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"Always question the obvious"
Gary Henderson
Gary Henderson
Michael Wright talks about getting back to the "ah-huh!" moment of your play. He says rewriting can sometimes get too gluey and you need to remember what grabbed you about your play in the first place.
Wright is an Associate Professor of Creative Writing and Theatre at the University of Tulsa, Oklahoma. His books on writing include Playwriting in Process, Playwriting Masterclass and Playwriting at Work and Play: Developmental Programs and Their Processes.
He suggests six line exercises when you're stuck. The beauty of having to write something in six lines is that there's no time for set-up, exposition, monologues or boredom.
Another exercise was to invent a story using eight or ten plot points. We then changed the order and took out anything extraneous. Many of us had the same experience - we dropped two plot points and point six became point two. Spooky.
Wright referred to the patterns of movement in your script as tension and release, like inhalation and exhalation.
On the art of rewriting - "Say you're stuck with your play... move it out of the mode of being a play to re-think and re-explore. Write it as a treatment or pitch, like you only have one page's worth of time to sell your play idea to a producer: what would be the hottest, most dramatically compelling things you could say about the play's story and characters? Anything to make it fresh and exciting and to bring out the most interesting colours."
Kristo Sagor is a young, passionate playwright from Germany who almost bounced off the walls. He eats sweet pastries for breakfast and doesn't like taking breaks. Since 1999 Kristo has had twelve plays published, which have been presented in many theatres, in Germany, Sydney and New York.
Sagor is also a maths freak and that's basically how he works out his structure. He never rewrites. I repeat, he never rewrites. He says it bores him and makes him lose his original idea. Instead, he calculates and mathematically creates plots and characters in his head before he sits down to explode out a first draft in a week.
I can best describe Sagor's workshop in the manner in which it was given: a mix of insightful tid bits delivered in a passionate, if not slightly mad manner:
"Stage directions should be poetic - you'll kick your reader out of the fantasy by using words like ‘actor' and ‘stage'... If you don't know why something in your play is beautiful, that's okay... The grammar of a language is the sum of all the rules without knowing... The beauty of your story is the mathematical connection of the characters and the scenes... Language is your best tool... Words that describe ‘good' and ‘bad' give the generation of your character i.e. cool, hip... An audience will love it if you can explain and describe things they can't express themselves... The world is complicated so art should be complex... Ah, Kristo, can we have a break soon? Use heart-opener words, where the audience will say, "Oh, my Grandmother used that word"... Use text differently i.e. create a sonnet like an obituary that explains the demise of a relationship... Use patterns, break them without people knowing it... No matter what a character is saying, they're really talking about their relationship with other characters or the world... Kristo. Break. Now... A squeal is the death of magic... Keep the secret of your character from your audience... A good title is one where other writers say, ‘Shit, that should have been my idea'... Lucky we don't all smoke."