Week One. Sunday Check-In

On both accounts!

I'd like to see a play about her life, too. There are so many ways you can go with this.

Ooh - I have written two beginnings - one has her on her death bed!  The other beginning is a bit more mixed media - involving music and photography, alluding to her father (of course!).

Something I always ask myself as a playwright is "what play would I want to go and see?"  And then I write it.  I would definitely want to go and see something about Anais Nin, and that's why I'm writing it - because surely I can't be the only one!

Thank you for your encouragement!  It really means a lot!

And if you figure a way to ADD time to a day...please share. I'll be in a similar situation over Thanksgiving, but it will be MUCH harder for me to sneak away. My son & daughter-in-law are coming with their 22 & 6 month old babies from the Saturday before Thanksgiving until the day after. They live in Minneapolis, and I live north of Pittsburgh, so we hardly EVER get to see them. (plus the baby is getting baptised)

So, my plan is to hog the computer while my 15 year old daughter is drugged, and steal time at work too. (No illegal drugs...she's getting her wisdom teeth out this Friday, so maybe I can use the *real* computer) I may even get this play done over then next week and a half so I can have all the grandbaby time I want.

Yah, first draft only. Aiming for a second draft during Naplwrimo is not sane. :)

then they sound like the kind of stage directions that are essential and any decent director will not discard them, anyway.

onward!

But the other thing that has to happen in those first few minutes is the 'fixing' of my character in that setting -- her cellphone dying, searching for a charger, searching the lobby desk for a hidden phone, looking for her misplaced building entry card -- all leading to her first decision whether to stay in the lobby and hope her cab comes soon, or go upstairs and try to call the cab company, and possibly miss a cab that's very hard to get, during a snowstorm late at night.

I have to establish her as capable, not stupid or silly, but just tired, and capable of making decisions that keep her stuck in that lobby by the time something else happens. The audience has to follow her into that box, so I want to play fair and let them see what she can do, and what she can't.

i didn't mean to squash your creativity! of course, write them in the first place. but you asked if it was worth writing all these stage directions, so i gave the answer that is honest for me.

it's totally valid to spell all the actions out entirely if you are totally specific about what uncomfortable actions you want her to take. but another option that would open the play up to a director and an actor working in a rehearsal room - would be to say something like "Anne is alone. There are no magazines and she is without electronic devices. She has to wait. Longer than is comfortable. So long, she does not know what to do with herself."

(or WHATEVER. i did not want to just give you a virtual "line reading" but i couldn't figure out how to explain what i meant without just writing what i meant. i hope that did not offend.)

You could communicate the discomfort you descibe above without dictating all the actions she takes, leaving the actor and director to discover things even more magnificent than you could discover.

of course this is in no way the only way. it's just that i am a writer of dialogue. i am not a director, and i am no longer an actor. i have been fortunate to learn that good actors and directors can often bring much to the play that makes me look much better than i even am.

but hell, yeah. write them in the first place. i just sensed doubt about the necessity of copious stage directions, so i swooped in. ;-)

I agree with Joy.  I find that some writers, especially ones with a directing background like myself, tend to try and direct the play with stage directions.  I am guilty of that sometimes, but then I can always edit them out.  That's part of the re-writing process.  The other rule of thumb is that stage directions should be terse and clear. 

When you buy a play, you never know if the stage directions were written by the playwright or interpolated based on the play's first production or a combination of the two.  I once read a book that suggested that they put them in a different type-face.  I think that's a cool idea.

One thing a lot of director's do is cross out stage directions.  I teach acting, and that's one of the techniques we use to liberate actors--to allow them to make more creative choices.

I always like to think that the script is really the blue print for performance.  G.B. Shaw wrote for a literate theatre crowd knowing that his plays would be published and read as literature.  People don't really do that any longer.  If you read stage directions in a Shaw play, some look like passages from a novel full of descriptions that are of no used to a director, designer or actor.

But if you are guilty of trying to direct your play, just look at the script and ask yourself "Do I need this stage direction?"  I find that most of the time it's implied.  Having an actor read stage directions at a reading is a good idea too.  I've been to many a reading where the best actor in the room seemed to be the one reading the stage directions.

