This script writing "business"...

It's often been said that the script writer's real work begins once a play or screenplay is written.  And there is more than a smidgen of truth to this.  It's worth taking a look at what kind of "work" this refers to.  

First of all, it's important to realize that once you are absolutely convinced that your script is ready to be released to the world--once you've been through that "final" draft a dozen times and every page is perfect--you have arrived at the threshold of a whole new phase in the project's life.  And this phase has to be handled just as carefully and thoroughly as the writing, rewriting, and early testing of your script.

Of critical importance is that you do your due diligence on the possible places your script could be sent and whose hands you want to get it into.  This is a vast task if it's done right and demands serious research into the various possible venues and people, contests and festivals, theatres and other organizations that are constantly putting out a call for new material.

Every writer--especially those in the early stages of their careers--play the wishing game that all they have to do is land a good literary agent and all their babies can then be handed off to this hard working professional dedicated to finding a home for your brilliant creations.  As all writers realize the longer they are in the business, this could not be further from the truth.  Agents negotiate contracts once serious interest in your work has been obtained.  But with very rare exceptions, they do not find the production opportunities for a writer's work.  And that goes for both the theatre and film/TV.  In other words, it's the writer who finds the interested parties who in turn make an offer.  The agent then becomes activated or a theatrical lawyer is found to deal with that offer.

So that leaves the burden on the writer to shepherd his or her work through its post writing life.  And that means a careful investigation of all possible avenues that that script can be sent down.  It also means developing a realistic strategy or game plan in terms of possible scenarios for the future of each script--from the most modest introduction into the world to the most ambitious and far reaching. For starters, playwrights should join The Dramatists Guild and then carefully investigate their annual Resource Directory (I'd be wary of buying the latest available edition of The Dramatists Sourcebook published by the Theatre Communications Group because it is now seriously out of date).  Screenwriters for starters should scour the Without A Box festival screenplay competition list and investigate every other screenplay competition (a simple Google search will open the door to hundreds of possible opportunities).

The point here is that it's up to you, the writer, to get things going, both for your script and your career.  And you have to be thorough, smart, and assertive.  Believe in your work and be it's biggest supporter--no one else is going to be that for you.

I remember years ago walking into the study for the first time of my friend and successful playwright Richard Nash (The Rainmaker among many others).  It was a small barn on his farm next to his country home and I'd been invited out to work with him on a new play that my theatre was producing.  I noticed that he had a long series of shelves against one wall that held dozens of scripts neatly stacked, one after the other.  I asked him why he had all these different scripts in stacks on shelves.  He said without missing a beat that he was a playwright and this was his business--he had to do this because he was constantly sending work out to theatres and producers.  Then he smiled and said that he was his business.  And it struck me that here was a true professional writer who took himself seriously and who knew that there was only one person that his long career depended on.

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I'm the Program Director of the low-residency MFA in Writing for Stage and Screen being offered by the New Hampshire Institute of Art.  Our next residency runs January 3-11, 2015 and we are currently accepting applications for starting the program at the following residency that runs June 19-28, 2015.  I'm also a playwright and screenwriter, producing partner in my production company Either/Or Films (The Sensation of Sight and Only Daughter), and a professional script consultant.

Script writing from the heart...

The other day a script client of mine told me that he thought he was "spinning his wheels" with the kind of story he was working on and that he needed to start paying more attention to what the market is looking for.

This is what I wrote back to him:

"There's always a danger lurking when you start thinking about what the marketplace wants.  The best scripts (and the ones that make their way to the screen or stage) fall into that likability orbit by sheer accident because the writers are writing from their heart and not trying to manipulate their stories to fit what they think the public and the marketplace will be attracted to.  Those that try to write to the market are often left out in the cold because by the time their script is up and out there in the world, all sensibilities have shifted and the "public" is getting turned on by something different--not to mention that the writer's heart connection with the story is at best frayed from the start.  And so the writer is left with a script that's quickly passed over because it was "manufactured" to fit what he or she thought the world would want to devour. 

This game of script writing is all a mystery--including what will turn people on and the luck of the draw that you as the writer just happen to have the right connections to allow your baby to slip into the hands of the perfect person who will champion the story and take it the distance.  I say mystery because in my many years in this business and in talking and working with many, many people in the biz, it has become clear that there's no formula for success except genuine talent, a sense of a good story that rings true to the writer's heart, and more than a little luck that the right opportunities just happen along at the right time and your script ends up in the right hands.

