Identify your acting troupe and your audience. For example, decide if your script will be performed by children for adults, by children for children or by adults for children. Additionally, determine the age group of the children involved; for example, a play for a 1st-grade class will be different than one for a 7th-grade class.
Determine the play's plot and themes. Choose themes that are relevant to the children's lives, and plots that are not too complicated for them. For example, younger children are likely to prefer simple plots with themes and ideas they've seen before in fairy tales, whereas older children may prefer subplots and more complex themes relating to things like society, family dynamics and peer pressure.
Bounce ideas off of children you know. Something that may seem like a good idea to an adult may be completely lost on a child, so find a few children in the age group you've identified and ask them what they think about it.
Establish characters and the play's setting. This will allow you to begin planning costumes and set design while you are writing the play.
Create an outline for your script. Two or three acts is typical, with each lasting about 15 or 20 minutes. The first act should introduce the characters and exposition to the audience, providing information necessary to understand the plot. the second act usually establishes the main conflict in the story, while the third act concludes the action.
Become familiar with stage directions and other theater-related terminology. Use this kind of wording, like "ENTER STAGE RIGHT" and "EXIT UPSTAGE LEFT," to direct your characters. Knowing this before you begin writing your script will allow you to visualize the movement of your characters more easily as you write.
Begin writing your play by listing the characters and the setting. A list could look like this:
CAST OF CHARACTERS:
Judy Winkler - a 12-year-old girl horse wrangler
Mr. Winkler - Judy's father
CIRCA AND SETTING: Present time, a suburb of New York City
Write the play. Divide the script into acts and scenes. Typically, action that takes place in the first act in the second scene would be written like this: (I, ii.), using upper-case Roman numerals for the act and lower-case numerals for the scenes. Insert stage directions in italics, and list character names in bold.
Edit your script. Read it aloud to ensure that the dialogue flows naturally and is written in a way that children actually speak. For example, it is unlikely that a child would say, "With whom did you arrive to the party?" They would be more likely to say "Who did you go to the party with?"