How to have fun writing your first draft...

I'm a big believer that the writing of your first draft can for the most part be an enjoyable adventure. I know I mention this quite often, but I'm convinced it all depends on what kind of planning and prep work you've done before leaving on the journey.  It's no different than any kind of extensive trip you intend to head out on.

Primary among the items you want to have with you before embarking are a detailed working knowledge of your characters' personal and shared backstories, an ear for their distinct voices, and, of course, a plot outline road map that takes you on one possible basic route through your tale from beginning to end.  Armed with these key elements, you should be able to take off on your first draft trip relatively confident that you'll somehow find your way through to your predetermined destination or some other landing place that the writing of the draft itself has led you to.  And having this pre-draft work in hand can in fact liberate you as the writer, freeing you to try things and explore those interesting side roads along the way.

So it ultimately comes down to preparation for the journey.  I constantly stress this with the writers I work with.  And if that preparation is done thoroughly and you believe you have everything you might need with you as you venture forth, then the chances are that the writing of your first draft can indeed be a fun and creative experience.

On the other hand, if you prematurely plunge into your draft expecting that most if not all the answers to the questions your story raises will somehow magically be handed to you in the actual writing of pages, you are most likely headed for frustration and will find yourself staring at a mountain of exploratory scenes that lead you nowhere.  It'd be like heading out on a trip through unknown and uncharted territory with no road map or guideposts on the seat next to you when you inevitably take that wrong turn and end up totally and hopelessly lost.

It's been proven to me countless times that making the effort to do the necessary pre-draft exploratory work, including working your way through at least one rather detailed version of your entire story in outline form, will actually greatly increase the chances of allowing the writing of your first draft to be a relatively frustration-free and even a liberating experience.  Writing a first draft is always a tremendous effort regardless, but with your prep work beside you, you can now take those interesting and unexpected side trips when they materialize without worry of losing your way.  And if those side roads and detours uncover entirely new ideas and possibilities, you're still in a vastly superior position to digest them intelligently and make the necessary adjustments to your story.  Or you'll be able to find a way to somehow hook these new discoveries back into your central character's arc, thereby enriching the overall journey.

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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 now considering applications for starting the program with our January 2017 residency that runs January 6-15.  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.

A classic problem in scriptwriting...

I've been working with several writers in the past few weeks as they work on plot invention and laying in the necessary information for a story to make sense and to move forward at a good clip.
And in the process the old classic issue of how to deal with exposition always rears its head and one way or another has to be dealt with.

What I've been finding myself explaining multiple times is that often the one sure-fire way--maybe the only sure-fire way--to plant critical information in your developing story is to find a way to weave it into an argument between your characters.  The simple truth is that an audience will be interested first and foremost in the dynamics of the disagreement or conflict they're witnessing--how the characters are reacting to each other emotionally and how each is responding personally.  And in the midst of the argument and heated exchange, the characters will be compelled to throw out the information you need the audience to hear for the story to make sense and move forward.

The interesting aspect of this is that your audience won't even realize that they've just absorbed key facts that have to be a part of your unfolding story.  They hear the exposition--the actual words describing the info that has to somehow get into your script--but it's delivered to them under the table so to speak.  What your audience is caught up by is the argument and the accompanying emotional colors that couch it.

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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 now considering applications for starting the program with our January 2017 residency that runs January 6-15.  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.                                 

Contaminating the writing process...

A lot of my students and clients are currently in the middle of writing their first working drafts of new work.  Something about the fall season and the urge to hunker down that writers pick up on, not to mention my MFA program's requirement for every student to turn in a working draft of a new full-length script by mid-December.  

So I feel compelled to once again remind all writers out there that it's so important to keep your developing draft to yourself as you work your way through it for the first time.  In my view, it's imperative that you protect this private process from all outside influence.  Other than sharing with a professional and experienced mentor or script consultant, you should embrace as a hard and fast rule to always keep your journey through that first draft a private experience. Otherwise you risk seriously contaminating your writing and your own artistic vision of the story you're creating.

Nothing can destroy a first draft faster than to show pages to your close friends and other well-meaning people in your life.  They'll want to and even feel obligated to give you feedback.  But the moment you allow people to give you input, you won't be able to get it out of your head, whether it's positive or negative.  It's contamination either way.  You've let others into a place where they should never be allowed to enter. 

Resisting this urge to share your first draft discoveries helps build an increasingly stronger and more intimate connection between you and your material.  It's as if your relationship with your characters were taking on the deeper sense of trust and mutual confidence that you would have with real people.  What's happening as you pile up pages is that your script becomes increasingly yours and your characters' own secret and your unique source of strength.  This, in turn, produces an energy which helps propel you through to the end.  Even when you're stuck on something and go through a few or many days of feeling lost, the experience remains a private one, shared only with the people inside the developing story.

The time will come soon enough when it's necessary and useful to share your script with others and hear what they have to say.  In the writing of your first draft, however, it's just as critical that you don't.  

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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 now considering applications for starting the program with our January 2017 residency that runs January 6-15.  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.

My encounter with Edward Albee...

