Sunday 30th June 2013

Spent the last couple of hours working on a play. It's only a ten minute play, but that doesn't necessarily make things any easier. With a regular play - or indeed any story, you have to hit the ground running, not spend too much time circling the plot before getting stuck in. Apparently, a hell of a lot of scripts and stories submitted to competitions and  companies have too many opening scenes where people are just meeting up over coffee, having not particularly interesting conversations about nothing in particular. You can understand why these scenes have been written - the writer has had to try and work out who these characters are, how they talk, what makes them tick. What's less clear is why such scenes survive several drafts until the final submitted version. Those scenes are the ones that get cut (or should get cut) while you get to the point of the story, in two minutes or less. 

In a ten minute play, without stating the bleeding obvious, the same applies, to the nth degree. Your statement of intent has to be - well, stated, in the first thirty seconds or so. Certainly, in the draft that I've written so far, that hasn't happened. I can understand why, and also why many authors shy away from the same in their scripts. You don't want to blow it all in the first minute - otherwise, it could be argued, where else is there for your story to go? The answer, of course, is always forward. The story may not even be about what you originally thought it was. Now, that's a startling thought for any writer - that whatever idea got them to start the actual story is in fact facile, unoriginal, and at best, merely the kickstarter to the other story that you haven't even thought of yet - but it's an important one to realise, I think. It allows you to stop being quite so precious, and to be slightly more relaxed about letting go of your ideas - adapting, adopting to change. 

The draft that I'm working on isn't even the first draft, I think. I've recently got into the frame of mind that the first bit of work you do on a story or a script doesn't have to be thought of as the first draft. This allows your inner critic to get a lot more freedom, when you finally let them off the leash. Your inner critic still gets to go wild, bitter, and - yes, critical - on your 'first' draft, but it also means that you still get to do a lot of false starts and working out of ideas before you get to that level. For me, a first draft should still be a reasonable piece of work. Sure, there's probably (at least) ten drafts to follow, but that first draft shouldn't exactly be an embarrassment to anyone, least of all its author. 

This summer, I hope to redraft an old script that just won't let go - Four Play. This is a script that has already had two productions, albeit of two very different versions of the script. The most recent version, a couple of years ago, had very positive feedback, and I have decided in a fit of entirely uncharacteristic ego, to take that feedback at face value, including the holy grail that it (the script) might have some kind of life entirely independent from me (in other words, that it might make me some money). However, in order to make that any kind of reality, the one piece of negative feedback, often and consistently repeated, has to be taken into account - that it was just too damn long. 

Now, I believe people who were in the audiences that said that, when you were actually watching the play, that it didn't seem all that long. However, I also believe those people that said that, yes, it really did seem that dam long. So, its required from me to hack out about half a hour. Not exactly an easy task, and not just because I'm a precious writer who can't bear to kill his darlings. Well, not entirely because of that. 

For those of you that don't already know, Four Play is a story set in the traditional trappings of a county house murder mystery. The twist in this play is that all four actors have to play four parts each, the costume changes getting all the more impossibly quick and frenetic. Plus, there's also four endings. I think we calculated that by the end of the night, there are more than 116 costume changes - and an equal number of exits and entrances. All of this means that any editing that I do isn't simply a matter of just cutting out that scene or this scene, since that scene or this scene is very likely in place to accommodate another actor's costume change. Having said all that, I worked out earlier this year how I could (probably) knock off twenty minutes or so from the running time. In the original (or, to be more accurate, most recent) version of the script, a murder is committed in the prologue. Then, scene two, set the following morning, introduces all the main characters, and goes about setting up their motives, red herrings, etc. Nobody knows about the murder that's already been committed. After about forty minutes, the next murder is committed, and then the pace really kicks in. I always likened it to a roller coaster that spends the first part of the journey going steeply uphill, so that when it drops, it can do so with real speed and energy. 

