Not Writing Excuse

I fell off my bike two weeks ago and strained the soft tissue around my left collar bone. It hurts. I'm not writing much. But I'm so antsy to get back to my Y.A. novel Green Tara.

Yesterday's Tricksters

Hijacked!

“Party Girls” is my first stage play, and it’s a real departure for me—a teen comedy/horror short. It was recently produced at the Bloomington Playwrights Project. and it got lots of laughs and a good review. So, why do I feel like the story was hijacked?

Here’s what happened: The director and actors ignored all my stage directions (and some of the dialog) and made the whole tone much cruder than I imagined. When the girls, zombies who talk (I’ve taken liberties with the genre), come out of their initial death trance they’re gagging. In the production when they gagged, they spit out disgusting cottage cheese with food coloring. It certainly looked like vomit, so they nailed the special effects. At the end, when the girl stabs the boy, it was done in full view and viciously and with a very realistic version of his disemboweled gut (more disgusting food). That’s the moment in the script where I’d indicated that they fall out of view and she stabs him accidentally. She says, “Oops.” I disliked the SHAUN OF THE DEAD tone. I’m pretty sure that, as produced, any of the subtle jokes were lost in the gore.

I really don’t like the current crop of zombie films or horror in general, and think that our culture has grown too fond of violence as entertainment. You and I are both wondering how I ended up contributing to the coarsening of our culture. At first I resented the fact that the others had hijacked my story and made it into this crude and violent piece. Then I had to accept the fact that I was the one who wrote “Hillary stabs Calvin” and no matter how accidental the actors might play the stabbing in the future, I’ve added one more to the body count.

SO, I’ve given considerable thought to what my character is really after. It’s NOT about revenge or the desire to eat human flesh. That’s just not interesting to me. I think I have a solution. However, the audience laughed at the crude version. So was my younger director more tuned into the audience and serving them? I don’t know if they’ll laugh or yawn when I rebuild the story with my retro sensibility.

Break Time

Two weeks ago I turned in a 143 page manuscript. The following weekend I watched my short play in a "world-premier" four-night run, making changes after every performance.

Last weekend I celebrated with a grand party our city puts on every year: The Lotus Festival -- world class music from all over the world, brought to our backyard. And I still need more playtime.

Back when I've refueled.

Write what you know

This morning I detected a lot of uncertainty. I heard, I'm "thinking about..." and I'm still "figuring out" from many of the writers in the room. This feeling goes with the territory. It is common for all writers at many stages of story development. So, know that you're in good company.
Two things to say to ourselves to overcome the fear, what if it's terrible?:
1. K.I.S.S., Keep It Simple, Sweetheart. (Remember: circle, triangle, square, trapezoid)
&
2. Write what you know. This doesn't mean every event or every character comes from personal experience. This means start with the story points or character points that you know. For example, if you haven't yet determined the main character's super objective, a.k.a. action throughline, look at all the story events you've collected and see if any of them fit into stages of the hero's journey. Perhaps clarity about the bigger arc will emerge. AND IT MEANS, above all, WRITE. "Thinking about" or "figuring out" the story are meaningless activities. WRITE. Because, writing is a process and we discover what we don't know about the story and the character by writing.

Dramatic Scenes

Great dramatic scenes all have structure, just as a complete work has.

1. The beginning, what the character wants.
2. The middle, or rising conflict, who or what that gets in the way.
3. The ending, the surprise outcome known as 'the turn.'

The dramatic conflict of the middle seems fairly easy to grasp. Yet, a soft choice for the beginning often leads to a lot of yelling and demands, but not much real drama, and no real chance for the scene to turn. The secret is in defining the goal.

The character's goal at the scene level is a specific objective, achieveable, & measurable. It includes taking positive action.

For clarity's sake, it's wise to state the goal exactly on the nose.

Let me give you an example from personal experience.

A short play I wrote called "Party Girls" was just produced at the Bloomington Playwrights Project. I'd done significant rewrites with the director and the cast during the early rehearsal period, but then didn't see a run through any time in tech rehearsal, trusting that all the basics were in place. The setting is in a side yard of a house where young high schoolers are partying. Opening night I was mortified that there was no sound to establish a sense of space, which meant no crickets, no dance music from the just off-stage party, no ring tone from the girl's cell. No sense of direction, or that the girls were on their way to a party.

Wait a minute. True, the absence of sound was deafening, but I'm ashamed to admit that somewhere in the the rewrites I'd dropped the girls' objective. This pair of teenage girls are on their way to a party, and the entire short is what happens between the edge of the yard and the back door. Nothing's going to stop them. The throughline is very simple, yet very specific. But I'd dropped the ball at the script level. No one in the audience knew where the girls were, where they were going or why. Thankfully, enough bazaar things happen in the first couple of the minutes that energy didn't sag.

Even so, I added two lines (now the fourth and fifth lines of the piece):

Kiki-I didn't even want to come to the party.
Hillary--Well I do. Come on!

The next night, the performance was so much better. Even without the sound design, we all knew exactly what was going on. And when the sounds were there the third night, even better.

TIP: As my friend Jennifer VanSijll says, "clarity trumps."

Value of a Deadline

I'm spending time with the greatest motivator of all, a deadline.

I need to turn in a rewrite (2nd draft) of the children's novel I'm writing for Quest Atlantis.

Back later.