbers added , as a rough guide to when things should happen in a coherent way, so your script runs to time, and has a basic traditional structure.  You can mess it around all you like later and you don´t have to stick to it either, but I find the exercise good, to make sure I have thought through all the basic and key elements are covered , or at least thought  about.
As I said, If you could have a look see and let me know your thoughts, I would appreciate it.

Thanks for your interest.

HI All,
I have written quite a few scripts, but for short TV things, and now a feature we are trying to do. Our first live shows many moons ago had different dynamics than doing TV, and our first TV programs we did not actually script, and then we slowly got the idea, and then years more experience and I wrote a computer program to help me organize my ideas quickly, and to inspire me to fill the gaps and make sure I had the essential elements that exist in all scripts. It took me 6 months to learn enough coding to write the first program, and then I found it would only work in Windows. So I was not able to share it, except with those I was directly in touch with here.(It is being used by an animation company my son works with, to quickly check your story ideas with.)
   Recently I have revisited the topic and I have basically put it into an HTML web page.I coded it this week and would like some feedback. I have not worked out the code to save projects yet, so you have to keep the page open whilst you work on it, and I suppose you can save the webpage to use the form on your own comp. Anyhow, anyone interested can give it a look see, and let me know what you think.
It is at http://philipstephens.webs.com/scripter.htm

It is basically a fill the boxes , in any order, form...  input how many pages you want, click the button at the end and the boxes are reorganized and page numbers added , as a rough guide to when things should happen in a coherent way, so your script runs to time, and has a basic traditional structure.  You can mess it around all you like later and you don´t have to stick to it either, but I find the exercise good, to make sure I have thought through all the basic and key elements are covered , or at least thought  about.
As I said, If you could have a look see and let me know your thoughts, I would appreciate it.

Thanks for your interest.

I think your page is a great idea, though I'm not sure if it differs greatly or offers any benefits over, currently available scriptwriting programs you can buy.

One suggestion is that you could find some way to email the end result to a person. I'm not 100% sure how you could do that, as I've only done it using php myself and not html, but I'm sure there would be some useful resources out there that has some ideas.

The other thing to do is check for validation:
http://validator.w3.org/check?verbose=1&uri=http%3A%2F%2Fphilipstephens.webs.com%2Fscripter.htm

Have you considered finding a web form creator program? By googling "web form creator" I found a number of sites that offered them. Most are paid (with limited free services), but I'm sure there are free options if you look hard enough. One site suggested using Google Docs, but I'm not sure how that would work.

Oh, this one is free and it looks like it's done in html:
http://www.phpform.org/

I see you're using Freewebs (now Webs) which I gave up on 6 years ago. You may want to consider moving to a decent web host, which offers more functionality; often things like form creators. It usually costs about the same or less, and you get better stuff with it. Just a thought.

Hi, I know that's topic is very old, but I think that I have something to say.
I belive there are no rules about, if you start whit the puppets or the script, in other hand if you start whit script you can use the characters for your text to build your puppet, and here is the great thing, puppets can do many things that we can't do, puppets can fly, can have a mounth bigger then he's body, etc. But I agree whit puppetainer this is a minor question.
The most important is tell a great history!
Here we have centurys of study that can help us, so study the histore an fundaments of drama is very helpfull.
Come back to the greek's here's are the art of poetry by Aristotle ( http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/6763 ) . We have many advances sinse this text but is important understanding the pillars of the drama, this book can be hard, you can look for a modern explanation of the concepts in the book, but is important to learn.
The central point of al history is conflict, every time anybody want something but have someone or something in opposition.
Some scholar belive that all historys can put in two kinds:
"The jorney of the hero" and " the foreign comes to town".
I hope be usefull, bye.