So don't ever shy away from that personal story your heart is urging you to write.  Don't be swayed by what you think the "market" will get excited about.  It's your heart connection with your material that makes it interesting and enduring.  And it's those kinds of stories that tend to attract positive attention and that eventually make it to production."

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I'm the Program Director of the low-residency MFA in Writing for Stage and Screen being offered by the New Hampshire Institute of Art.  Our next residency runs January 3-11, 2015 and we are currently accepting applications.  I'm also a playwright and screenwriter, producing partner in my production company Either/Or Films (The Sensation of Sight and Only Daughter), and a professional script consultant.

MFA Script Writing Residency June 2014

Last month (June 20-29) I ran the residency for our MFA in Writing for Stage and Screen program offered by the New Hampshire Institute of Art.  Held at a 700-acre conference center in the foothills of the famous Mt. Monadnock, it was a jammed-packed ten days of table readings, classes, screenings, endless discussion, and give and take among our nine student writers and our faculty of five established playwrights and screenwriters as well as with the eighteen professional actors who joined us and were cast in multiple roles for our readings of student scripts.

Everyone involved in the Writing for Stage and Screen program was also mingling on a daily basis with students and faculty in the other MFA programs in Visual Arts, Photography, and Creative Writing running simultaneously with ours.  All involved experienced a stimulating and exhilarating time full of discovery and breakthroughs and the residency's success made clear that our MFA program is indeed working full throttle.

The highlight of our program's ten days together were the readings of our student scripts--a play, the book to a musical, two screenplays, and a TV pilot.  The caliber of talent evidenced by the work itself and the actors who were brought in to give it first voice was exceptional.

As the days went on, we experienced over and over again that special excitement when new material suddenly lifted off the page and became alive in the room.  One of the most important elements of script development is that first read with talented actors cast appropriately for the roles.  And I'm happy to say that our student writers were well served indeed in this regard and I was especially gratified to be a part of and witness to this initial lifting off the page that took place for these well-crafted stories.  I definitely see a bright future for every one of these scripts and it was clear everyone around the table could sense the same.

To my way of thinking, the point of any MFA program in script writing is ultimately to help student writers create beautifully crafted stories for the stage or screen.  Period.  Simple enough.
But how to do that in the best possible way?  That was the challenge I put before myself as I agreed to put together a new professional degree program in my field--for students to learn what works and what doesn't both in terms of their creative process and the resultant finished works that process produces.

And a critical part of that process is for writers to hear and experience their words brought to life by the other wonderful collaborative artists who inhabit our creative world of theatre and film.  Because in the final analysis, the script is only a means to an end, and the sooner that the playwright and screenwriter understands this the better.  In other words, we craft our scripts to get produced and to be "born" into a whole new life of their own.  Anything less and they remain silent and a promise unfulfilled, merely taking up space on an office shelf.

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I'm the Program Director of the low-residency MFA in Writing for Stage and Screen being offered by the New Hampshire Institute of Art.  Our next residency runs January 3-11 in Peterborough, NH.  I'm also a playwright and screenwriter, producing partner in my production company Either/Or Films (The Sensation of Sight and Only Daughter), and a professional script consultant.

Script Writing Master Class April 5 2014

Under the auspices of the New Hampshire Institute of Art, I'm teaching a day-long Master Class/Workshop in Writing for Stage and Screen on Saturday, April 5 from 10 am to 4:30 pm in Manchester, NH.

This intensive class is designed to be an introduction or review of the process of developing an idea into a working draft of a play or screenplay.  It will cover the basics of formulating your story idea, techniques of in-depth character exploration, investigating the back story, analyzing the story structural components, inventing plot, charting out the dramatic shape of a story, techniques of good dialogue writing, and tips for writing of the first draft and beyond.   Numerous exercises and handouts will guide you through the writing process as it unfolds.

I've taught a version of this master class for several years around the country.  It's always been a lively and stimulating time for me and participants.  If you're within shouting distance of Manchester on April 5, I hope you'll consider joining us.

More details can be found here and you can register here.

