Some thoughts today on scene-writing.

So... you've made your map, planned the journey of your characters, identified your protagonists, antagonists, objectives, obstacles and changes. The grand design is there on paper, and now you have to actually begin writing. How do you go about it?

Well, as I've said before, everyone does it differently. As often as not it requires closing your eyes, holding your nose, jumping into the deep end and thrashing around a good deal. But there are a couple of strategies that you may find helpful. Depending on how you think and work (analytically or intuitively) you may want to just write the scene, let it spill out onto the paper (or screen), and think about these things afterwards.

1) Break It Down
It's important to take it one step at a time. Identify a section, or scene, of your play -- it could literally be a single short scene ending in a blackout, or it could be a section of a longer scene -- and concentrate on that. It doesn't have to be the first scene in the play -- you might well want to begin with the last scene because you can see it, vividly, in your head. And it doesn't have to be long. It should, however, contain some kind of crisis (however small) leading to a change in one (or more) of the characters' outlook and/or objective. Remember, this little change doesn't have to be conclusive: it can be quite minor... it's part of the larger journey of the play.

2) Plot it Out
Determine what occurs in this section (for example: Hamlet visits his Mother's bedchamber and kills Polonius.) What has occurred just prior to the scene? Where is each character coming from? What is their emotional state as they begin the scene? What are the objectives of each character as they begin the scene? What does each character in the scene accomplish? Is this what she set out to do? How is each character different at the end of the scene than at the beginning?

Break the scene down into beginning, middle, and end. Think of it as a connect-the-dots drawing, with each dot representing a point in the character's little journey through the scene.

3) Enjoy the Journey
As you write the dialogue, and connect the dots, remember to enjoy the journey. Revel in each emotional stage that the character experiences as they make their way through the scene. Don't be concerned with rushing through to the end. One of the traps that actors fall into is that they "play" the end result of a scene, or speech, or line, at the beginning. They leap over the emotional journey, without allowing the words to take them there one emotional step at a time. They don't allow the individual discoveries and changes to occur. This can happen to writers as well. It's something I'm often guilty of -- I know what has to happen at the end of the scene, and so I write that into the first line... I'm constantly reminding myself that the characters don't know what's going to happen until it actually happens... unlike me, they don't know what they're going to be feeling in five or twenty-five minutes.

4) Stay Open
It's also important to maintain your spontaneity as you write. I always find that, despite the most rigorous planning and detailed road-map, I am inevitably taken by surprise by what comes out of my characters' mouths. They are always striding off in different directions than I had intended. I think that, when you're writing, it's valuable to explore these directions. Often your sub-conscious/intuitive urges are far more accurate and intelligent than your conscious/analytical plans.

If this happens, however, you may well have to either a) rewrite your road-map to incorporate these changes, or b) chuck what you've just written and start again, keeping to the road-map.

5) Identify the Decision Moments
One of the most riveting moments in a play, is when a character has to make a decision. And the audience, aware of the various implications of the various choices, has no idea what the character is about to do. It could go either way. It's riveting because it's full of action, full of suspense. And it doesn't have to be life-or-death. It could be as simple as: will the character answer the phone or not? Check your scene for decision moments. Does your protagonist reach a point where she has to make a choice? Is it the right choice or wrong choice? What does it lead to (i.e. what are the implications for the next scene?)

6) Write Into The Corners
This is much different than writing yourself INTO a corner. It's a similar point to the one I was making above when I spoke of enjoying the journey. Think of your scene as a fascinating room, full of adventure and discovery. Explore the corners of this room. All the nooks and crannys. We are so influenced by the stereo-typical characters and dull, formulaic plots of television and Hollywood, that we often don't take the time in our plays to fully explore the emotional implications of a given moment. Don't let your characters get off easy. If you raise an emotion (such as jealousy or anger) let it really happen -- take it all the way.

7) Be Ready to Rewrite
Once you have ploughed your way through the first draft of a scene, don't think it's finished! I find that all of the really good work happens in rewrites. You have to be willing to take a cold hard look at what you've done, and then chuck the whole thing out and start again. It's this process that separates real writers from non-writers: the willingness to engage in the painstaking, often frustrating process of revision. As Oscar Wilde said: "Talent is the infinite capacity for taking pains." I'll be talking more about this in future posts.

