“How Playwrights Use Software: Towards Writing Support Tools for Performances”. Chen, A. S., Li, I., Huq, P., Donaldson, R., Ringland, K. To appear in ACM Creativity & Cognition (C&C) 2026. 🎖️ Best Paper Award.

Playwrights use writing support tools to craft scripts for the stage. However, these tools are not attuned to the challenges of creating live performance and navigating theater ecosystems, instead complicating and constraining playwrights' processes. Through thematic analysis of focus groups with 13 playwrights, we explored how playwrights' creative needs and communities inform their tool use, and how playwrights adapt to tools that fail to meet their needs. We found three themes in playwriting processes: scaffolding communities of practice, incorporating voice and body into writing processes, and managing scripts across the theater lifecycle. We discuss lenses of embodied practice and non-normative time through which researchers can better understand creative writers' overlooked writing behaviors and processes. To guide the development of playwriting support tools, we offer design considerations around enabling speech, visualizing performers, and contextualizing version management. By spotlighting playwrights, we illuminate how performance can inform creative writing support research.