Charging through your first draft...?

Sitting with my wife this morning discussing the novel she's in the middle of writing, she shared with me that in her last writing session she had to put the brakes on her forward progress and go back and insert certain details that she'd rushed right over on her first pass through a section of her story.

This brings up an interesting question for writers of any kind of fiction:  Should you stop your forward progress as you push through your first draft to go back and insert material into territory you've already covered--or--is stopping your forward momentum on your first pass through worth the risk of derailing your forward progress?

As we discussed this, I realized that there really isn't a definitive answer.  Some writers, like the late Pulitzer Prize winner Lanford Wilson once told me, it is imperative for him to just push through that first draft and never stop and go back.  Along the way, he takes quick notes of ideas he might later go back and add.  But for him it was imperative to just push through to the end and then insert what else is needed throughout.

Lanford explained:  "I'm writing pages, I'm not writing a play.  I'm writing 90 or 102 pages, that's all I'm trying to do.  I'm just trying to stack up work--in other words, to keep going...if something comes up...I'll just make a note and go on as though I've made the change.  And then, as soon as I' finish, I go back and change all that."

On the other hand, sometimes in my experience there are plot elements that you suddenly discover you've skipped over or that present themselves out of the blue that need to be addressed on the spot.  And the reason is that these "discoveries" have the potential to radically change the part of your story that you haven't pushed through yet.

So there's really no definitive answer to this.  You just have to slog your way through that draft, whether or not you occasionally stop and go back and fix or you take Lanford's approach and finish your first draft and then go back and make adjustments.  Then again, maybe it's a combination of both...?

It's a messy business.

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I'm a playwright and screenwriter, producing partner in my production company Either/Or Films (The Sensation of Sight and Only Daughter) a professional script consultant, and the author of The Playwright's Process.   I'm also on the faculty of the MFA Writing Program at the New Hampshire Institute of Art.  You can follow me on Twitter @eitherorfilms or @mfastagescreen and I’m on Facebook at buzzmclaughlinscriptconsulting.  If you're interested in the possibility of working with me as a script client, email me at buzzmclaughlin@gmail.com and we can start a dialogue.

A writing mantra that pays dividends...

So you have an exciting new idea you want to develop.  You've been mulling over the basics of the story in your head and are eager to dive into it and get started.

But wait.  What exactly does that mean?  To start on page one and see what evolves as the pages accumulate? To let the characters emerge as you place them in the unfolding story and let them wander where they will?  With you holding your breath as you wait to see if the writing actually leads you somewhere exciting?

In my experience, that's not the writing process that will consistently pay the best dividends.

Instead, what's first needed is a careful assessment of who your central character is going to be, what his or her primary external want and internal need is, how this character might face serious obstacles represented by other major characters, where your central figure lands at the end, and how he or she is significantly changed by the journey they've experienced.

And then the baggage your main characters walk into the story carrying needs to be explored thoroughly.

Think of them as standing at a closed starting gate with filled backpacks strapped to them and holding duffel bags and suitcases loaded to the brim.  It's your job to systematically open each of these pieces of luggage and examine every item inside.  This is the backstory stuff that these characters are going to walk into your story with once the gate is opened.  You're kidding yourself if you think you don't need to know what burdens they're carrying with them as they enter your tale at the front end.

And this leads you to fertile ground for initial plot invention and the structuring of your story. 

So many writers I work with make the mistake of being way too impatient to get to the actual production of script pages.  And in most cases this leads to an inevitable floundering and ultimate abandonment of what started out as a great idea.

Instead, I suggest that you take a deep breath, tackle this essential pre-draft exploratory work thoroughly and have as your mantra "I am already writing my script."

Because, of course, you are.

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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 last residency ran from January 5 to 14 and we're currently  considering applications for starting the program at our June 2018 residency that runs from June 22 to July 1.  The application deadline for a June start is May 1.  If you're interested in finding out more about our program, email me at buzzmclaughlin@gmail.com and we can start a dialogue.

I'm also a playwright and screenwriter, producing partner in my production company Either/Or Films (The Sensation of Sight and Only Daughter) a professional script consultant, and the author of The Playwright's Process.  You can follow me on Twitter @eitherorfilms or @mfastagescreen.  I’m also on Facebook at buzzmclaughlinscriptconsulting.  