Greg

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Ruth Margraff: Piece of Cake (post to the Librettists and Lyricists Workshop)

THE RECIPE:

One of my favorite recipes for cranking out work under pressure or passion is from my dear mentor Paula Vogel who had us do this even before our fall semester for Brown University's grad playwrighting workshop. These are called Bake-Off Plays and we would write them in 48 hours. We were not allowed to stop writing during that period of time but were welcome to sleep if we could, but we had to set aside that chunk of uninterrupted time. Which happens to work out well if you go away somewhere for the weekend where people can't reach you with the cares of everyday life.

I did this last year by driving to upper Michigan and writing for 4 days in a Wonderland Motel. I'll warn you that this state of mind can be euphoric. It is a level of consciousness that I have come to crave if I go very long without it. In fact as I was telling Zeynep, I just did this somehow here in New York by taking on a catsit so I holed up there in an unfamiliar space so there were no habits there and generated 36 pages of a new play this week!

Of course I'd been researching and "cooking" that play for months, in fact, all summer. And the cooking of ideas is extremely important, stir them, season them, add unexpected ingredients etc. But you may find that your mind knows when it is "ripe" and takes completely over. It is almost like sleeping and sleeping becomes part of the writing as you doze off and realize you know how to finish the scene or, suddenly, see the apple in the garden as having a snake in it....

Give it a try! It's a piece of cake!

Ruth Margraff

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Linda Eisenstein: I've Started -- Now What Do I Do? (post to the Advanced Playwriting Workshop)

Workshop mates:

As our all-too-few weeks together draws toward a close, I can feel the four of you panting, trying to get yet one more round of revisions completed before the curtain falls on our busy little band.

This is all to the good -- you've been an incredibly focused, productive group, and I salute each of you for the excellent work you've done.

At the same time, I can feel the increased heart rate on the other end of the cyber-lifeline, as I hear you all wondering how you're going to keep going.

So here are a few tips on continuing the journey:

1. DEADLINES ARE YOUR FRIEND.

Set yourself manageable but challenging goals for completing a scene, an act, a rewrite. One of the reasons that a workshop like this one can be so productive is that there are implicit deadlines and an ending date. We all go through periods of seed, bloom, and fallow, and unlike Hemingway, all of us can't or won't work every day -- but I find it helpful to trick myself into continuing productivity by putting events on my calendar *that involve other people*. Like: Scheduling a readthru, 4 weeks from now. Call the actors and get them committed. Or, promise somebody -- another writer, a mentor -- that you'll let them read your script by such-and-such a date. Knowing that there's a date on your calendar can keep you moving forward.

2. DON'T BE AFRAID TO SURFACE PESKY QUESTIONS AND REVISIT YOUR INTENTIONS.

If you're having trouble with a section, something that doesn't seem to be working out, clarify your goals. One of the reasons that we've had a good exchange is that we've asked each other specific questions about your scripts -- something I don't understand, or something you're struggling with -- and we've always focused the discussion on how your Intentions are being translated into its Execution. Keep your objectives and intentions in mind. It's always easy to get caught and committed too soon to the structure of scenes you've already written. But if they're not carrying out your objectives for the play, you have to be ready to let them go and find new ways to get your meaning across.

As I said to Andy earlier today, "There are always many ways to skin a cat -- once you've decided that it's a nekkid cat you want."

So keep asking yourself, when a character or scene is eluding you for a moment, things like:
- what are you trying to accomplish here?
- how does it fit with your overall plan?
- is it taking up the right amount of space? or too much, or too little?

3. STEERING FOR HARBOR.

Now: I know full well that becoming clear about your objectives and intention(s) for the play, so that you can craft its execution more consciously, comes to different people at different times. Some writers know from the get-go exactly where they want to go, steer for it, outline, and boom, boom, boom they crank out the scenes. But for some of us who work from a hazier intuitive place (I'm one of these creatures), this is a "mid-game" phenomenon, because our earlier writing is a process of discovery -- sometimes we don't know until we're much further along what we're really writing about. Sometimes we don't know until we've got half a play -- sometimes not even 'til we hear a readthrough out loud and hear what an audience is hearing.

