Learning from Great Writers: Sarah Kane x Brevity

Improve your writing with this 5-minute workshop

Welcome to my writing workshop, where I borrow techniques from great writers to help improve your writing (and mine too).

Today, we’re looking at writing with brevity. Our example is the 20th century British playwright, Sarah Kane (1971–1999).

Today’s Menu

1. The main idea
2. The example
3. Apply it!
4. Who was Sarah Kane?

1. The main idea

Sarah Kane rose to prominence in the 1990s and was widely regarded as the leading British playwright of her generation. Her brilliance was sadly short-lived. She struggled with severe depression and took her own life at age 28. Her printed work consists of five plays, a short television film called “Skin” and two articles for The Guardian newspaper.

Kane’s plays are an autopsy of humanity’s underbelly. Her characters dominate, humiliate, rape and mutilate others, but they also suffer, yearn for change and express hope. Violence is never gratuitous in her work. She wrote with the deepest ethical regard for life.