Student Blog: Writing Plays: How the Heck Do I Do It?

I have been so so privileged that in the last few years, I’ve been able to immerse myself in the world of new work. Brand new plays, musicals, and other things like that. I love getting to be apart of a brand new piece and seeing it grow and become something from nothing. That is what is so crazy to me. that plays and musicals all start from nothing. A blank page. And that is so wild and so so cool. Someone asked me recently what my writing process was and how I write plays and I wish I had an answer. My writing process is all over and changed constantly. I only really write short plays, I’ve never tackled a ful length, not saying I never will, but it’s something I thought I’d walk you all through some of the things I do when writing a new lil play. I’d like to preface this with the fact that I’ve never taken a playwriting class in my life, I’ve attended the Lanford Wilson New American Play Festival and that’s it. I’ve been writing for about 1 year now.

Before I get into it I want to start with this: I still struggle with is inferiority complex a lot. I feel like what I've written isn't good enough or as good as other peoples. I'm slowly, but surely learning that this isn't the case. I'm still actively learning how to combat this, I wish I had the answers but I still don't know. I try to tell myself that that the stories I have to tell are incredibly important and that I should tell them. And I am learning to believe that. All of our stories deserve to be told and need to be told.

Now that I got that out of the way-writing plays!

So, first I have to get an idea. That can be really easy, and it hits me like while I’m walking around or something happens, or it is very hard and I got nothing. My notes app is full with incomplete sentences that I want to turn into lines and ideas for plotlines. Once I’ve got something I wanna write about I open up a good ole blank google docs page and just start. I don’t outline, most of the time I have no idea where the script or the story is going, but I just start. I get the exposition out of the way, it helps me get to know the characters and helps me turn them into what I want them to be and I just keep writing. I keep writing through the conflict until I get to the end and see where it turns out. Sometimes if I’m really courageous, I do this in one sitting, but most of the time it takes me a bit to finish one. Then I have a first draft. Something that the playwrights’ at this year's Lanford Wilson New American Play Festival really hammered home to was that the first draft doesn’t have to be perfect and most of the time it isn’t going to be. You just need to write something so you have something to doctor up and to work with. Let it be messy. And that is something that has stuck with me and that I’m still learning. I always wanted my first drafts to be perfect and good, but they don’t have to be perfect. I don’t have to try so hard to get it right on the first try because I have unlimited tries to get it right. I just have to have something to work with.

After I finish the first draft, I normally set it down for a couple days and let it rest. Then, I’ll pick it back up again and read through it and make little changes. If there was a line that I had that I don’t like, I mess with it until I like it, etc. Next, I look and I make sure things are believable and aren’t too convenient. The last play I wrote, one of my characters had to discover something that he wasn’t supposed to find, and at first his reasoning for finding the item was way too convenient. It was too easy, he hadn’t worked for it. So, I had to find something that worked. I think I wrote down a list of 20 outrageous ways he could find these items and one of them actually ended up working and now it’s in the script for good er, for now. I don’t want things to be too easy. I want my characters to earn every moment they have so I make sure that they are actively trying to get their objectives and they have obstacles to overcome.

After going through that process a few times, it is time to read it out loud. This is so so scary to me. I didn’t hear people say the words I wrote out loud until I had been writing for about a year, and it was at the table read for my short play that I did in New York. I was terrified and oh so scared. It has gotten a bit easier, but the weirdness/surrealism of it all hasn’t gone away completely. Like, I still can’t fully believe it. I like to hear the words out loud, that way I can audibly hear if something doesn’t sound right or doesn’t come out the way I want it to. I’ll get together with some of my friends and hear them read it. After that, I make small adjustments from there.

Depending on the situation, if my play is being performed or I’m submitting it off to a festival or something, I will turn it in/turn it over to the hands of the director and just step back and see what happens. If I’m just writing it for funzies, I put it in my new works folder and I save it for a rainy day. So yeah, that’s my roundabout, kind of process.

I’ve said it once, I’ll say it again, new work is so incredibly important. Please try writing a play, at least once in your life. Just sit down and see what happens, and if you hate it, you never have to do it again but you just might love it. I never ever in a million years thought I would be a playwright and given so many wonderful opportunities to produce my own work. I still don’t entirely know what I’m doing, but I know that I love it. Go support new shows. It is so vital to this industry and I’m so grateful to get to be a part of it.

Please, tell your story. I want to hear it. It is worthy of being told. As always, go do great things.

To post a comment, you must register and login.