Uggh, I have fallen behind! I was on a family vacation last week and found precious little time to write. I started each of the exercises but often did not complete a finished draft of the day’s called-for scene. But I did do a lot of thinking about the prompts and jotted down a lot of ideas and excerpts that I would still like to use. So … instead of giving up or charging ahead to write a from scratch play I am going to take a week off to finish each of the exercises I’ve posted so far. I’ll update my previous posts as I go. And now I know that if I want to repeat this monthly challenge in the future, I should leave myself two days for each full-scene exercise instead of one.
Maybe you find yourself in the same boat and would like to use this extra time to catch up too. If not, feel free to move forward and begin your play. You can use this checklist as a guide:
- Generate some raw material. Maybe you already have an idea in mind for a play. If not, think back on your own life to a time that still has a lingering emotional connection for you. Identify a volatile or unsettled relationship touching on that time and do some free writing to explore that time and that relationship. Remember to employ your five senses.
- Brainstorm how to adapt the raw material into a play with fictional characters.
- Describe your characters and define their goals.
- Describe your setting and how it will reflect the central conflict of your play.
- Write short monologues to discover your characters unique voices and explore their relationships to one another.
- Order your scenes and sketch out what will happen in each scene.
- Write the opening scene. How are your characters introduced? How is the conflict revealed?
- Write the last scene. How have your characters evolved? Has the conflict been resolved? (note: it doesn’t have to be)
- Connect the dots by writing the intermediate scenes.
- Read your first draft aloud without stopping to make any minor revisions. Identify three major weaknesses to work on. Does a character seem flat, with no authentic voice? Is a transition between scenes confusing? Does more backstory need to be developed? Is one scene way too long?
- Revise to address these big picture problems.
- Read again, this time with an eye/ear for details that need to be refined.