Eyes on the Road, Girlie is my latest offering. Just written a few days ago and now, of course, in rewrites.
Truth is funnier (and stranger) than fiction.
My housekeeper relayed this story in passing the other day. Her client is a 90-year-old woman who no longer drives but still loves her outings. So she has hired a caregiver, not to help with her meds, clean her house, help her shower, or fix her meals. No. She has hired Diana to drive her around three days a week. Sometimes they are random drives, sometimes to the nearby ocean beach, or a historic site, or to beautiful downtown Savannah with all of her charming squares. Her choices are never premeditated; always picked spontaneously on the morning of the outing. But! two things are absolute: Breakfast biscuits at McDonald’s and luncheon at Chik-Fil-A.
When I heard this story told in real time, my imagination sprung to life: this would make a charming, perhaps funny, (I never know when my writing will turn up funny) short play. And so, as often is the case, dialogue began running in my head until I was forced to write it down.
Fellow writers: Life and the people around you will supply you with all you need if you but look and listen.
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From stage play to novel was an incredible journey for me as a playwright turned novelist. In playwriting, you must tell your story in 100 pages or less, definitely in less than two hours and everything you want to relate to the audience must be conveyed through the dialogue. In the theatre world, there’s a term: “method acting” which means you get as close to your character as you can. If the character you are going to portray is a prostitute, you follow and talk to whores. (been there, done that. Honolulu, 1992 ) If your character is a woman who’s husband has been in prison for the past 13 years, you get inside her head or better yet visit him in prison.
I’m a ‘method’ writer, (every chance I get.)
In 1999 I had reason to visit a men’s DOC facility. (prison). I was visiting a confessed murderer as research for one of my earlier scripts. My writing has taken me to some unexpected places to say the least. On a Sunday morning I found myself sitting in the reception area with three dozen other women. Wives, sisters, mothers, daughters of convicted felons. As I waited, I wondered how long they had been coming to visit; how long would a woman wait for her man behind bars; and what a terrible impact this must have on the children, visiting their fathers in this place. Sitting there I was suddenly compelled to write their stories. I tried to interview as many women as I could and this was no easy task.
Their closed society is cloaked in guilt and shame. But they finally let me in and I discovered, for the most part, incredibly brave and strong women. They would tell their friends and neighbors, “my husband travels with his work” to explain the man’s absence. Always appearing cheerful and strong while visiting their men, the women I spoke with, had a pull off down the highway where they would congregate (after leaving the prison) where they could cry, scream, and moan and be comforted. Where they could share, with other women who understood, what their lives were really like outside the walls. Away from the eyes of their men and the prison officials.
For someone who was so comfortable writing in the genre of ‘scripts’ this was a scary prospect. Yikes! I thought, a novel was at the very least 70,000 words and over 300 pages long. What could I possibly have to say? One year and four months later I had a 335 page novel in my hands. Evidently my characters had plenty to say! At times I was surprised and delighted with my women and their stories. At other times appalled. As many writers will tell you, at some point, the characters sort’a….no…they definitely take over and you become simply the typist.
I am hoping that my readers enjoy this journey and find some empathy for those women doing hard time outside the walls.
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A good writer is always observing and watching other people and their interpersonal relationships with others. Relationships are complex and rarely resemble yours. And of course…listening. Everyone speaks differently, with a different word choice and a varied cadence to their speech. This can translate to your writing and add another layer of ‘flavor’ to your dialogue.
I also recommend watching movies or series to learn dialogue writing. But, not just the ‘bad’ movies, poorly written, poorly directed, and poorly acted. Watch the good ones too…ones you liked.
I recently was binge-watching an older series, “Six Feet Under“. One which I had loved when it was new and couldn’t wait for each episode to air. I began watching for the simple pleasure of re-watching it. But three or four episodes in, I began to critique it. Especially the character of Ruth; the mother of the Fisher family. She had a hot temper and I am certain that was ‘written’ in for the character. However, the actor, (Frances Conroy) went from 0 to 10 when the script called for temper. There was no layering. At first I blamed the writing…then the director. My final analysis was that the
writing (without seeing the script) was hardly at fault. Or maybe a little bit not having enough blocking written in. Don’t forget, emotion can be written as part of the blocking.
Then I laid some blame at the director’s feet for not noticing that his actor had only two levels; calm and yelling. And the yelling came out of the blue and was all the same. Why didn’t the director catch this? Well, he did have a huge cast to direct and watch over. So mostly the responsibility lay with the lazy actor. An actor who wants to get as much as possible out of a part would look for those layers, subtle though they may be. Ed O’Ross (Nikolai, the fiery Russian florist) was excellent at layering his character’s emotions.
