“Just look at your own plays. The ones that the critics like are the ones where the girls have guns.” That’s what Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Marsha Norman (The Color Purple, ‘night Mother, Secret Garden) claims that Mel Gussow (New York Times theatre critic) told her. He was primarily referring to the play she wrote about a girl who commits suicide. And ironically, Norman spent the last year writing on Law and Order with a staff full of playwrights and a bunch of gun-filled plotlines.

Why did this catch my eye when reading The Dramatist, a magazine I assume most of you have never seen? Because Norman was asked, “Why is it so hard for women writers?” Dramatists Guild Executive Director and playwright Gary Garrison noted, “In the Guild office last week, we conducted a study to discover how many women were produced in the United States last year in our major regional, Off-Broadway and Broadway theatres. Of all the plays that were done, 80% were done by white men; 20% were done by women, and of that 20%, 3% were women of color.”

There is no dearth of talented female playwrights or of talented female playwrights of color. I’ve read and seen their work, met them, studied with them, encouraged and been encouraged by them. And as far as I can tell, there is a great number of them. I’m curious, actually, what is the percentage of women in the field? Is it close to 50%?

Now I think the intriguing thing is that Marsha Norman replied, “… I do really think that men who run theatre classically want there to be a chase and then some kind of event, and then the thing’s over, right? Whereas women who write plays tend to be not so involved with what the big event is, but what it is that the people know in the story; how the people are led to each other; what they do for each other.”

This really rings true to me, both in my own work and in the work that I love. It’s about how the characters got into their particular situation and how they’re going to find their way out. And it’s less about what they say to each other than how they say it– or, more importantly, what they really mean. That’s just so much more interesting to me than bang, you’re dead. Nothing against Theo and Bang Bang. I think his novel is quite character-driven.

When I shared my newest play, Little Bosnia, with the Crucial Minutiae gang, Ethan mentioned that he’s starting to recognize my voice. “What, what is it?” I wanted to know. I think every writer wants to have a voice, and I’m still not sure I could describe mine. He said that the character talk across each other and then he used some comparison to angles and trajectories. I loved it. I was a little less thrilled to hear the consensus that I need to develop the arc of the play. I’m sure I do. But I also think that my arcs are different than the Aristotelian. Is there room for that? Can a different arc lead to an even more satisfying catharsis?

What about other genres? I’ve heard women lament their scant place in the t.v. writers’ room and the recent uproar from female screenwriters about the reticence to feature female protagonists. What about fiction? Or even non-fiction? Do female writers have an easier time there?

I read this interview in The Dramatists just after watching No Country for Old Men, which almost seems to prove the point about the way a gun automatically creates events (even if it doesn’t have bullets). Courtney mentioned a few weeks ago that she had issues with the ending and wondered if I did too. The answer is yes. It reminded me of the ending of The Sopranos. But now I’m wondering if it was a let-down because it lacked that typical shoot-out, then resolution arc. Based on Marsha Norman’s description of gendered writing, does the gritty Coen brothers film have a feminine ending? I know one thing… I would have found it a hell of a lot more satisfying if that Texas girl had picked up a gosh-dern gun!

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All the World is Cristina Pippa’s weekly column.