I was down in Sydney visiting one of my friends recently.  He invited me over to Fox Studios to hear a reading of his screenplay.  We parked right in front of Hugh Jackman's office.  As I helped him unload the boxes of scripts, he asked if I would read a part for him (after all I am a trained actor as well)--I said, "Sure, what part would you like me to read?"  "Hm....maybe the stage directions?"  My heart sank.  Not because I wouldn't get to play a plum role, but because I knew he wanted me to listen to the play.  If I were to read the stage directions (which will definitely be the most text in a screenplay) I would've missed out on "listening" to the script.

In the end, I read a few minor characters.  I was able to listen, and yet still feel a part of the group (I was the only American in the room).  And I think the feedback I gave him was valuable.  

So, in the end, less is more with stage directions.  If you feel you have to write them when you're drafting, fine, but be prepared to put them on a diet when you re-draft.  There is nothing more off-putting to script evalators than to open up a new script and be confronted by a half a page of stage directions.  When I see those kind of plays I roll my eyes and say "here we go again" and usually--not always--I find myself snoring around the fifth page (or less).

Dean 

there is no dialogue for the first few minutes of the play, since there's only one person on stage, alone, in a lobby, and I didn't want her to become 'talky' or neurotic or any other of the traits that allow a person to talk to herself.  Part of the tension I want to establish comes from how uncomfortable we get in our society if we're just standing alone, with no iPod, no cellphone, no way to divert ourselves from the act of waiting.

And how do I know if I'm overwriting stage directions, if I don't write them in the first place?

is it worth writing all these directions ...

i would say it depends. if you're writing the kind of stage directions that can be ignored, then they're not worth putting in your play to begin with.

i come from the Shakespeare school of stage direction thought. he only wrote stage directions for when someone enters, exits, or dies. now, i do a tad more than that. but not much. and as such, directors know that when i write a stage direction, it means something. it's not dismissable. it's as much a part of the play as the dialogue. and i only work with directors who get that.

a hallmark of the young playwrights i teach is that they overwrite stage directions. i always remind them that if something is important enough that directors and designers and actors need to know it, i think it should be evident through the dialogue. exceptions to that rule abound, of course. but as a general principle.

now i don't know you or your play or your stage directions. perhaps none of the above applies. but i do stay firm with the fact that if YOU make your stage directions matter, good directors will not be able to ignore them.

Please make sure Benny and Clara live!  They sound like marvellous characters!

Structure-shmucture.

Why try to reivent the wheel when you can just take the wheel and use it to make a unicycle?  Or one of these: http://www.ileneblack.com/flying-bicycle-machine.jpg

Or something.

My professor who advised my undergrad thesis (I wrote a play) back in college used to always tell me that it was OK to borrow from other works. It was my first time writing a play after coming from a poetry background, and I had this horrible feeling that everything had already been done by people much more talented than I was. And he'd always say to start with imitation and that even if it feels like a total rip-off to you it will be different because it's filtered through your own voice and your own style. And that as you progress as a writer, your own sense of voice and style becomes stronger. I obviously have not gotten there yet. :)  I remember once when I was really struggling he told me that Paula Vogel had flat-out called The Baltimore Waltz "my German expressionism play" and that writers are always stealing from other works. But I've definitely had moments where I feel like I've taken the "borrowing" way too far. There's a been a few lines of dialogue in my current play where I'm sure I've heard something similar before and it must have come from somewhere else. :)

I'm doing OK. I also didn't do any prewriting at all (I decided to do this on October 31), so I've been kind of doing that in notebooks as I go along. I've noticed some character schizophrenia picking up in my draft already too (in the first scene my engaged couple was not living together but by scene three they'd been shacking up since college graduation), but I've been just jotting down notes on things like that when they dawn on me and not actually going back and fixing it just yet. It's encouraging to hear you mention the first draft schizophrenia because that makes me feel better if I don't quite have everything in order at this point. I'm also getting used to writing a longer format play, since most of what I've written previously has been one acts. I start thinking "oh, I'm already at page 29 and I haven't even gotten to [insert idea here] yet!" ...and then I realize that I have 45 pages left to go so I shouldn't be worrying about that. I'm happy to hear you've had a breakthrough. Tonight's writing might be a little hard for me because I'll need to think about where the next part is going before I sit down to write it.

Your daughter is getting married? Congratulations!

Also, WRITE.

I love when actors play a larger number of characters. In my play, The Chalk Boy, four teenage girls play an entire small town. There's just something i like about economy in language and style.

Is it worth writing all of these directions when playwriting teachers have told me directors ignore them, anyway?

Yes. Yes it is.

Sometimes I feel like I don't so much write plays as I regurgitate books/movies/plays/tv shows/songs I've consumed.