An MFA program that works

I've recently returned from our low-residency MFA in Writing for Stage and Screen program's January residency in Peterborough, NH.  As Program Director I'm happy to say that again it was a big success. 

By "success" I mean that all of our student writers were once again immersed fully in this retreat-like setting, attending classes, workshops, special talks by Visiting Artists, and, most importantly, were able to share a new full-length script they wrote during the previous semester with their fellow students, our faculty of established writers, and the many actors and other industry professionals that join us for our ten-day bi-annual intensive.

 
As I've said before on this blog, I think the biggest draw for our two-year program is that before graduation, all our student writers will have written at least four full-length scripts.  And they walk away with a strong beginning body of work under their arm, work that's been given initial testing with professional actors in table readings and/or staged public concert readings.  It's this feature that makes our program unique nationally and its success is most accurately evidenced by the serious and growing recognition that our student and alumni scripts are receiving in the marketplace.

I urge any readers of this blog who are considering looking into MFA playwriting or screenwriting programs to take a look at ours.  It is designed for serious writers who are intent on building a solid foundation on which to launch a successful writing career in our industry.

Oh, and thanks to current student and photographer Kara Krantz for the photos.

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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 last residency ran from January 5 to 14 and we're currently  considering applications for starting the program at our June 2018 residency that runs from June 22 to July 1.  The application deadline for a June start is May 1.  If you're interested in finding out more about our program, email me at buzzmclaughlin@gmail.com and we can start a dialogue.

I'm also a playwright and screenwriter, producing partner in my production company Either/Or Films (The Sensation of Sight and Only Daughter) a professional script consultant, and the author of The Playwright's Process.  You can follow me on Twitter @eitherorfilms or @mfastagescreen.  I’m also on Facebook at buzzmclaughlinscriptconsulting.   

The dangers of writing out of order...

There are writers I work with who have shared with me that they often write their first drafts out of order--initially writing scenes that take place at various places in their unfolding story.  They say that this gets them warmed up and connects them with the material they're working with, discovering the tone of the piece as well as getting a better bead on the principle characters and their voices.

My contention is that there are lurking dangers when you take this approach to your first draft.  Here are a few of them:

--There's a tendency to fall in love with key scenes you've written early that take place deep into the unfolding story.  And it's often very difficult to toss these pages out when you finally get to where those scenes belong in your plot even though they no longer really fit.  Many new discoveries have been made as your draft has taken shape and mostly likely scenes are now obsolete to one degree or another.

--There's a ripple effect operating as you write your first draft, meaning that one thing builds on another and many slight and not so slight adjustments in voice and behavior naturally occur as you work your way through your script.  But this can only be to your advantage if you write your draft from beginning to end.  Otherwise it's short circuited and you never allow this organic growth to happen as you work your way through, especially as you try to squeeze in that scene that you wrote too soon--a scene that most likely is void of many of the discoveries you've made along the way.

--Another aspect of the ripple effect is the subtle and not so subtle changes that occur in the actual plot of your story as you work through its telling from start to finish, incorporating the cumulative discoveries you've made along the way.  And that beautiful scene you wrote out of order will no longer quite fit.  And if you've fallen in love with the scene, there's the strong temptation to still try to force it in there--like trying to put a square peg into a round hole.  And this can be the death-knell to your script. 

--In a sense, writing a draft out of order is the lazy approach to tackling your draft.  By this I mean it tends to indicate that you've been in too big a hurry to get into the actual writing of the script and haven't had the patience to do the essential extensive pre-draft character work--digging into backstories and exploring the nine-tenths of your tale that's going to forever remain under the surface in the subtext. These critical discoveries don't happen by initially writing a scene that takes place deep into your script because you don't know who your people are or have a sense of the subtleties of personalities and relationships that will have evolved by that point in your story.

So the message here?  When you're ready to go to draft, start on page one.

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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 last residency ran from June 22 to July 1 and we're current considering applications for starting the program next January at our residency scheduled for January 5-14, 2018.  If you're interested, email me at buzzmclaughlin@gmail.com and we can start a dialogue.

I'm also a playwright and screenwriter, producing partner in my production company Either/Or Films (The Sensation of Sight and Only Daughter) a professional script consultant, and the author of The Playwright's Process.  You can follow me on Twitter @eitherorfilms or @mfastagescreen.  I’m also on Facebook at buzzmclaughlinscriptconsulting.   