No script or production is perfect. You can watch ANYTHING and learn from it. Same with reading. I’ll give you an example; when I noticed a couple of authors using the same word or phase over and over in their work of fiction, I realized I might suffer from the same curse. My nemeses is the word ‘just‘. My guard dog is the feature (in any word processing platform) ‘find’ or ‘replace’ and I use it to root out the 300 times I used ‘just’. (hahaha)
If you’re a screen writer, visuals are more important than diaglogue. Your blocking can include the silent dialogue. Write in the non-verbal speech of an actor. In ‘Six Feet Under‘, actor, Lauren Ambrose (Claire) and Jeremy Sisto (Billy) were superb with their non-verbal dialogue, using facial and eye expressions and body language. This credit I give to the director and the excellent actors.
When writing stage plays the playwright should keep ‘action’ simple. Write some emotional blocking in but always remember the director is going to have their own thoughts about how the scene should go. Be careful not to do the director’s job for them. It won’t be appreciated.
If you are a screenwriter or writing fiction you probably think you have no interest in theatre. One of your best sourses to learn about writing dialogue is the theatre. Live stage plays are the Mecca of good or bad dialogue. Go there, observe and learn!
The Black Hills Community Theatre of Rapid City, South Dakota is opening performance dates for my play, The Guyer Girls, beginning March 31st.
Writing down my memories of my mother telling me these wild stories about herself and her four sisters when they were teenagers in the 1920s in a tiny town
in the Pacific Northwest was a joyful trip down memory lane and a perfect genre to preserve her stories. When I was a child, thankfully, I knew all of my aunties as older women. It’s a special event when I am notified by Samuel French, my publisher, that this particular play has been licensed to produce by a theatre group.
Synopsis:
Critics have described The Guyer Girls as a cross between Little Women and I Remember Mama. From the opening moments when Ivah cuts Violet’s eyebrows off, this story romps through the sibling antics and rivalry of a large family. The first act takes place as the young teenage girls are growing into lovely women.
In a series of family stories set in the 1920s, we enjoy the girls’ hilarious pranks, antics, joys and humiliations. There is laughter in abundance. Tears, love, and sibling rivalry as these four delightful sisters grow up under the guidance of their matriarch, ‘Mama’. A prestigious marriage, a female pro-basketball player, and a run away to Alaska, these young women couldn’t be more diverse. Fast forward to the 1940s. The sisters are adults, starting their own families and Pearl Harbor has just been attacked.
The Guyer Girls are the children of Sophia and Levi Guyer who migrated to America and then moved out west. The stage play is a rich tapestry of an American family spanning three decades and based upon the true story of the Guyer family. 4f.
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Watch for more interviews with authors. December: Marc Cameron, writing for TOM CLANCY
March-Apr: Joshua Hood, author of ROBERT LUDLUM’S THE TREADSTONE RENDITION April: Author, H.W. ‘Buzz’ Bernard
As a playwright you better find some conflict in your story. Little Women had soft, cozy conflict but make no mistake there was conflict. Romeo and Juliet had glaring conflict represented by a family feud that wrought murder and mayhem. To be successful, you must have antagonists and protagonists in your plot.
CONFLICT: It is a challenge to write conflict with dialogue only. There is no description (like fiction) where you can tell the reader how angry and against something your antagonist is. Granted you have the characters right there in front of you, to tell the story with their body language but the dialogue carries the day and is the difference between weak writing and strong, successful writing.
Using examples from a recent play of mine, I will demonstrate conflict in simple, but successful (to the overall plot of the play) terms. A children’s play but the rules still apply and are no less challenging because it’s a kids’ play. Perhaps even more of a challenge.
Sub-PLOT: The sooner the plot is revealed the better. If you haven’t engaged the audience in the first three minutes, you don’t have a very good plot.
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Back in the day when there were truly ‘starving actors’ we started up theatre companies all the time with a couple of platforms and four ‘spots’ that one would use in a shop in the garage at home. This is a cheap ($12. a piece) adaptable, portable light. You can even attach a gel to the cone for a few pennies per gel. Use blues for night and warm colors (amber) for day. Each light has a wire running back to the control desk/booth and while you won’t have a dimmer option, you must be able to turn the light off and on.
When we started our own company, we had to be totally portable as our performance space could be an art gallery, a café, a gymnasium, or school auditorium. Anywhere they would allow us to use their space. All sites had to be vacated when the weekend was over and then loaded back in for the next performance date.
We could light just about any play with four of these clamp-on, shop lights. The purpose of any stage lighting is to light the actors and the set. If you don’t accomplish anything else, you need to make certain this happens. If your stage is in a very small space, it’s not super critical to light the actors brightly. Just be certain they stay in the light, which is where the director’s blocking comes in.
Even if you need to stick to the basics of simple illumination, lighting makes everything feel more professional and helps the audience to better focus on what is going on, on the stage. Theatrical lighting doesn’t have to be overly complicated. Lighting is about making certain that you can see the people on stage and that the moods of the play are represented and amplified.