Worry about stucture and the second draft in December. This process is just about getting it out there, pure and unadulterated.

Good for you getting so far so quickly.

You know, your friends might understand if you have to lock yourself in a room or go to Starbucks (they are open on the holidays just for us!) for a couple hours during the weekend. Just tell them, they might be cool with it.

I had a pair of friends when I moved back to the Quad Cities after I first got done at Iowa. They were creative types, but not the I'm-actually-doing-it creative types. They liked to talk about it, but never did anything. Well, the female of the couple, bless her heart, she would call me constantly after work to do stuff with her. I would say, look, I need to write, then I can hang out. And she wouldn't understand. 'You just got published." she would say. "Come chill out." I didn't want to just rest on my laurels. I wanted to use the momentum to keep going. And she didn't understand it.

I guess I shouldn't have told you that story, huh? The point is, my BF, he gets it. If I say I need to write when he wants to play Rock Band 2, he just plays by himself. He understands my drive and your friends might too.

Besides, it's only a couple hours, right?

Thanks, josh for the pep-talk. I am actually doing lots better. I think there's still going to be a bunch of stuff scrapped in the end, but I think it's going to be shedding fat, not real nuts and bolts of the play as it will be seen. So you know, yeah. See my section on my play for an update. How are things going for you? I wasn't sure I saw a check in for you, but I will def look.

Thanks, Colleen! Actually, I have gotten really good over the years at not going back and re-writing things I already wrote while I'm still working on it. This, of course, has the tendency to have a character, for example, be a right wing Republican in the beginning and a loosey-goosey hippie in the end. That's why first drafts for me are really like schizophrenia. It's a process of trying to figure out who the characters are. Usually I get a bit more time to do 'pre-writing' before I start working, but this time, I didn't, so within the month I have to do the pre-writing as well. *sigh* but now I think i had a breakthrough. We'll keep our fingers crossed, shall we? How are you doing?

Day late with checking in due to some urgent house-keeping. You know, groceries and plumbing.

This is fun. I'm spending some time with characters I like spending time with. I'm not worrying too much about structure (I usually over-do that bit) this time around; for now, I'm swapping between dialogue scenes and monologue scenes, and it's a lovely way of finding out news things about characters I thought I already knew.

Of course, when it comes to a second draft, I'll probably have to junk stuff, but that's not the point of this month. Get a first draft done, and then you can work out what's good or not.

...most of them written yesterday & today, which I guess is encouraging.  If I can keep up a better schedule over the course of the month (and write like a maniac over Thanksgiving) I think I'll succeed.

However, this is the first play I've written without much of a sense of its structure--I don't even know whether it's one act or two, and how to build up the minor conflicts between the characters before the major secret is revealed.

And I just introduced a new character, and I barely wrote two lines for her when I realized that she is basically a xerox copy of the teenage girl (Jean) in "August Osage County."  Must revise--I know that "good writers borrow and great writers steal," but when I cringe at the blatantness of my own thefts, it has gone too far!

Yeah, I know.

And most of it is stage directions, which directors most likely will discard.

But the beginning of the play is nothing but one woman, alone, waiting for a cab during a snowstorm, for several minutes.  I don' t want her to babble, or be neurotic, but I want the tension to come from being in a lobby of a deserted office building, behind glass doors, and only have those doors between her and... not being safe.

Is it worth writing all of these directions when playwriting teachers have told me directors ignore them, anyway?

I've been playing with how compact I can make the story and how quickly I can move it forward. Where I can jump ahead and where I can veer off into the ditch.  This is the first two person play I've ever written and I'm liking the format. I haven't even been tempted to add more characters which is unusual for me - I like to hear lot's of voices.  There are other characters - but they're all played by the two actors. The two make good music together. I've discovered that the doubling creates some interesting resonances - quick shifts between past and present and not being sure exactly where you are. I don't have a beginning that I'm really in love with. But that may change. I started by writing the last image. And am working backward and sideways. I keep telling myself to settle down and try to shape it a little, but it's just not ready. I know at one point it will click together.

I think it's important in a marriage, especially one that's been going a while, to weather the ups and downs by rededicating oneself to the other. Wow, that was very formal language for me. I think it's cool that you rededicated yourself to your wife. :-)

I made my husband bleu cheese angus beef burgers for his birthday dinner tonight. Beef is his love language so with the German chocolate cake and Chocolate Champion ice cream, the meal kind of said it for me.