Why most scripts are toss-aways

It may sound harsh, but most new scripts that are out there making the rounds will end up before long in the proverbial circular file.  As much as 90 percent or more is my estimate.

The reason?  Because most writers are are in much too big of a hurry to get into draft and let their accumulating pages dictate where their story goes.  And doing so makes them feel like they're making lovely progress when in fact in most cases they are blindly heading into the weeds.

What so often happens is that 30, 50, or 70 pages in it begins to be clear that something isn't right--the story needs another character to bolster a major element in the story, or a character who has taken up a lot of space in the story no longer has a structural reason for being in such a prominent position, or a new major exciting plot element suddenly surfaces that hasn't been even whispered about in the preceding pages.... It's inevitable that new discoveries like this will always be made as more and more pages materialize.

The problem--and I have run into this countless times as a script consultant and teacher--is that when gut instincts tell writers that major adjustments should be made usually involving reworking significant portions of a script-in-the making, they have so fallen in love with all those pages already in the stack that it becomes almost impossible to consider throwing them out.  They remember vividly the pain and struggle it took to produce them and in their judgement it's all very well written. So there's an attempt to "fix" around and in between those already written precious pages, with the rationalization that these patch ups are doing the trick.

Sadly, these fixes rarely work because what's really required is a major rewrite and finding the guts to throw out sometimes large portions of what's been already written and sometimes starting over from page one.  So the "finished" draft ends up a crippled patchwork of what could have been.  Those "darlings" are all still intact, but the story unfolds in fits and starts at best.

So what do I suggest?  Don't start your draft until you're ready.  Not until after you've done extensive character exploratory backstory work and worked out a detailed plot outline that has steady forward momentum and that has your central character landing where you want that character to land.  Many past posts on this blog deal with various aspects of this pre-draft work and a good portion of my book deals with this as well.

The message here is not to rush into draft before you're ready.  And always remember that you already are writing your script as you work through your pre-draft explorations.

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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 last residency ran from June 22 to July 1 and we're current considering applications for starting the program next January at our residency scheduled for January 5-14, 2018.  If you're interested, email me at buzzmclaughlin@gmail.com and we can start a dialogue.

I'm also a playwright and screenwriter, producing partner in my production company Either/Or Films (The Sensation of Sight and Only Daughter) a professional script consultant, and the author of The Playwright's Process.  You can follow me on Twitter @eitherorfilms or @mfastagescreen.  I’m also on Facebook at buzzmclaughlinscriptconsulting.

A crucial test for your new story idea...

There a number of ways of initially evaluating the potential of a new story idea that's come into your head.  My last post dealt with determining who your story is about and the initial questions to ask about that central character.  Another early "test" is to simply ask to what degree that central character comes out a changed person by the end of the tale.

I know this sounds obvious and so basic that it doesn't even warrant mention, but so often writers ignore asking this up front and therefore miss giving that new potential idea an initial structural shape that can be built on in imaginative ways.  It's often the trigger that opens the storytelling floodgates, allowing for the creative development of a new idea.

Every story involves a journey by the central character from one place to another and the most powerful stories always have that character go through some sort of sea change.  In other words, he or she is a significantly changed person when they arrive at the story's destination.

Think of an arc, a trajectory that the character is moving through, starting with the early set up of the main dilemma, then the intensifying struggle to deal with that dilemma, and finally landing at a place of resolution.  And it's having an early handle on how the character is a changed person when reaching the tale's destination that allows for it to initially take root and grow in your mind.

Of course this landing place can change and often does as you develop an idea further.  However, this early focus on how the character is significantly changed (or might be changed) by the end of your story is one of your strongest launching tools as you enter the story development process.

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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 last residency ran from June 22 to July 1 and we're current considering applications for starting the program next January at our residency scheduled for January 5-14, 2018.  If you're interested, email me at buzzmclaughlin@gmail.com and we can start a dialogue.

I'm also a playwright and screenwriter, producing partner in my production company Either/Or Films (The Sensation of Sight and Only Daughter) a professional script consultant, and the author of The Playwright's Process.  You can follow me on Twitter @eitherorfilms or @mfastagescreen.  I’m also on Facebook at buzzmclaughlinscriptconsulting.

Another scriptwriters' retreat...

Last month, from June 22 until July 1, the MFA program I run out of the New Hampshire Institute of Art held it's bi-annual intensive residency in Peterborough, NH.