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I'm the Program Director of the low-residency MFA in Writing for Stage and Screen being offered by the New Hampshire Institute of Art and we are currently accepting applications for entering the program at our June 2014 summer residency, although the April 1st deadline is fast approaching.  I'm also a playwright and screenwriter, producing partner in my production company Either/Or Films (The Sensation of Sight and Only Daughter), and a professional script consultant.

Exposing the subtext of your story

Okay, so you've done a lot of character exploratory work, maybe even written some backstory scenes between major characters.  You've been thinking about plot and central character arc and where you want your script to land--in other words, you've been working at a structural framework or basic bones of the script that seems reasonable.  And you're now finally sensing that maybe you're ready to move on in the process, leave all this pre-writing work behind, and take the plunge into the writing of your first draft.

Here's something to keep in mind as you stand on the edge of that diving board preparing to jump off.

It's basically very simple, actually.  Just remember that your script is only the tip of the iceberg--the surface layer of a deeply submerged whole.  Your job now is to write your pages in such a way that there are constant albeit often indirect glimpses into that submerged part of your story, or subtext--that rich stew of intellectual and emotional "stuff" always hovering just under the surface--that you've explored in your pre-writing work. And you tap into this deeper level and make it felt and understood by what you leave unsaid. As a result, your audience is seduced into making its own connections between the surface and what lies underneath and in the process becomes fiercely engaged with the script to get the whole story.  

Take Downton Abbey for example (there, I admit I'm a fan of this lovely period soap opera).  One of the things writer and creator Julian Fellowes does well is constantly invite us as viewers to "lean into" the unfolding story by never having a character say something that we already know or suspect--especially when it comes to the smouldering subtext that hovers underneath each character's conscious present reality like hot coals in an ash bin.  We are allowed to engage with this inner life of the overreaching story and the characters that bring it to life because the subtext is always operating and "exposed" moment by moment, yet is never directly referred to nor ever actually allowed to crack the surface.  And this is one of the main reasons that the series works so well, episode after episode, year after year.

So always write with this dynamic in mind.  It's this quality more than any other that separates good scripts from bad.

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I'm the Program Director of the low-residency MFA in Writing for Stage and Screen being offered by the New Hampshire Institute of Art and we are currently accepting applications for entering the program at our June 2014 summer residency until April 1st.  I'm also a playwright and screenwriter, producing partner in my production company Either/Or Films (The Sensation of Sight and Only Daughter), and a professional script consultant.






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Our script writing residency about to begin...

Happy 2014 everyone!

My new year is off to a rousing start as the MFA program in Writing for Stage and Screen that I run launches into its ten-day winter residency this weekend in beautiful Peterborough, NH.  Student writers are traveling in from across the country and Canada in spite of a snow storm that has inconveniently decided to fly into New England at the same time.  We'll just have to adjust accordingly and use any "special" travel experiences as part of a writing exercise once we're all safely gathered around a roaring fire and sipping hot chocolate or perhaps some other beverage that warms the head and heart.  

This residency promises to be especially exciting for all of us for several reasons besides our scheduled afternoon sleigh ride mid-week.  First, we're welcoming new faculty member and Visiting Artist Clare Sera to our growing roster of established faculty writers:

Clare, who hails from Los Angeles, co-wrote (among many other projects) the screenplay for the upcoming Adam Sandler/ Drew Barrymore film Blended due out in May. She'll be teaching classes to both our continuing students and those just starting the program.

Also joining us for the first time will be NYC playwright and screenwriter Karen Sunde (see her bio and others on the program's website), who will also be working closely with students for several days.  Karen's track record and experience in the theatre is extensive and her classes no doubt will be very lively.  Rounding out our faculty for this residency are returning playwrights Russell Davis and Kathleen Clarke as well as yours truly.

We'll also be doing readings of several screenplays written by students during the past semester, bringing in professional actors to spark the new work to life and test its viability.  The readings will be followed by lengthy discussion and feedback sessions. I'm especially looking forward to this aspect of the residency because the true test of any MFA program like ours is the output and quality of scripts that students deliver during their time with us.  I'm happy to say that, judging from the work turned in so far, we're well on our way to achieving our goal of having each student graduate at the end of their two years with at least four potent full-length scripts (either plays or screenplays or both) ready to make the professional rounds and hit the marketplace.