I did also say, as he eschews gifts, that I would dedicate myself to helping him launch his new nonprofit -- whatever is in my power to do -- as I have never witnessed him so passionate about anything before.

I've been on page 26 since Friday afternoon. Busy weekend, extremely limited time on the computer, bridesmaid's dress shopping for my daughter's wedding, and other *obligations* kept me from writing more...and now that I have some time...I really need some sleep.

(I'll write more at work...just don't tell anyone)

However, just because I haven't written anything new in the past couple of days, doesn't mean I haven't been working on it. I've finished the first 3 scenes, and am considering and reconsidering how the next 2 scenes will play out. This is where sleep helps...I solve most of my problems (the writing kind AND the rest-of-my-life kind) through dreams.

so, I'm off to get some work done...in my sleep.

Twenty pages is not so far behind. You're still in the game. Keep going!

I reviewed that Coldplay album for my work. I wanted to hate it, but it won my tar heart over.

You are right on track. Keep going!

Ten pages isn't bad. Keep going!

You are ahead of the game, my friend! Twenty-seven pages is a lot, especially considering the difficult subject matter you've chosen to explore.

I love being a part of the herd!

I need that advice too so keep reminding me ! Tell me to stop making excuses and to write the damn thing. :)

God, i love the AV Club. Amazing!

Anyway, you can still win this thing. you have three weeks left and everybody knows this week was a wash, what with the whole country changing course and all.

http://www.jointheimpact.com/

Pass it on!

I psychotically LOVE but of these story ideas. I can't wait to (hopefully) read something.

I write the most when I'm insanely busy as well, and lord knows it's been a coo coo week for the entire country. You know this already, but you've gut to tell your inner editor to shut the hell up, at least until November 1st.

I haven't started my writing for today yet, but I'm somewhere on page 26. I want to get myself to at least the top of page 30 tonight, but we'll see how that goes. It's so weird, it's only been a week and already I've made myself write through Election Day, a night I had class, a power outage, a migraine, and most recently, a weekend with the parents. I really hope the next three weeks are somewhat less crazy. Although I think I am somehow at my most productive when things are as psychotically busy as possible.

I'm trying really hard not to let the internal editor come out and start tearing what I have written so far to shreds. It's harder some days than others. I haven't reread nearly as much as I usually do... so far I've only looked back just to make sure I know where I was when I left off. I haven't really tried this approach yet, but at least page-count-wise it seems to be working. Lots of my other projects have ended in depressing unfinished drafts, so maybe it's better for me at least where I am right now not to look back until I have a complete draft or at least something close to it? I've never written almost 30 pages this quickly before. But I don't know how much of it will end up being any good. But I can't let myself worry about that now or else I end up stuck... time to get another three or so pages out before the fiance gets home from studying.

I know how you feel... I've been forcing myself not to go back and reread if at all possible because I'm afraid I'll have the desire to delete it all. Good luck! :)

In the middle of page 22, the line happened which I hope will make the audience exclaim "Ooh!" and exclaim and scream and cheer and whoop.

They have to find the right answer, and are first exploring the wrong answers. I plan some kind of dramaturgological spectacle so they aren't just sitting around discussing it -- though their challenge IS a compelling one -- and this one wisecrack I hope will bring the audience out of their seats.

And it was as though Hugh said it before I consciously thought it because I said, "Whoa!" out loud after I typed it.

I think listening to Coldplay's "Viva La Vida" over and over is awakening my powers of dialogue.

And the lyrics are fitting to the situation, though not to the scene I'm writing at the moment.

Now I'm at page 24. The end of last week was hectic- the election took a day away because I really couldn't focus- first from fear and then from "Yeah so awesome!" and then from "What the hey?"  about all the Prop 8 stuff. Actually, I used a stronger word, if you can believe that. Then my sketch troupe had a show, and then my one act opened. Excuses excuses- not enough writing. 

Basically, I got stuck trying to fit these stories at the end of the world I wanted to tell inside the structure I created, so I took them aside and just wrote the fantastical story theatre part of the show, and am now working to break them up in the framework in a meaningful way.

I've got two stories so far: one about a new breed of celluar phone that can do email, music, internet..and it can learn. Basically, society is taken over by these phones because they can everything and people can just be free to lollygag along, so much so that the human race loses its will to procreate, and so everyone ends up dead. Happy, but alone and dead. The problem with this story right now is that it's kind of ham-fistedly symbolic, and the whole thing feels like an intellectual exercise rather than a flesh-and-blood story. There some stuff about the cell phone learning to play music better than a person can, and what that means- and it all feels a little forced. But this is revision talk. I have the building blocks on the page, and then I will go back and make them more people-ish. 