Clamp lights aren’t the be all and end all. You’ll have to live with the shadows that they cast.
But remember, this is all you can afford now, and you’ll also need to be able to break it down and take the lighting with you.
I still remember the thrill when we could finally afford a couple of Klieg lights.
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Most theatres have a set designer who creates the set based on the director’s vision. But it is important that the playwright sees the set. Where your story takes place. If your set requires two different scenes/sets and you have structured the play around two sets you must think about time and money. Anticipate the cost because you want the director to choose your play to produce. But if the cost of more than one set is too much, your play might never be chosen.
An envelope design works nicely for the need of two locations/sets in one play. The first set in created on the outside fold of an envelope. When the scene changes the ‘flap’ is opened, like a tri-fold (by the stage crew) and a new set/location is used. Set pieces (Furnishings) have to be changed out and this calls for some cleverness on the director’s part.
One play comes to mind that I directed: The Cemetery Club. The main set was a living room of one of the female characters. But I also needed a Jewish cemetery. The four widows went there every month to visit their dead husbands and maintain the gravesite.
So what I designed was a single backdrop (scenery). What you might see out the living room window. Then I furnished the living room with set pieces. Sofa, chairs, coffee table, lamps, etc.
Upstage on a riser I created the cemetery with three graves. I designed starfoam monuments with the Star of David on the downstage side. The women would walk up on the risers and, while gazing at the graves, deliver their monologues. It worked because the actors believed it. Thus the audience believed it. The magic of theatre!
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Available NOW: How To Write a 10 Minute Play ~~ Journal and Handbook
Lots of great instruction about the art of writing a ten minute play. And over 250 blank, lined pages for your creative writing as you write your first or tenth 10 minute play.
Excerpt from back cover: ‘As you prepare to write your first 10-minute play, pretend that you have walked into a room and interrupted a conversation, mid-sentence. Or you have turned on the television and tuned into a sit-com, ten minutes into (late) a thirty-minute episode. That’s where your head space should be when you begin writing your play. Give yourself permission. Sit down and write.
This journal/workbook gives you not only the space to write down your ideas for a play but there are instructional sections to help you create your ten-minute play. Develop your story line. Create the characters. Try out different dialogue. 250+ blank, lined pages with famous quotes by actors, playwrights, and writers on each page to inspire the writer in you.’
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“Writing isn’t a calling; it’s a doing!” t. sugarek
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This beautiful journal/handbook is now available in Hardcover. Here’s a little of what you can expect inside. Plus hundreds of blank pages for your own writings and plans for a stage play.
1. Format is very important. If you submit your new play to anyone they will not read it if it is not in the proper format. There is software out there that offer auto-format but I found them lacking. The character’s name is centered. Blocking (action) is indented and placed in parentheses. Setting (indent once), Rise (indent once) and Dialogue is far left. Double space between character’s name and first line of dialogue. Blocking (action): is placed below the character’s name in parentheses. (indent x 3). A ‘beat’ is a dramatic pause to enhance the pace of the speech and is placed in the dialogue where you wish the actor to pause for a beat or two.
2. Each page represents approximately one minute of time on stage. So if you have a play that is 200 pages long, that won’t work. Audiences aren’t going to sit for more than one and a half hours unless you are providing a circus, a fire drill, sex, and an earthquake. You should keep your full length script to about 100 pages which equals 1.6 hours of stage time. For a one act divide that by 2. For a ten minute play your script should be from 10-15 pages. These times and figures are debated by others but this has been my experience as an actor/director/writer.
3. Leave lots of white space on the page. One day when your play is being produced, actors will need a place to make notes in the script during rehearsal. This is a sample of an actor’s (mine) working script. The
actor usually ‘highlights’ their lines and writes the director’s blocking in the margins. (in pencil, as blocking frequently changes)
4. The blocking is indented, in parentheses, and directly below the character’s name. This is where the playwright gives the characters instructions on when and where to move. But, keep it short and sweet. Remember there will be a director who has their own ideas of where he/she wants their actors to be. Be aware of costume changes in your writing. An actor can’t exit stage left and enter stage right, seconds later, if you haven’t written in the time it will take for them to accomplish a costume change.
5. Your script has to work on a stage. If your story takes place in more than one locale, you have to be aware of the logistics of set changes. So keep it simple to start. If you are ambitious in your setting buy a book on set design to research if your set is feasible. There are some wonderful ‘envelope’ sets that unfold when you need to change the scene. But you have to consider the budget; would a theatre have the money to build it? Always a worry.
6. Dialogue: Now here’s the sometimes hard part: everything you want the audience to know about the story and the characters, is
conveyed in the dialogue. Unlike a short story or a novel, where you can write as much description as you’d like, a play script has none of that. NO description.