So as you work away on your current project, you'll know what'll be transpiring in the winter wonderland and picture perfect village of Peterborough, NH for the next couple of weeks.  Maybe we'll even discover that our sleigh ride experience will turn out to be the germ of several new plays or screenplays.  You never know where and how new ideas materialize...

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I'm the Program Director of the low-residency MFA in Writing for Stage and Screen being offered by the New Hampshire Institute of Art and we are currently accepting applications for entering the program at our June 2014 summer residency.  I'm also a playwright and screenwriter, producing partner in my production company Either/Or Films (The Sensation of Sight and Only Daughter), and a professional script consultant.

The successful script writer's secret weapon

So now it's the middle of November.  All last summer you mulled over this promising new idea for a play or screenplay and since the week after Labor Day you've been working on turning that idea into an actual draft.

How you doing?  Got that draft in hand?  Are you excited by the progress you've made?  As Woody Allen has been known to say, "the hardest thing about writing is getting from nothing to a first draft" and I can't think of a writer I know who would disagree with that statement.  But it's the getting there that often proves the killer.  After all the preliminary story structure and exploratory character work is done, it's the sitting down and actually writing the damn thing that so often remains elusive and can seem forever out of reach.

In the end, the secret to arriving at that completed draft is simple.  It's called discipline.

This sometimes scary concept comes naturally to some and is a constant struggle for others.  But it's worth stating the obvious:  one way or another all successful playwrights and screenwriters have found a way to sit themselves down on a regular basis and turn out pages day after day, week after week, and year after year.

It may be painful, even agonizing, to order your body into your writing room and force your mind and fingers to crank up yet again, but this is the only way scripts get written.  You've got to produce actual pages.  Lots of them.  One at a time.  Steadily.  Stubbornly.  With determination.  Sometimes with gritted teeth.  Sometimes with great pleasure.  Page after page after page...day after day after day....  There's no other way.

This takes a serious commitment to the task at hand--setting up a regular, consistent work schedule and sticking to it; writing every day of the work week if possible, even if you can only snatch an hour or two per session.  You already know what your limits are per day.  I can go about four hours tops.  Usually after three I start to fade.  Some writers I know can go for six or more.  Some even eight or ten.  I don't know how they do it, but more power to them.  So whatever works for you, fit it into your life and keep plugging away on a daily basis.

The late and very successful playwright Wendy Wasserstein, once admitted to me that she has a struggle with discipline.  She put it this way: "I think I'm innately a very undisciplined writer.  I'll be distracted by anything, basically.  I take phone calls, I speak too many places.  But finally when I think this is too much, I can't do this any more, I must write, I'll then set aside time and say, "Wendy, every day for X amount of hours you'll be in a room writing, no telephone, you must do this or otherwise you're going to go mad."  So that's what happens.... it really takes discipline."

               

And playwright Terrence McNally explained: "I have to sit at my desk to work.  I'd love to pretend that while I'm driving or while I'm shopping I'm working.  I'm not.  I'm shopping, I'm driving.  I have to sit there and look at that screen.  And not talk on the phone.  You have to be really grown up and put the answering machine on monitor and turn the volume down.  And when friends say 'I have tickets for...' say 'No.' ....Once you start a play it's an enormous emotional, physical, spiritual commitment.  It's a big thing to write a play."

And playwright and Academy Award-winning screenwriter John Patrick Shanley:  "At a certain point I had a job, so I had to get up at five o'clock every morning and write for three hours, and then I would go to work.  That went on for a year, and during that year I learned the discipline of being a writer.  Because there's nothing else going on at five o'clock in the morning...My only rule was that I had to be sitting at that typewriter.  I didn't care if I wrote anything or, if I did, what it was.  Just so long as I was sitting at the typewriter, then I was writing.  So I created a space and habit in my life with that."

One of my biggest ongoing disappointments as a teacher of playwriting and screenwriting is recognizing genuine talent in someone and then discovering that the commitment isn't there.  Without that writer discipline, even a towering gift lies dormant.

So soldier up and finish that draft.  

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In addition to being an independent film producer and script consultant, I'm the Program Director for a low-residency MFA degree in Writing for Stage and Screen offered by the New Hampshire Institute of Art  (applications currently being accepted for our January 2014 residency).                   