It was another jammed-packed creative gathering of student writers from around the country teaming up with our faculty of professional writers, SAG and Equity actors, and several other industry professionals.  A stimulating time for all of us, we ran classes every morning and table readings and rehearsed concert readings of students' full-length plays, screenplays, and tv pilots of new original series in the afternoons and evenings.  With meals together in between.

In all we gave voice to 11 scripts--a marathon of story telling being lifted off the page for the first time.  Writers had the opportunity to work with the actors before every reading, discussing how each of the major roles should be played.  And then extensive directed feedback from the entire collected group of professionals followed each reading, giving every student writer the opportunity to see how and where his or her script might be improved.

A lot of attention in classes was given to the writer's position in the industry--how to prepare for entering the field and once launched, how to sustain a career.  Gail Currey, the former Studio Head of Dreamworks Animation and one of our Visiting Artists, gave an inspiring talk about what it takes to maintain and build a career in our industry and how to maneuver the inner workings of the film industry and the script development process.

Workshops on grant writing for writers, synopsis writing, rewriting, dialogue writing, screenplay story development, and more kept our mornings buzzing.

Also, all our student writers pitched new story ideas that they'll be developing into working drafts during the fall semester (between now and the next residency in January 2018).  Professional writer/mentors were assigned to each writer and who will be working closely with our students as they go through the process of creating their new script to share at the next residency.

Breathless as all this may sound, our ten-day residency was pretty much a non-stop creative exploration from beginning to end.  Everyone departed charged and ready to get to work on their next project--hopefully wiser, with their skills and craft further sharpened.

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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 last residency ran from June 22 to July 1 and we're current considering applications for starting the program next January at our residency scheduled for January 5-14, 2018.  If you're interested, email me at buzzmclaughlin@gmail.com and we can start a dialogue.

I'm also a playwright and screenwriter, producing partner in my production company Either/Or Films (The Sensation of Sight and Only Daughter) a professional script consultant, and the author of The Playwright's Process.  You can follow me on Twitter @eitherorfilms or @mfastagescreen.  I’m also on Facebook at buzzmclaughlinscriptconsulting.

The rewriting process: Getting some distance

I like the analogy that 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 dig into it right away, it falls apart, the insides come oozing out as you attempt to put a piece on your plate.  And if you try tasting it, your mouth gets burned.

In my experience, gaining a bit of distance from a very first draft is 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.  During this time find some way to engage yourself in another all-consuming project, perhaps even start working on another new script idea.  Or as Marsha Norman explained to me, "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."  However you do this, the idea is to get some distance, get the project out of your head as much as you possibly can.

During this breather period, it's also critical that the script remains a private experience.  Your script is still incubating.  It's a very delicate phase and this is not yet the time to start sharing your initial draft with anyone.  Getting input from others now could forever destroy that special, intimate relationship you've been nurturing with your work and that you still have a use for.

The point here is that your ability to judge a first draft's merits can only be trusted if you keep it to yourself and allow yourself to gain some objectivity.  And the only way you can achieve that is to put it on your own private rack for awhile and walk out of the kitchen.  I've never encountered an exception to this.

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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 last residency just ended, running from January 6-15, and we are currently accepting applications for starting the program with our June 2017 residency running from June 23-July 2.  I'm also a playwright and screenwriter, producing partner in my production company Either/Or Films (The Sensation of Sight and Only Daughter) a professional script consultant, and the author of The Playwright's Process.

You can follow me on Twitter @eitherorfilms or @mfastagescreen.  I’m also on Facebook at buzzmclaughlinscriptconsulting.

The one essential ingredient for a successful writer...

To wrap up my recent series of posts on writing your first draft, it's worth stating the obvious:  One way or another all successful writers have found a way to sit themselves down on a regular basis and turn out pages day after day, week after week, year after year.  And the operative word here is discipline.

Almost every writer struggles with this to one degree or another.  And the best of them have found a way to fight their way through the ever-present alluring distractions of their daily lives and sit themselves down and focus on the task at hand.  It may be painful, even agonizing, to order your body into your writing space and force your mind and fingers to crank up yet again, but this 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.  And sometimes with great pleasure.  Page after page after page...day after day after day...

Here are some our most successful writers on the subject:

The late Wendy Wasserstein:

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 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 you're going to go mad."  So that's what happens.  It really takes discipline.