But it's my contention that you can't effectively *rewrite* until you know where you're headed, and until you know what experience you want the AUDIENCE to have. 'Til then, you're exploring your material. After you start thinking about the audience's experience, and trying to shape *it*, you're finally in a real redraft mode, rewriting your play toward production.

Sometimes I've said to you "You have 2 (or 3 or more) plays battling inside your piece. Play A seems to be about this, Play B seems to be about that. You have to decide which one you're writing." Learning to detect what's hidden under the surface of a play is always what I try to do as a dramaturg and teacher -- then I see my job as bringing that information to your attention, so you can decide what you're doing.

Part of continuing as a working playwright is learning how to be your own dramaturg -- that is, learning to be precise about what you're really after, "hearing" what the audience is receiving, and learning how to steer the ship in that direction. When you learn how to do this -- that is, speak clearly about your intentions, and sculpt them -- it helps solve many, many problems that face playwrights -- including the ubiquitous miscommunications with directors, actors, and producers that all of us face at one time or another.

Happy wrighting,

Linda

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Diana Wagman: Pushing Characters to the Limit (post to the Introductory Screenwriting Workshop)

Dear All:

A continuing discussion of character -- character being the single most important element in a screenplay. I just heard Ben Kingsley speak and it was fascinating to hear about character from an actor's (and such a fine actor's) point of view. He said what fascinates him most about a character is their inevitability. Everyone has their constraints, their limits, their borders that can't be breached -- as an actor, he starts there and works backwards to find the character. He said you don't know anyone until you back them into a corner, until they're pushed until they can be pushed no further. And, he said, there you find drama.

He talked about SCHINDLER'S LIST, and TWELFTH NIGHT and DEATH AND THE MAIDEN. In each case, he talked over and over about inevitablity. When you reach the climax of the story, he said, you must feel with the character's action, bad or good, despicable or admirable, "what else could they do?" It's inevitable for his character in DEATH AND THE MAIDEN to confess to the horrible crimes Sigourney Weaver accuses him of. Kingsley believed in his character's complete innocence, but he knew, when pushed to the limit, to save his life, he would confess to things he didn't do. Mel Gibson didn't confess anything in BRAVEHEART, even as he was disemboweled -- it would have been totally out of his character to ever give in.

As writers, I think it's very important to know what our characters would do when pushed to their limits. And, in those limits comes real drama. Alvaro, our workshop member from Venezuela, has a terrifying opening scene where a boy has his ears and nose cut off. He cannot make a sound or his father will die. The boy is stronger than his father, but they both die anyway. The antagonist, also a boy in that opening scene, and his father (the evil commander) watch -- I'm sure we'll find out how strong the antagonist is -- his parallel to that boy when pushed to his own limits.

They're not always limits of terror. They can be funny situations. Even in a romance or a comedy, a character needs to get to the point where they must act, and the audience must say hooray -- they've done it, and it was true. In FRENCH KISS with Kevin Kline and Meg Ryan (not a great movie, but not a bad script) Meg Ryan is afraid of flying, hates new things, she's picky and finicky and timid -- and flies to Paris to save her relationship with Timothy Hutton. She has her luggage stolen, her passport taken, she is filthy and broke and then she rallies. It's funny, but it's true -- she was pushed to her limit and her character didn't call home for a plane ticket back -- she went after what she wanted.

Of course, the character who calls home is, in most cases, not a very interesting movie -- but, if you have a character who seems like she/he would give up, call for help -- you might look at what's made your character so passive or push them a little harder, raise the stakes.

In general, passive characters are not very interesting. Ben Kingsley in DEATH AND THE MAIDEN is passive on the outside, but incredibly manipulative. He scrambles to save himself and he is very active within the limits of being Sigourney Weaver's physical prisoner.

Remember, drama is character in action. To be in action, a character needs to act. To act, they need to come in conflict with something else. Which leads us to my next posting -- which will be about conflict.

Please feel free to write me back and discuss in general, or your work in particular. I think you all have strong story lines -- but need to work on character, particularly your main characters. Think about pushing them -- putting their lives in jeopardy, their jobs on the line, locking them out of their houses with only a towel on. Look at the action of your stories -- and make sure your main character is involved in that action. Get them to the point of inevitability where you can say, "Of course they did that. What else could he/she do?"

More soon.

Diana

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For another, more comprehensive exploration of dramatic writing, we recommend
The Playwriting Seminars