EXERCISE 61
Thanks for your patience. Ive been busy writing a cycle of ten full length plays (for a reading at Wiltons Music Hall in May - please come). Now let’s continue …
I was talking to a friend the other day who said : ‘I really must get round to writing my script’.
‘That’s great’, I said.
‘Yeah but I’m still at the conceptual stage’.
‘The conceptual stage? You’ve been at the conceptual stage for three years!’, I said, untactfully.
Does this procrastination ound familiar? Is this you or someone you know? Chances are, it is.
We’ve all been there.
My friend has been researching, reading novels in the same area , seeing relevant films, talking to friends, reading guides to writing rather like this one. But they still haven’t written a word of an actual script.
So obviously the thing to do is to write. Today. Maybe just a post card’s worth. And every day. In a few months they’ll have a draft of a play.
From Exercise 70 onwards I’ll give you tips on redrafting. But for now I want to have a last push on getting a first draft written.
I advised my friend to start writing immediately. To trust that three years of conceptual stage would find it’s way into something written quickly and spontaneously.
They said that they were interested in writing about gay bar culture of the last century.
Great. That’s all you need. Just write ‘A man walks into a bar’. Then write the next thing that happens, then the next and carry on writing the next thing until you have a script.
It really is as simple as that.
You may well want to find out who this man is, what this bar is, why he’s walking into it on this particular day.
The audience will be curious about this too.
But you can find all this out through the act of writing, just as the audience finds it out watching a play. They don’t know anything in advance. The writer doesn’t need to either. If you don’t limit and control your creativity, it will all come out in the writing.
It’s great to have a big idea. To do some thinking and research. But when it’s time to write, you need one simple concrete action to start your play and then keep asking ‘what happens next’? after each subsequent simple concrete action.
No need to know any more than what happens in this moment and then find out what happens in the next moment. A play is built up from several hundred of these moments.
So .. ‘A man walks into a bar’ [if you like, substitute here a similar phrase for the subject you’ve been over thinking - choose a person and a place]
What happens next?
It’s amazing how often our mind says: ‘A man walks into a bar but there’s no one there so he goes home’.
Ridiculous! But we all do it. This is called a CANCEL. Train yourself to avoid a CANCEL unless you’re conciously choosing it for a specific effect.
‘A man walks into a bar and discovers it’s a space ship heading to Mars’. Hmmm. It’s marginally better but it’s still kind of cancelling the bar and trying a bit too hard to be whacky.
Better at this stage to be obvious, logical.
‘A man walks into a bar and orders a ..’
What? A bottle of champagne, a beer with whisky chaser, a tomato juice and some water for his dog?
The simple choice of what he orders will start to suggest to your imagination why he’s here and who he might be. And what will happen next.
Next, the bar man says, “We’re out of vodka” [or whatever you chose].
No. They don’t. It’s another CANCEL. We often feel that some negativity will create conflict, drama. But it’s actually more likely, certainly at this stage in a play, to block the action.
Have the bar bar man say yes to the drink. And then add an offer such as:
‘Here you go. Haven’t seen you in twenty years’
.. or ..
;is this your first time in a gay bar?’
.. or ..
‘welcome to singles night’
.. or ..
Whatever gets your imagination moving.
ACCEPT and OFFER will move your play forward.
It’s very simple. And like all simple things takes a lot of practice and has to be relearnt continously.
Try it now. If you’ve got a big or generalised idea, write a simple sentence to begin an action. ‘A woman arrives at the High Court’ or ‘A daughter walks into her mother’s care home’. Then write one simple thing that happens next. And keep going.
At first this may well feel more scary than all the overthinking. But you’ll have begun writing the play or the scene that you’ve been putting off for years!
Happy writing
Mark