Playwright Terrence McNally:

I have to sit at my desk to work....I have to sit there and look at that computer screen.  And not talk on the phone.  You have to be really grown up...  Once you start on a play, it's an enormous emotional, physical, spiritual commitment.  It's a big thing to write a play.  

And screenwriter and playwright 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...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.

Somewhere inside you have to find that commitment.  Because without self-discipline, even a towering gift lies dormant.

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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 last residency just ended, running from January 6-15, and we are currently accepting applications for starting the program with our June 2017 residency running from June 23-July 2.  I'm also a playwright and screenwriter, producing partner in my production company Either/Or Films (The Sensation of Sight and Only Daughter) a professional script consultant, and the author of The Playwright's Process.

You can follow me on Twitter @eitherorfilms or @mfastagescreen.  I’m also on Facebook at buzzmclaughlinscriptconsulting. 

    

Another tip on tackling that first draft...

Recently I've been sharing a number of posts on various aspects to keep in mind as you write your first draft. Hopefully you're finding them useful.  Here's another tip to keep in mind...

In my experience as a writer and a script consultant working with hundreds of fellow writers, probably the one practice followed by most is that once you feel you're finally ready to plunge into your first draft armed with your pre-draft exploratory work and plot outline, it's important to just push through the whole thing as fast as you can without stopping to fix or make major adjustments along the way.

Just keep going till the final fade out and then take a deep breath and congratulate yourself for finding a way through to the end.  What you have when you arrive at your destination may very well need serious revision, but at least now you'll hopefully have something relatively whole to work with.

Over the years, here's what some top-tier writers have shared with me about this:

Michael Weller:  Half of getting through a first draft is just being too stupid to know how bad it is and to just keep going and going and push through to the end.  Then you go back and say, "Okay, how can I persuade myself that this thing really happened?"

Romulus Linney:  You try to go right through.  You want to write that first draft a fast as you can.  Faulkner called it the tightrope.  On a tightrope you don't want to look down and question yourself, "Is this really a good idea?"  You just walk across.

Marsha Norman:  It's a mistake to go back and revise too much until you see what you have.

Lanford Wilson:  I'm just trying to stack up work--in other words, to keep going...When I get finished...and have it there, that's when I say: "What in the hell is this now ?"...The first draft is a creative process, and I'm the artist or the writer at that point.  When I finish, I become an editor--that's a little schizophrenic--and the editor doesn't have nearly the fun the writer has.

I could go on, but the point is clear.  Not all writers work this way, but the vast majority of the most successful ones do.   

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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 last residency just ended, running from January 6-15, and we are currently accepting applications for starting the program with our June 2017 residency running from June 23-July 2.  I'm also a playwright and screenwriter, producing partner in my production company Either/Or Films (The Sensation of Sight and Only Daughter) a professional script consultant, and the author of The Playwright's Process.

You can follow me on Twitter @eitherorfilms or @mfastagescreen.  I’m also on Facebook at buzzmclaughlinscriptconsulting. 

Giving your characters rope...

As you plunge into your first draft on any project it's imperative that you allow your characters free rein to wander where they want to wander.  To let them surprise you as they find their rhythm and start wanting to go places you haven't charted for them to go in your pre-draft work.  In other words, give them some rope...

This is an essential requirement if you ever hope to write a script with a sense of spontaneity and that comes fully to life.  And it's what keeps the writing of that draft a true adventure.

However, there is one caveat.

To keep your characters from getting hopelessly lost and turning back to you for guidance (which they most certainly will), it's equally imperative that you have a well crafted plot outline worked out beforehand that supplies a basic road map to get you from the starting gate of your story to your final destination.  It can never be written in stone, but it should definitely supply a charted path from beginning to end if and when you need it.  Because this is what frees you up and liberates you--by allowing those wonderful characters you've fallen in love with to take as much rope as they feel they need as they journey through the wilderness of your first draft.

And then when they do get lost, you have the means to pull them back on track.

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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 last residency just ended, running from January 6-15, and we are currently accepting applications for starting the program with our June 2017 residency running from June 23-July 2.  I'm also a playwright and screenwriter, producing partner in my production company Either/Or Films (The Sensation of Sight and Only Daughter) a professional script consultant, and the author of The Playwright's Process.

You can follow me on Twitter @eitherorfilms or @mfastagescreen.  I’m also on Facebook at buzzmclaughlinscriptconsulting. 

How to protect your artistic vision...

