The British Theatre Guide:

School & Youth Theatre

Creating Your Own Show - The Actual Writing (2)

By now you have some idea of the complexities of writing, so it's time to start thinking about actually writing your own play. There are, however, a few questions you should be asking yourself first:

Is your plot worked out to the last detail? If so, be prepared to be a bit flexible: you'll probably find that, as the characters develop and the plot begins to move, new ideas will occur. Some of these ideas will be refinements and will therefore mean that you have to adapt the plot, whereas some will be totally new and will necessitate a total change of some aspect of the plot.

Are you flexible enough to allow your characters to develop a life of their own? You'll almost certainly find this happens and you must be prepared to accommodate the changes, even to the extent of modifying the plot.

Can you be flexible enough to abandon ideas if it becomes necessary to do so? You could find that a character becomes superfluous. No matter how dear (s)he may be to your heart, for the good of the play you'll have to chuck him/her out! A plot incident, too, may become surplus to requirements. Let it go!

So, here we are, sat in front of the typewriter/word-processor/blank sheet of paper: where do we start?

You probably already have at least one - and possibly more - scenes fairly clear in your head. Write them! I often find that I have the first and last scenes pretty well tied-up (or, at least, I think I have!) right from the start, so I do them first. It's the best way of getting over that awful time when you sit with that (literal or metaphocial) blank sheet in front of you. Once that first leap into the dark is made - and, make no mistake, it is a leap into the dark! - the rest, although never easy, becomes less hard.

After that I just write. I make no attempt to regulate the flow or impose any order on what I write: I simply write. I want to get the thing finished so that I can start the real work, and that's the revision - no, it's almost totally rewriting! But that's OK: I've got the basics; I've got something down. Now comes the surgery!

I use that word advisedly! Go through and cut, cut, cut! Everything that's inessential goes - ruthlessly hacked out. It's not surgery really: it's butchery!

Now look at what's left, and there's a few more questions to ask yourself:

Are your characters consistent? If not, why not? One possible reason is that they develop over the period of the play. That's fine, but we have to see it happening. What needs to be done to make it so?
How will your audience get to know your characters' personalities? Have you written great screeds of information for the actors? That's a mistake, because you are relying on the actors' technicque rather than the play itself. The personalities of the characters should emerge from the action and the dialogue. Readers or audience members should feel that they are getting to know the characters as the play progresses. Each step of the way a little something must emerge which tells us some more about the characters. That's how we get to know people in real life, and that's how we should get to know them in the play. And if some trait of character is not important in the play, then don't waste your - and our - our time on it.
Is everything relevant? It ought to be! Just as you shouldn't waste time and energy on irrelevant character traits, so you shouldn't divert our attention away from the main plot (or necessary sub-plots) with irrelevant action.
Do you have a scene in which one or more characters fill in necessary background so that we can follow the development of the plot? If so, is it as short as possible? is it easy to follow? does the dialogue flow naturally? Is there, in short, a better way of conveying this information to us? If there is, use it!
Watch out for under- or over-writing. Both are easy faults to fall into. Under-writing comes from the fact that you forget that the audience doesn't know as much as you about the background, plot, characters... whatever, whereas over-writing occurs when you treat the audience as though they are thick and can't pick up anything but the most glaringly obvious ideas. Both are easy traps to fall into: sometimes it is easier for someone else to spot these faults than it is for the writer. Eventually you will be able to distance yourself from your writing (to some degree!), but until you acquire this facility, it is a good idea to have a sensitive (but honest!) friend who can help. This is nothing to be ashamed of: remember, even the best novelists have their editors, and any playwright worth his salt will attend every rehearsal of the first production of his magnum opus and do as many rewrites as necessary, whether of whole scenes or even single speeches. It became obvious during rehearsals for one of my plays that a new scene was necessary at one point. There was a sudden (but necessary) change in one of the character's attitudes and a new, albeit brief, scene was required to justify this. The interesting thing is, it was the actor who spotted this, not me!

Finally, pare it to the bone. I once worked for a newspaper editor who gave me some of the best advice on writing I have ever had from anyone (Andy Smith, where are you now?): pare your story down as far as it will go, then cut out a third of it! "If you don't," he told me, "I'll do it for you. Or worse, one of the subs will. And then it'll not be the story you wrote. But if you cut it, it will be, because you'll find a way of keeping the feel of it all intact, whereas an editor or a sub will merely chop out words."

Excellent advice for any writer!

By the way, one more piece of advice which has become necessary because most writers now use word-processors: never, ever use [FIND AND REPLACE]. Changing one word can upset the rhythm or even the balance of a sentence, so never change a word unless you weigh very carefully the effect, not just on the lexical meaning but on the emotional overtones and the rhythm, even the speakability of the sentence. Just look at this:

I'm telling you, Joe!

Change Joe to Peter.

I'm telling you, Peter!

The first finishes strongly - Joe is a heavy, stressed end word - whereas the second is much weaker because Peter, having an additional, unstressed syllable, tails away. If you're going to change the character's name from Joe to Peter, then you'd better put the name first in the sentence so you maintain the strong ending:

Peter, I'm telling you!

A small change? Yes. A minor one? Definitely not! Try speaking them aloud and you'll see what I mean. That's why you need to read and re-read what you've written - aloud.

Enjoy your writing!

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