Career sustainability for the script writer

Except for a handful of playwrights and screenwriters in this country, so-called "professional" script writers are faced with an ongoing sustainability issue in their careers.

At the top of the list of goals for any writer for the stage or screen is to get his or her work produced. This, without question, is (or should be) the prime motivator for tackling time and again the task of writing one viable and producible script after another.  Needless to say, this is an arduous and long term undertaking involving total commitment and a persistent never-say-die attitude as works are released into the world and forced to face the gauntlet of the gatekeepers.  And the most legitimate (albeit oftentimes resentful) measure of "success" in the script writing arena is having those works land well received professional productions on a consistent basis.

An MFA script writing program that works

As many of you know, I am (among other things) the Program Director of the low-residency MFA in Writing for Stage and Screen being offered by the New Hampshire Institute of Art.  The program was launched this past June with our first 10-day residency in Peterborough, NH with an entering class of exceptionally talented students from NYC, Los Angeles, and Canada.

What I find most gratifying about the program is the wonderful (and I might even say amazing) progress our student writers are making on their projects this semester.  At our June residency we discussed at length multiple story ideas for feature-length projects pitched by each student.  Much give-and-take and idea sharing ensued and determinations were made as to which project each student would concentrate on as his or her major writing focus for the semester.  The residency also included intensive course work, all of which in one way or another was geared to laying out the tools needed for strong story development. Then, at the end of the residency, each student was assigned a mentor for the semester--a faculty member who had been working closely with the student at the residency.

As the adviser for all the student writers, I've seen the exciting progress that's being made. It's clear at this point in the semester that all students will have a strong working draft of a feature-length screenplay completed by early December.  Then, at the next residency that runs January 3-12, the scripts will be tested and given voice with actors.  And another major project for the second semester will be analyzed and discussed with our faculty of established professional writers who will also be working with the students on expanded exercises and additional course work.

I'm delighted the way that the low-residency approach to the MFA works so well for writers--coming together with fellow scribes for intensive work for a short period and then going off into their own life to write with the guidance of a mentor.  And I urge anyone reading this post to take a look at our website, and if you've been thinking about getting an MFA in playwriting and /or screenwriting to consider joining us.  The application deadline for our January residency is November 28th.  I can guarantee you'll be embarking on an exciting journey.

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In addition to being an independent film producer and script consultant, I'm the Program Director for a low-residency MFA degree in Writing for Stage and Screen offered by the New Hampshire Institute of Art (applications currently being accepted for our January 2014 residency).                 

The experimental evolution of a script

My independent film company Either/Or Films recently produced a low-budget feature here in New Hampshire called Only Daughter.  A more accurate description might be "micro-budget," seeing the film was made for $20,000, almost all of it raised on IndieGoGo.   The film is currently making the rounds of several film festivals and last weekend won the Best Screenplay and Best Actor awards at the Orlando Film Festival and Best Film, Best Director, and Best Actress awards on "New Hampshire Night" at the New Hampshire Film Festival in Portsmouth.

What's interesting about the project from the writer's POV is that, although the actual screenplay was written (and the film directed) by my producing partner, Aaron Wiederspahn, it was developed by him and the principle actors over a period of several weeks.  This group got together on a regular basis and worked with the story idea and improvised possible scenes, trying various approaches to the developing material.  Then after this extensive group exploration, Aaron went off and wrote the actual script that was shot.

Your script and the art of carrot dangling

For more years than I care to remember, I have worked with playwrights and screenwriters on developing techniques that will help them create lively, compelling dialogue.  In many ways a writer's ear for good dialogue is simply there or not--an aspect of his or her raw talent that can't be taught or learned.  But there a few principles of good dialogue writing that I continue to put forth.  And there's one that seems to especially resonate with writers struggling to get better at their craft.  I call it the Art of Carrot Dangling.

Some years ago I asked my artist daughter to come up with a sketch that could help illustrate what I mean by such a term.  This is what she came up with:

Silly as this diagram might look, I think it holds a basic truth about the mechanics of how a script (both dialogue and descriptions of action) should function with an audience once it's brought to life in performance on the stage or screen.  You, the writer, are the driver of a horse-drawn wagon full of vegetables (the "goods" of the script) who's expertly manipulating a carrrot (the script in performance) tied to a long pole in front of the horse's nose (the audience)--the purpose of which is to keep the wagon moving to a stable down the road (your destination) so the horse can be fed the whole wagonload of vegetables (the story's ideas and content; what you ultimately want to communicate).