As you face the challenge of writing your first draft there is one cardinal rule you should always keep in mind.  It's actually one of the simplest rules to follow, but often one of the hardest to put into practice.  It has to do with the writer's urge to share his or her work, to communicate to others what you are creating on the page.

In a nutshell, the rule is to resist the powerful temptation to invite other people to take a look at your first draft pages and show them the progress you're making--to get reinforcement, encouragement, and positive response in order to garner the emotional fuel you need to continue the often arduous task of trudging through the writing of that initial draft.

As you work through that first scripting of your story from beginning to end it's absolutely essential that you fight against this urge to share your pages as they're being produced because doing so is the one sure-fire way to lose control of your own artistic voice and vision, at least how it relates to the tale you're struggling to tell.

Without fail, friends and trusted colleagues are always eager to step forward to take a look as your pages materialize.  They like you, they want to help you, to encourage you, to give you positive feedback, to make you feel good about all that effort you're putting into your project.  And along the way, they love to point out what they really liked, what surprised them, where it took them as your story progressed, what it reminded them of as they consumed your pages--all in an effort to make you feel wonderful about yourself as a writer and storyteller.

The problem is, if you do succumb to this temptation to share your work while it's being given birth in your first draft, you destroy entirely your own private artistic experience with your material.  It is, instead, forever contaminated with the well-meaning input of those friends who talked you into letting them see your pages when you were in a moment of weakness and fear that what you were producing was terrible.  You won't be able to get their feedback out of your head.  Their attempts to encourage you, to bolster your attitude towards what's on those early pages, to "help" you write something you can be completely proud of are all well-meaning efforts and are delivered with love.  After all, these folks are your friends and want nothing more than for you to have amazing success as a writer.

What they don't understand is that the last thing you need as you struggle through your first draft is their input.  This is your story and your telling of it.  You deserve to have it stay a private and locked experience between you and the characters who populate your tale as long as possible and certainly through the writing of a completed draft and a first rewrite.  There comes a time soon enough that others can level their thoughts on what you've created, but you owe it to yourself to keep it to yourself at least through that first pass and until after you've had a chance to privately take a look at what you've come up with.

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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 last residency just ended, running from January 6-15, and we are currently accepting applications for starting the program with our June 2017 residency running from June 23-July 2.  I'm also a playwright and screenwriter, producing partner in my production company Either/Or Films (The Sensation of Sight and Only Daughter) a professional script consultant, and the author of The Playwright's Process.

You can follow me on Twitter @eitherorfilms or @mfastagescreen.  I’m also on Facebook at buzzmclaughlinscriptconsulting. 

 

At the first draft starting gate: the takeoff

There are two ways you can position yourself to begin the actual writing of your first draft.

One is to review all your pre-draft exploratory work one more time--any character work, backstory timelines, plot outlining and anything else you've explored regarding your developing story--and then, leaving all this material handy for reference, simply plunge in with page one and see where it leads knowing you can refer to any or all of this developmental material at any time.

The other approach is to put all your prep work away and don't review it at all, the theory being that you've done the pre-draft work and thinking, so it's up there in your head somewhere for guidance if and when you get stuck in the actual writing of your draft.  The thinking here is that this allows your characters more freedom to do and say what they want in the moment and reduces the temptation to force them into a predetermined mold.

Of course, there's not one best way to get started.  You simply have to discover a procedure that you feel comfortable with, that puts you at ease.  If all your prep work makes you nervous, get it off the table and file it away.  If it gives you a sense of security at the starting gate, keep it there in front of you.  Just always remember that first drafts often have a way of taking on a life of their own fairly quickly and you should give yourself permission to explore where your characters might take you regardless of any predetermined route you've worked out for them.

Ultimately, no one but you really cares how you get started with the actual writing of your script. People are only interested in how good the finished product is.  As the late, great playwright Romulus Linney told me about getting started with his first drafts:  "I have mulled it over and thought about it this way and that way, and there is always a moment when you say, 'Okay, for better or worse, here we go.'"

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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 last residency just ended, running from January 6-15, and we are currently accepting applications for starting the program with our June 2017 residency running from June 23-July 2.  I'm also a playwright and screenwriter, producing partner in my production company Either/Or Films (The Sensation of Sight and Only Daughter) a professional script consultant, and the author of The Playwright's Process.

You can follow me on Twitter @eitherorfilms or @mfastagescreen.  I’m also on Facebook at buzzmclaughlinscriptconsulting. 

