Sunday Morning Craft Talk*

*--Yeah, yeah, these are supposed to post on Saturday mornings. In my defense: (1) The prompt came on Saturday night, as I lay me down to sleep. (2) I don't want to wait till next Saturday to post it. (3) Time is just a construct.

(Photo by Amirrasim Ashna, via Pexels.com)

The prompt came over the transom, flung by a writer for whom I have great affection and respect:

"I do want to try writing a play but I'm curious about your approach
​other than the obvious writing."

I was chuffed to be asked. I have all of two full-length plays (one produced, one not yet) and a handful of one-acts to my name. Obviously, there are far better exemplars for the form. But I do have gumption and want-to, and those count for a lot when it comes to setting down words with the self-indulgent hope that they'll someday be read or heard.

More than that, I have thoughts. I told my friend I'd get back to him after I bagged some Z's.

Here, then, is my response from this morning (edited for taste):

For me, the fun and the challenge lie in the stripping away of setup, exposition, and backstory: It's an act of propulsion using dialogue and a confined setting.

I think Straight On To Stardust, proud as I am of it, was more a screenplay than a play. My new one is much more minimal: one setting, five people, three of them doing the heavy lifting. It's a lot of damn dialogue, plus the moving around each other in a small space.

When I write a novel, I'm often thinking of the big canvas, the limitless aspects of time, and the freedom I have to get where I'm going. It's often a much smaller viewfinder on stage.

So there, I think more about how what people say to each other moves things along, the triggers in the speech, how things can turn on a word. What might come gradually in the pages of a novel is often like flash paper on stage. It's really cool when you can catch that ride.

---

Now...

If I wished to pull apart every sentence above, I could launch into endless digressions. About how writing a play isn't limiting at all, that the bounds exist only in the imagination of the dramatist. About the endless ways of pulling the marionette strings. About the fixation of place and the ceaselessness of time.

The timing of the prompt was interesting because I'd just had an evening of drinks with one of the finest actors in my town, and we'd spent time talking about these things. I was primed to provide an answer when my friend came calling.

In the end, all I really know about any kind of writing is the composition of the intrinsic gifts found only in the doing. I have fun writing plays; it is pure joy. When you have that, in anything, you want only one thing: to experience it again and again and to get better through those experiences.

Onward.​