Finally, I worked out earlier this year that if all the characters already know that the prologue murder has been committed, then we could get to the meat of the story a helluva lot quicker. Of course, it worried me that it would be a lot more difficult to introduce all the back stories and red herrings, and also how I was going to hide the identity of the first victim - it's a big reveal in the finale because nobody's actually aware of the murder, and therefore a lot more difficult to pull off as a surprise if everyone knows that somebody has been murdered. But, I was reasonably confident that something would work itself out if I just got along to writing it. It was still going to be a bit clunky, but I figured, that's what 27th drafts are for. 

However, yesterday, I realised that there was no need for scene two to be set the following morning - that was a waste of time, and actually made the pacing a bit odd. Actually, I realised, scene two should follow pretty much continuously from scene one. It does mean, however, that the very top of the play is pretty much at the heightened level of finale  - the pace and attitude of where we come in at the very start of the play is where most plays check out. Now, that worries me for a number of reasons - it's a hell of a big ask for the audience, and an even bigger ask for the actors -and I'm not yet convinced that the story itself won't be capsized by such a move. However, starting at the end is exactly what any writing manual / workshop implores you to do. I just never expected to be considering to do it quite so literally. Whatever else, I'm convinced that many audiences will not have seen anything like that on stage before. And that's a good thing. 

Probably.  

Back To Brighton

I'm in a coffee shop in Brighton making two significant mistakes. The first is having chosen a coffee shop that comes with its own wifi access, meaning that the first real bit of writing that I've done this afternoon is the sentence and a half you've just read, and the second mistae is reading a book called The Edinburgh Fringe Survival Guide.

It's always the same at this time of year. Having not been at work for a couple of weeks means that I'm beginning to feel - well, you know, a human being, and having spent a week at the Fringe seeing a variety of great (and terrible) shows reminds me how possible it is to do the same. At the moment, my days aren't packed hour to hour with demands on my time, and so, despite my claim earlier, I am actually completing a bit of writing, and my mind is firing on at least two cylinders, trying to work out how easy (or at least possible) it would be to bring a show up to Edinburgh.

It is, of course, all about the time and money. Even those performers and companies that latch on to the valuable free festivals that have become so important in recent years have at least some disposable income to make a month away from real life a viable option. I've always claimed, and indeed assumed, that I'm in no way bitter - that's the way that the cards have been dealt, and in any case, I don't personally know of a single performer who hasn't worked incredibly hard for whatever degree of success they've achieved. But now I'm thinking I may as well get a little bitter. It's something to do, isn't it?

I spoke to a lot of performers this year who had found themselves in terrible shows, the quality of which was reflected in low audience numbers, and savage reviews. One actor I spoke to mentioned the review that the show in which he was appearing. Not only was the review better writen that the show, it struggled to give one star: 'And that was generous,' he muttered darkly. It must be disheartening for a company to repeat a show for at least two weeks of what's one of the world's biggest arts festivals to increasingly dwindling audiences, fighting against the positive word of mouth that's buzzing around - as far as you can tell - any other show in town.

What seemed to link these shows - apart from the fact that they were by all accounts dire - was that they were bankrolled by the director. At this point we should acknowledge that in these cases, 'director' refers only to the person with money and an ego, and not, as you might hope, any detecable charisma or talent. In at least two of these cases, the 'director' was doing the show as part of their PHD. I'm still not entirely sure what this indicates.

All of this doesn't stop me, each year, from coming back to Brighton in a slightly more creative frame of mind, finally working out what cuts and changes are needed in the show that people have been telling me for about ten years now that I really MUST bring to the Fringe, of having new ideas for stories/plays/stand up that invariably jostle for postion alongside the incomplete ideas I had this time last year before real life got back in the way. I often read of all these people who managed to complete their first novel in the half hour between waking up and going to work, and I honestly don't know how they managed it.

This year, then, I'm going to see if there's any value in the small and short. There's plenty of short story and short play competitions out there, all with, if not some critical recognition, then at least cash prizes. In some respect, this is what this blog is about. While there are few things more boring than a writer talking about what s/he's writing about (while they're talking about it, chances are they're no-where near getting to actually writing about it), I can understand why they do it: if they announce they're working on something, they have witnesses. Not an audience, but witnesses - people who can pull them up in a years time and ask them how that novel/play/joke/to do list is going. And if they've got nowhere with it: well, clearly they're not serious about it all.