A successful scriptwriting workshop

This past summer I flew out to Santa Fe for the week-long Glen West Workshop run by Image Journal, a literary and arts quarterly currently in its 25th year. Over two hundred writers and other artists gathered to share their work and creative ideas in a glorious setting high on the New Mexico plateau.  Although the elevation of 7,000 feet set me back for a couple of days (my meager 2,000 feet in New England didn't give me a running chance not to be affected), it was the script writing workshop that I was invited to run that truly kept me going.  I thought it'd be interesting to share why it was so productive.

My approach to the workshop was to have all nine of my participating writers arrive the first day of the class with two or three story ideas--ideas that as of yet were not really developed beyond a simple description of a couple of sentences or a short paragraph.  That was it.  No writing samples to share or finished scripts to dissect or discuss and analyze.  Just a couple of simply stated story ideas that each student had a strong hunch might be something they'd like to develop into a play or screenplay.

We spent the first few days going around the room breaking down each idea into the basic structural components that in one way or another have to be present in any good script:
     --a single central character
     --his or her dominant want and need
     --the other principle characters that have to be in the story
     --the major conflict that the central character is facing that sets up his or her primary dilemma
     --how that conflict manifests itself in action
     --how the conflict is ultimately resolved
     --how the central character is changed by the end of the tale
     --and stating what the premise of the story might be (the statement it is ultimately making)

The Motor of Your Script

Raise the hood of any play or screenplay and you should see its motor staring back at you.  And without a doubt, in the vast majority of cases, that motor is the script's central character and his or her main want and/or need that somehow has to be satisfied.  This is what drives the story from the beginning to the end of the journey, what pushes it forward and gives it ongoing momentum.  

Just this week I've been struck again with how critical this basic tenet of good script writing is.  I've been reading a client's screenplay that is filled with wonderful moments and lovable characters. Clever and witty humor abounds.  But the story never fully springs to life and gets me entirely engaged in the first act because the writer has not clearly defined the main external want and dominating internal need of the central character.  I found myself not being able to focus on the story and get swept up in it's unfolding early on because the motor was not yet firing on all pistons.

Launching a New MFA Program in Writing for Stage and Screen

The last ten days of June were a special adventure for me and a talented group of writers.  In the beautiful and culturally alive village of Peterborough, New Hampshire we launched a new low-residency MFA in Writing for Stage and Screen offered by the New Hampshire Institute of Art.  I’m happy to report that the launch was a big success.

With a small number of students hailing from New York City, Los Angeles, and Canada and a faculty of established working professional writers, we gathered together to explore the process of developing stories for the stage and screen.

Sharing Your Script For The First Time: Part 2

Continuing our discussion...

Once you've located your initial readers and they've agreed to the task, expect to wait a while before hearing from them.  For most people, reading a first draft of a friend's play is a big order.  They'll take this very seriously and wait until they can clear a morning or afternoon or evening for the task--something that, for almost all of us, takes time to pull off.

Once they've read your play, set up separate, one-on-one sessions with each of them.  The last thing you want is for them to hear each other's reactions as they're attempting to tell you their own.

Sharing Your Script For The First Time, Part 1

I can’t stress enough how important the very first sharing of your work is.  You’re about to cross a line in the life of your project that you can’t ever cross back over.   Outside input will now enter your creative process for the first time.  And it’s going to have an impact, positive or negative or both.  It’s going to reshape how you think about your script.

The rewriting process: scanning your script

Here’s another simple little exercise that you might add to your arsenal:  

Before releasing your new play or screenplay to anyone for the first time and after you think you've made all necessary revisions and the script really works for you from beginning to end, I suggest you take your rewriting process one step further.

Beginning the rewriting process: Keeping your script to yourself

As you enter the initial phase of rewriting your first draft, it's important that you resist the often times compelling urge to share your work with others.  That day will come soon enough.  Now more than ever as you proceed with this first examination of the draft, you still need to protect that private relationship between you and your script.  It's your impressions at this point that are the most important.  Your reactions.  Your ideas for changes.  I realize that the urge to share, to get the opinions of respected, trusted friends can be almost overpowering at this point.  You want to know how others respond, what they think, what they understand and don't understand.