The other story is a sort of fairy tale about the death of dreams told by the character of Sanjay, who is my favorite character so far in the story- he's sort of this corpulent nihilist who figures since the world is over, and everyone we know is dead, we should all just get drunk because we'll all die soon and none of this will mean anything. He tells a story about a jar of peanut butter that dreams of escaping from the cupboard and becoming various figures in American history- Abe Lincoln, Paul Revere- but eventually finds himself helpless as he is brutalized into sandwich filling, at which point he gives up on his dreams and, because he gave up on all his dreams, becomes human. 

At some point, I think the ominous gun wielding figure on the outside of the bunker where these artists are living will come and tell a story, but I'm not sure about what yet. 

So it's all very preliminary, but I think it will be something in the end that is not entirely uninteresting. Let's hope, yes?

Loving your play is always a good sign.  If you love it, chances are someone else will too!  I had a great week this week and I love this site and all of you.  I wish every month were NaPlWriMo!

I didn't work (on the play) Sunday.  I took a day off.  I did a lot of other writing though.  I met with my friend Melissa who directed one of my plays up in Malaysia.  She is a wonderful director and sceneographer.  It was so lovely to see her again.  She has such a great energy about her.  Making your way in the theatre is tough everywhere.  I hope I inspired her a bit and kept her creative juices flowing.  In our conversation, we evolved a great idea for a play.  I want to share it, but it's so frickin' good that I can't believe no one has written about it before.  I'm afraid someone will steal it!  Ha! Ha! 

I'm sitting on 55 pages still and hope to get some writing done this afternoon.  I'd really like to finish a draft this week.  I started putting out feelers to actors for a reading.  Would love to get a reading before the end of the month.  I have to go to a photo shoot today (but fear I am not very photogenic). 

I awoke this morning to find that an old, but not forgotten, actor friend of mine posted a production photo on facebook of a bunch of us acting a scene from Gorky's Dachniki (Summer People).  In the picture, 2 of the actors are now working in NY and one is the artistic director of a theatre in Las Vegas.  I feat that one of them may have passed away. It's a joy to know we are all still working in the theatre and keeping the dream alive.  What a blast from the past!  The picture looks like it was taken at the turn of the (20th) century (but was actually taken at the turn of the 21st century).  Ha!  Ha!  

I had a play premiere in Pittsburgh this week.  It's the first play I've had performed in the US in about 10 years.  Hopefully more in the near future.  I've submitted work to a good 25-30 festivals over the past 4-5 months.  

I also had a delightful dialogue (via email) with a young director in California who wants to direct some of my plays and another local director who wants to do 2 of mine here locally.  

I addition to my play, I've started work on a new directing text.  Also had a conversation with Mark Cleary, the artistic director of Newtown Theatre in Sydney, about possibly going to Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne to work in 2009.  

On a personal level, I re-dedicated myself to my wife.  Sometimes I don't make enough time for her, but realized that without her undying support, I wouldn't be able to live this creative life that I love.  She makes a lot of sacrifices for me, but I know she does it out of love.  It hurts to see her upset with her work sometimes, and I know that she sometimes foregoes things that she wants for the sake of us.  It takes a special kind of person to do that.  Every artist should be so lucky.

Sending creative vibes to all of you on the other side of the planet!

Much love,

Dean 

...and you are awesome for checking in because really being where we are is the first step to taking the next action.

Good luck this week ! Setting aside one hour a day can make a big difference in page count.

I only have 4 pages. But hey, it's 4 pages and actually, I feel like I can still catch up because I knew this past week that I would have no time due to the conference and grad school assignments due. So I am still here and I am still planning on having 75 pages at the end of this thing !~

That's awesome ! I started writing a play a long time ago based on Anais Nin ! Though I changed the main character's name . It started with her on her death bed. I am so glad you're doing that ! I would love to see a good play written about her !!!

well, I'm at eight pages. 

I'm hoping once my exam is finished tomorrow, I'll have more time to write and process.  So, it's not going super awesome at the moment.  I'm excited that I have started and that I am going to keep writing.

Who cares if it gets scrapped in the end? Just WRITE, woman!

Keep with it! You're doing just fine!

29 pages whilst all of that other stuff is going on is very admirable. Well played!