Beta Play blog 1 – Grey areas.

So, I’ve decided to document my playwriting process. I’m doing this partly as a motivational activity…because I want to keep momentum. Momentum being something that has often alluded me as a drama writer – not in the stuff of scenes – but in the stuff of process.

When I was freelancing intensively, I worked a varied circus of evenings, daytimes and weekends, and that rhythm just didn’t allow for consistency or the kind of durational hyper-focus my writing needs to thrive. But since I’ve  entered more conventional, full-time environments, (if you want to call them conventional), I have found it easier to compartmentalise-off my writing time. In terms of the whole ‘applying for funding to create protected writing time’ idea, this has worked in the past, although only to a degree. I’ve actually found the balance between working full-time flexi-hours, and creating a writing life around that, more beneficial to generating sacred time and space. Yet, I know this won’t be the same for everyone.

Now it’s a case of – how do I really create momentum that supports a larger writing habit? Well let’s see if process blogging helps…

I’m not starting from scratch here. I’m starting from a place of having written, I reckon, about 45 to 50 minutes of drama. I’m at this watershed point. At this 45-minute point, I feel like the work has matured into a project with body and some shape. Prior to this, I was tentatively trying to make myself write something. Now the ‘thing’ is taking on its own life-force, which is intriguing. I wonder if you have a watershed point, when you feel like your work starts to take on a form and become bigger? Anyway, I’m now surprising myself, which is good.

Of this scrappy 45 minutes, I would say that I’m currently dealing with a behemoth of scenes. I’ve just gone through the process of breaking down whether I actually need all these scenes and, of course, I’ve discovered that the ‘scenes’ aren’t so much scenes as dramatic points or pivots. This micro-process has been useful because – as my less lazy, more rational mind knows – several dramatic points can be contained within one scene and woven into a richer textual fabric.

One obvious takeaway from my recent writing sittings is – don’t fear the number of beats in a story. Having said that, it could be argued that modern plays are becoming more televisual and, as such, are more voluminous collections of shorter scenes. This is sometimes more obvious when watching the work of new writers who have not been through the MA or theatre development scheme training system, but I don’t mean this pejoratively.

Another issue of process I’ve been jostling with is the idea of not being an expert in what I’m writing about. This particular neurosis is well documented by writers. There is a tension between the desire to know every detail and aspect of background to a scene – the socio-political and personal colour – even before setting pen to paper or fingers to keys. It doesn’t take a genius to know that this kind of perfectionism isn’t very conducive to progress.

In fact…I’d say that this play is the first thing I’ve written where I didn’t start out with a clear structural concept or plan. I’m allowing the content and structure to write itself, in ‘the way it wants to write itself.’ Then, I’m observing what kind of material I’m working with, which is proving quite natural…By extension, I’m less concerned about this combination of content, treatment and structure looking like or mimicking other plays. I’m kind of ‘OK’ with it being different, as long as it has its own working grammar.

I suppose that’s what this series of blogs will be about – articulating the feeling out of the play through grey areas of process that aren’t so widely discussed in those books about story theory yada yada yada. Maybe I will call this blog ‘Grey Plays,’ although that does have kinky overtones. Perhaps all plays are grey in their beta stage, until coloured-in or painted into vibrancy. So, let’s call this a ‘Beta Play Blog,’ with a play on the word ‘Beta’ as ‘better.’ The Communicator in me likes that.

I’ve been really thrilled to see how the audience for this blog, in general, has grown from hundreds to thousands lately, in tandem with a new flurry of dance reviews. I hope you glean some points of interest from this different offering and maybe this ‘beta play’ process could be likened to those of other art forms you’re working on… Let me know. Until then, this is me clocking out of my writing desk and clocking into life.