The First Draft of Your Script: Getting Some Distance

A finished first draft is like a freshly baked pie.  When you first take it out of the oven you have to put it on the rack to cool.  If you try cutting a piece hot, it falls apart, the insides oozing out as you attempt putting the piece on a plate.  If you try tasting it, your tongue gets burned.

It's mysterious how this works, but distancing yourself from a finished first draft is absolutely essential.  The degree of objectivity gained with even a few days of cooling off helps enormously as you go back to appraise what you've come up with.

More often than not, when you finish writing that final page, that negative voice will have grown from a whisper to a shout.  However loud it may be, resist concluding that what you've written is terrible.  Realize these feelings are normal.  There’s also the outside chance the opposite may happen and you're so excited about what you've written you can barely contain yourself.  Or you may be somewhere in the middle, uncertain as to its merits.

Whatever your feelings are toward that stack of pages, however, the worst thing you can do is to immediately start reworking them.  You need, instead, to put your newborn draft away and totally forget about it for awhile.  Two weeks to a month will permit you to gain some distance, but some writers need much more time.  During this break try to engage yourself in some other all-consuming project, perhaps even starting work on another play.  Or, as Marsha Norman suggests, "You should just find wonderful things to read between the time you put the play away and the next time you pick it up.  You should fill your mind up with other language, other characters' concerns."

I also highly recommend that you still don't share your work with anyone else even though the urge to do so now that you have a completed draft is often compelling.  During this cooling off time you and your play are still incubating together.  It should still be a private process.  Getting input from others now could forever destroy that special, intimate, personal relationship you've been nurturing.  So fight off the impulse to share your play quite yet.  You'll be happy you did when you come back to it.

Usually what happens when you return to your draft after such a distancing period is that it'll surprise you.  If you hated it when you put it away, now it'll most likely read  better than you thought it would.  If you loved it, now it'll probably be obvious that it needs more work.  The point here is that your ability to judge its merits can only really be trusted if you've allowed yourself to gain some objectivity and the only way you can achieve that is to put it on the rack and let it cool off for a while.  I've never encountered an exception to this.

Too Many MFA Programs in Playwriting and Screenwriting...?

Yesterday I came across a comment in a LinkedIn discussion that suggested that there are too many MFA programs out there turning out second-rate playwrights and screenwriters.  The thrust of this person's thinking was that as a result the market is being flooded with new mediocre scripts that are actually doing damage to the profession.  And inferring that most of those who graduate from these programs--in addition to sending out their inferior scripts to every theatre, production company, and literary agent in the country--are looking for teaching jobs that will allow them to turn out even more wannabe successful writers, creating a vicious cycle and further exasperating the problem as the years tick on.

Having taught scriptwriting for over three decades on both the undergrad and grad level, worked professionally in new play and screenplay development nearly as long, and had many of my own scripts developed and produced at writers' conferences and productions, I have to say the comment may have hit on something that's been bugging me for years.

To my mind, the only kind of MFA program in playwriting and/or screenwriting that is worth its salt is when working professionals are doing the teaching and the focus of the program is on the serious testing of student work with other working professional collaborators.  Student scripts need to be put through the ringer of a carefully structured lab environment where actors, directors, designers and other theatre and film artists are allowed to get their hands on student writing and see what works and what doesn't. An environment where the student writer engages directly with seasoned people who have been in the trenches for a long time--and still are--and who know how to give voice to material, spot strengths and weaknesses, and offer targeted suggestions for improvement in a way that may sometimes hurt, but is offered sincerely and can be trusted.

It's this kind of writing program on the graduate level that is sorely lacking (with a few notable exceptions) and the main reason there's a growing negative attitude in the professional world about the perceived treadmill of MFA programs turning out writers whose work has not been truly battle-tested and that, for the most part, forever remains gathering dust on the page.  So when I was approached with the prospect of designing yet another new MFA in playwriting and screenwriting, I jumped at the chance to put together a different kind of program that would be truly hands-on and have the capacity to turn out writers of plays and screenplays who know the ropes and whose work reflects a professionalism several notches above the norm.