Last month the news swept through the theatre and entertainment world that Edward Albee passed away.  Unarguably one of America's greatest playwrights, Albee left a mark on American dramatic literature that has only been equaled by the likes of O'Neill, Miller, and Williams.  He was a towering figure and his work will live on after him as his plays continually come alive on the stages of the world.

During his professional life Albee also had a reputation of being a prickly and oftentimes difficult man whose arrogance could turn people off and that could make him a handful to work with.  I thought my own encounter with him several years ago might be interesting to relate in this regard.

Trusting the writing process...

I'm continually struck by the degree to which I find myself telling writers to take their efforts with creating a new script one step at a time.  There are days we all have when everything seems totally out of reach and all you can hear is that nasty whispering voice saying "who are you trying to kid."  And it's on those days that you have to step back, take a deep breath, and realize that it's baby step after baby step that allows a script to come into being.  It's all a process, with one element building on the next.

As I've often said in this blog, writing a play or screenplay is a big undertaking, a complicated and intricate puzzle to solve.  And like puzzle pieces poured out of the box and onto a table, you start by finding a method, an approach to organizing that jumbled pile of tiny cut pieces into a plan of attack that will eventually produce a beautiful finished picture.

How to avoid getting lost in your first draft...

I'm so often struck by the number of playwrights and screenwriters who attempt to "discover" their stories by starting with page one and just forcing it out by trial and error--riding on a hunch and a prayer that somehow they will find their story in the writing of actual pages of script.  Usually lots and lots of pages, hundreds in fact.  They are often very good writers with loads of talent and believe this is the only way they can work.

Frankly, this never ceases to baffle me.

I once asked a famous and established playwright how many pages using this approach he actually writes on average and he held up the palm of his hand about six inches above the top of the table we were sitting at and said "about this many," meaning at least two reams of paper or around a thousand or more pages.

My apologies to all of you out there who work this way, but it seems to me it's the equivalent of consciously taking a hundred mile trip to ultimately arrive at a destination a block away from where you started.

Of course for some writers, this works fine.  I can't ignore that fact.  Great scripts eventually emerge from the mountain of pages produced.  However, to my mind there is a much more productive and faster way to create rich and successful scripts.  It starts with developing a process that includes extensive pre-draft exploratory work on your principle characters that then leads the way to inventing the basic building blocks of your story's dramatic structure--all before you attack page one.

In other words, a systematic writing process that views your story as an iceberg...

...and first takes a serious look at the nine-tenths of your emerging tale that will forever lie under the   surface and explores it thoroughly--putting under the microscope the milestone events that have shaped your characters lives and their attitude towards those past events, especially the personal episodes that relate in some way to the central dramatic dilemma you're dealing with.

This is what makes for rich and engaging storytelling.   And it can most successfully be achieved by exploring this subtext before plunging into actual draft.  Directly or indirectly, it's all part of your story and in working this way you are, in a very real sense, already in the process of writing your script.

As a result, when you've done this kind of pre-draft exploration, the actual writing of the script itself--the one-tenth of your tale that is above the surface--will be written with authority and sense of purpose.  And lo and behold, the characters that walk into your story will take over and on the best days start writing your script for you.  And the added bonus is that with a little luck and help from the muses, you'll soon have in your hands a viable and sturdy first draft of manageable length that's been written in a fraction of the time.

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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 now considering applications for starting the program with our January 2017 residency that runs January 6-15.  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.

Welcome to the script factory...

Last month in Peterborough, New Hampshire there was a ten-day explosion of creative storytelling as 13 full-length scripts--plays, screenplays,and tv pilots--were lifted off the page for the first time.

Writers from all over the US and Canada gathered in this culturally alive village in the heart of New England to celebrate their art with professional actors, directors, designers, producers, and public audiences--everyone involved and focused on the new work being presented.  It was a high energy and exhilarating time for all participants and everyone left the gathering recharged and recommitted to our shared collaborative art form and the scripts that ignite it all.

What I'm referring to, of course, is the latest residency experience of the low-residency MFA in Writing for Stage and Screen program run out of the New Hampshire Institute of Art.  The program boasts a faculty of established professional writers and other visiting theatre and film professionals who teach classes and workshops and who mentor our students throughout the two-year course of study.  And at the heart of the program are the new scripts being written by every student--at least four full-length works while in the program--all of which are read and critiqued at each of the five residencies the students participate in.

Our program is nationally unique in its commitment to having every student create a substantial beginning body of work that serves as a launching pad for his or her script writing career.  Every effort is made to refine the craft and skill of our student writers and to realistically prepare them for the rigors of entering the professional writer's arena in the various mediums.  This is our trademark and our promise to every student, and our growing list of alumni and their successes lends credence to that commitment.

If you're looking for a place to learn and grow as a script writer in a safe and supportive, yet challenging environment, I suggest you check out our program.  The added bonus is that when you complete the program, you not only are prepared to begin your professional writing career, but you also walk away with that terminal degree under your arm.

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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 now considering applications for starting the program with our January 2017 residency that runs January 6-15.  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.