How to avoid a script collapse...

When working with writers, I find myself saying countless times that the actual writing of a script begins long before you reach page one.  And that it's critical to convince yourself that all your pre-draft exploratory work--initial testing your story idea, character backstory development, and plot invention and outlining--is all part of the writing process of creating a solid draft that will have legs.

I like to use the analogy of the process of building a house because it so nicely illustrates this point.
The builder begins by securing the land and selecting the site for the house.  Then stakes are put in the ground where the house will stand.  Then the hole is dug for the basement or footings, concrete forms are put in place and the cement truck arrives to pour the foundation.  Then on top of the foundation framers construct the floor girders and erect the studs forming the walls and rafters and sheath the whole structure in plywood.  Window and door openings are cut in and installed, shingles put on, siding is added to the outside walls, everything gets painted or stained, etc. etc.  Then the interior is finished off--wiring, plumbing, drywall, floors, more painting, the landscaping, etc.  And finally you're looking at a completed house ready to be lived in.

But what happens if you skip or short change any of the early steps in the construction process? What if the framers, for example, cheated and put the studs and rafters 30 inches apart instead of the necessary 16 inches?  Or the concrete mixture was short on concrete and overloaded with sand or the holes for the footings were not dug below the frost line?  The house might still look beautiful when first completed (with all those shortcuts and mistakes hidden from view), but it won't stand a chance of surviving the harsh realities of time and weather.  And then you're left with something like this:

Or this:

And my contention is that this happens way too often with scripts when the entire building process is not respected and writers are in way too big a hurry to get that completed "house" up and running.

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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 last residency just ended, running from January 6-15, and we are currently accepting applications for starting the program with our June 2017 residency running from June 23-July 2.  I'm also a playwright and screenwriter, producing partner in my production company Either/Or Films (The Sensation of Sight and Only Daughter) a professional script consultant, and the author of The Playwright's Process.  You can follow me on Twitter @eitherorfilms or @mfastagescreen.  I’m also on Facebook at buzzmclaughlinscriptconsulting. 

Your Act 3 determines your Act 1...

One of the danger areas I've come across with the writers I work with is the understandable urge to get into draft as quickly as possible.  As storytellers this is a natural inclination--"let's get on with it already; enough backstory prep work and plot outlining; I want to start turning out pages."

Unfortunately what often happens when this urge is embraced is that an extraordinary amount of time is spent working and reworking Act 1 without having a clear and consistent focus on the overall structure of the story being told.  And what happens is that there is not the full awareness of what needs to be established in Act 1 that must later pay off in Act 2 and especially in Act 3. In other words, what I often see happening is that the entire story is not kept front and center as the writer immerses him/herself in those opening 25-30 pages, getting lost in trying to perfect the beginning of a script while losing sight of the whole.

Analyzing your new story idea...

The first thing I do with writers I work with who have a new story idea they want to explore is to have them do a preliminary analysis of the idea to see if it at least has the potential to contain the basic dramatic ingredients any good script possesses.

 

This involves a simple process of breaking down the idea into the various essential components, all of which will "test" the viability of the idea.  I explain this in detail in my book The Playwright's Process, presenting what I call the Story Idea Worksheet and how to use it.  It's a simple tool that allows you to begin taking a serious look at your new idea, to discover if it is something that deserves further development.

The worksheet asks that you tackle your idea by first landing on a working title, briefly describing the story's central character, and then stating simply both the dominant conscious or external want of the character and his/her dominant conscious or unconscious internal need.  This sets up the major dilemma or issue inherent in the idea.  The worksheet then asks you to list other possible characters who could possibly populate your story--characters who champion or could come against the want and need of your central character thereby setting up conflict.  Next it asks you to suggest a setting and possible special occasion that might surround the unfolding of your story--choices that might further raise the stakes for your central character and his/her dilemma.

The worksheet goes on by asking you to state in very simple terms how the major conflict/dilemma manifests itself in action and how that dilemma is ultimately resolved.  And finally it asks you to state how the central character is changed by the end of the story--a critical part of any test of an idea--and what you think the dramatic premise might be--what you're leaving with your audience at the final fade out.

This exercise has proven to be invaluable for the writers I work with.  It allows for lots of flexibility and trying things on for size.  Some writers end up doing several versions of the worksheet before committing to developing an idea further, finally settling on the one that feels strongest.

