Play Writing Steps

Video Transcript

"In this clip we're going to talking about the writing steps. I guess it's like if you paint something you want to get to the point where you're just painting without thinking of it and it's just flowing. But in the beginning you're thinking about each individual color, each individual brush stroke, and it's the same thing with writing, really. We're going to kind of break it down into the component parts, and then, after that, you can have it in the back of your mind and fly forward with it. Now there are four basic steps to writing, and you can do them really in any order and it shouldn't be a structured regimented thing. It should be something that is in the back of your mind, and just something that you're aware of. The first step is research. Now the second step is writing, then editing and then rewriting, and then you kind of keep repeating those steps as you go along. In addition to that I've broken a couple of the steps down a little further. Research actually, to me, comes in two different parts. There's a research you need to do at the very beginning to see if you want to proceed with doing this play, and also everything you need in the background to get you started and going on it. There's another kind of research which is smaller, more detailed research along the way. It might be to do with certain characters or certain dress, or certain, again, details. I think it's important to start off doing the basic research you need to do to get the play started because if you try to do every bit of research in the whole play, you might burn out before you even start, so that's something to think about. One example of dividing research into two parts is the play that I wrote, "Potter's Point". The setting was a monument on the top of the hill overlooking the ocean that had been there for a hundred years. It was important to research different monuments on coastlines especially, and see what there was there, what sort of...maybe they had plaques, they had a flag pole, they had picnic benches and a fence in the front, just physically what was there, and then backgrounds of them -how long they lasted, what happened, why some got closed down- that type of thing. Those I needed to do before I really knew that I wanted to proceed with the play. Later came the other kind of research, which is the more detailed research. I had two characters who started meeting up at this historical Potter's Point right after World War II, and they met there every single week. So some of the things they would talk about regarding the war and regarding that time period, so that I could do along the way so I didn't bog myself down at the very beginning. Also, the writing process itself is broken into two parts. One part, which is probably the most important part of writing, is the creative part, which is not necessarily typing into the computer, but it's thinking up the idea. It's putting the ideas together, and it could be in your special private place where you're getting the most creative inspiration, or it could be driving along the street where you're getting an idea, but it's the creative process, or it might be as you're sitting in front of your computer. Just that whole creative writing process and figuring out the characters and what kind of conflict they're going to be going through. And then the other part of writing is simply the input. One of the reasons for really dividing these four points is that you can get in trouble if you start doing all of these together. You're doing a little bit of research, you're thinking up some ideas, you're inputting it, you're doing some editing while you go along and kind of rewriting in your mind, and then you'll start to get bogged down, possibly. So, again, whatever works for you is the process to go with, but I think a good rule of thumb is when you're doing writing and especially inputting, you're finally ready to put all this down on paper. You don't want to stop and do little edits and little spelling corrections, and switch a sentence here and a word there -that can all come in editing. So just get it laid out there, and then you might want to jump right into it and edit it. You might want to put it away for a couple days and think about it before you edit it. But whatever you do, those steps are often good to separate a little bit. And then after you decide what you've edited down, what rewrites are you going to do? Are you going to add characters? Are you going to need some stronger conflict, or a different, more realistic conflict? These are all things you can think about. Now you know these steps and that they don't have to be done in any particular order, so put them in the back of your mind and proceed forward and create a wonderful play."