The whole point is that you have to start somewhere and analyzing a new idea in terms of seeing just how potent it might be is a good and logical starting point.  Because a story idea's potency is always dependent on how solidly it contains the essential dramatic ingredients--a good thing to discover very early in the development process and not half way through the writing of your first draft.

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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 last residency just ended, running from January 6-15, and we are currently accepting applications for starting the program with our June 2017 residency running from June 22-July 2.  I'm also a playwright and screenwriter, producing partner in my production company Either/Or Films (The Sensation of Sight and Only Daughter) a professional script consultant, and the author of The Playwright's Process.

 

     

Our bi-annual gathering of scriptwriters...

It's that time again.  Every January and June, there is this special gathering of playwrights and screenwriters in the quaint mountain village of Peterborough, NH for a ten-day marathon of sharing new work and participating in intensive workshops on our craft and our industry.  Our next get together launches this Friday, January 6.

Of course what I'm talking about is our low-residency MFA in Writing for Stage and Screen offered by the New Hampshire Institute of Art.  Talented student writers from all over the country--from New Mexico to Florida, from Texas to Michigan and from New York City to Dallas--as well as San Juan, Puerto Rico and Wabasca, Canada will all gather together to celebrate our art form with a distinquished professional faculty drawn from various aspects of our profession.

There will be intensive pitch sessions of new story ideas, craft classes in dialogue and rewriting and career oriented workshops on submission tactics and the national new play development arena. And central to the residency will be ten readings of new work written by our students this past semester, all of which are cast with professional actors and are followed by extensive feedback sessions.

To top off this residency, we've invited our alumni back for the opening weekend to share their adventures in the scriptwriting trade and to help further expand our growing networking apparatus on a national level.

Overall, these residencies are a time and place for emerging writers to share their passion for their art and expand their skill and their horizons as artists.  And all student writers leave the experience renewed and ready to go to work during the semester on their next project with their assigned professional mentor--developing a new script they'll share with the whole group at the next residency.

It's quite special.  Come join us if you can.

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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 last residency ran July 21-31, 2016 and we are about to start our next residency that runs January 6-15.  We are currently accepting applications for starting the program with our June residency running from June 22-July 2.  I'm also a playwright and screenwriter, producing partner in my production company Either/Or Films (The Sensation of Sight and Only Daughter) a professional script consultant, and the author of The Playwright's Process.

Capturing your angst...

At a Christmas party this past weekend I ran into a writer I know who has been having a rough time emotionally this fall, to the point that she can't really move forward in her creative life.  I suspect there are a lot of folks out there who are experiencing the same symptoms to one degree or another this election year.

What I suggested to this writer (and anyone who considers him/herself any kind of scribe in this predicament) is to put down on paper or pound out in a document all your raw feelings.  In other words, to journal your way through your angst and/or the thoughts that are bringing you down.

Journaling can do wonders to help you objectify what you're feeling, getting out in front of you what you're experiencing emotionally and what you suspect are the reasons for it.  And by journaling I mean really venting and letting loose and putting down in words exactly what comes to mind when you target the root causes of the dark mood you find yourself stuck in--describing the sadness, the depressing thoughts, and so on and making an attempt to articulate in detail the reasons for it.

No one will ever see this but you, but the dividends are often significant and long lasting.  On the short term, you'll find that it tends to help you process your way through the doldrums you're going through.  But also, what I've learned over the years with of this type of journaling, is that sometimes months or even years later I can go back to these entries and there staring back at me is a vividly captured emotion that I experienced in my past and that I can now use in my current work.  I'm still connected to it, but I now have the necessary distance from it to be able to fold it into my writing.

At times it's been exhilarating as a writer to have this documentation of my past emotional struggles available to me--my own private treasure trove.  And on occasion a past journal entry has unlocked a key I'd been searching for and that I needed to unwrap for a project I was currently in the middle of.

At any rate, it's always a good practice for a writer to use words--the raw material we work with day in and day out--to help guide us through the down times.  And you may find that down the line it will prove a bonanza.

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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 last residency ran July 21-31, 2016 and we are still considering applications for starting the program with our January 2017 residency that runs January 6-15 or for starting with our June residency running from June 22-July 2.  I'm also a playwright and screenwriter, producing partner in my production company Either/Or Films (The Sensation of Sight and Only Daughter) a professional script consultant, and the author of The Playwright's Process