Here is a Sample of formatting your script correctly. (Click link for details.)
Journal includes instruction on:
How To Begin How to Write a Play
Formatting your Play on the Page
How to write Dialogue
How to Create Rich, Exciting Characters
Designing a Set
Stage Lighting Stage Terminology
and more….. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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In remembrance of the innocent victims killed in a senseless shooting. Inspired by that horrible day, I wrote a ten minute play for the classroom in the hopes that teens would learn more about the circumstances that led up to that day. Perhaps more teens would open up about their thoughts and fears through performance of this play. The child (and yes he is a child regardless of his heinous actions) was in court yesterday pleading guilty to 17 murders of students, coaches and teachers.
Synopsis:
Mass shootings are a part of our current culture. Not until now did I have something to say (write) about so many mass murders.
This ten minute play for teens in the classroom is to honor and memorialize the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting. It focuses on a small class of students hidden away in safety by their English teacher and what happens while they wait for the shooting to stop. But the question begs will they ever be safe again?
The victims:
My Mr. Hale (play) is fashioned after Scott Beigel, 35, a geography teacher and the school’s cross-country coach. He was killed after he unlocked a door to allow students in to hide from the shooter.
Alyssa Alhadeff
Aaron Feis
Martin Duque Anguiano
Nicholas Dworet
Jamie Guttenberg
Chris Hixon
Luke Hoyer
Cara Loughran
Gina Montalto
Joaquin Oliver
Alaina Petty
Meadow Pollack
Helena Ramsay
Carmen Schentrup
Peter Wang
My weekly BLOG features INTERVIEWS with best-selling AUTHORS! May: Jenny Colgan, June: Don Bentley writing for Tom Clancy, August: Veronica Henry, October: Life Coach, shaman, author, Jennifer Monahan, November: Susanne O’Leary. To receive my weekly posts sign up for my
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Don’t Be shy about about editing some of your older work. For example, Next! A Hollywood tale. This stage play is from 2009. Full length drama, for adults. What inspired me to look at it again was a little flurry of book sales for this play.
So I pulled it out, dusted it off and read it again. And found some interesting spots to make it better. In this latest revision I added a whole new scene, which was overlooked the first go around. I couldn’t believe that I had neglected to tie up a loose thread, which the new scene did nicely.
I have a philosophy; That is that no story is ever finished and I’ve never been shy about looking back and seeing if something needs a good polish or a rewrite.
This story is about ‘cattle calls’. Auditions that are open to the public; to anyone with a resume and a headshot. Grueling, harsh, and often cruel, the casting directors are ruthless and go through starving actors like a threshing machine.
Synopsis: Four young, brash actors come to Hollywood to live out their dreams of making it big in tinsel town. They are convinced that hard work and honed skills will bring them everything that they ever dreamed of. They discover that hard work and talent have very little to do with success.
This full length play tells the story of the unflagging optimism of these four actors. They never give up in spite of the daily exploitation and frustration. This comedic drama portrays the real story behind the auditions, the type casting, the ruthlessness and hidden agendas of the movie industry. How the beautiful people, with virtually no acting talent, become stars overnight while trained, talented actors work for years in menial jobs while pursuing a career in film and theatre. The four characters are representational of all the fine, new actors that Hollywood lures into its machination of heartbreak. The author purposely uses only first names as a symbol of how dispensable these young people are.
A surprising and shocking ending will keep the audience on the edge of their seats.
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Recently I was invited to read and review a new collection of three plays. There was so much WRONG with the formatting and the lack of knowledge by the playwright that I couldn’t review it without tearing it all down and asking the playwright to begin anew. But there evolved a constructive critique that might help other new writers.
Back cover should not be blank with a graphic design. Don’t waste this space.
1. Use this space as an opportunity to grab the buyer/director. List titles and short synopses of your plays. Count gender and following synopsis type this: 1m. 4f. (indicating one male and four females.
2. One line tags
3. A short bio of you
Pg1. First page: Title of play/s
Pg.2: Copyright notice
Pg 3: list of play titles and Pg # they start on.
In the first few pages you should have a Contents (list) with the tile of each play and the page number it begins. Make it as easy as you can for the director to find the play and the list of characters Because this dictates whether the director can use your play or not depending on age of character and gender. Always keep in mind that men are harder to cast.
On whatever page a new play starts it should begin with the title and the list of characters.
Be certain, you as the playwright, understand what constitutes a full length play. a One Act play, and a Ten Minute Play. If your plays are preachy and esoteric it will be a hard sell to a director.
The end of a play is indicated with one word, centered: CURTAIN
‘Black out‘ and ‘End of Scene‘ are no longer used. The director will understand when a new scene begins. The next page demonstrates to the reader that a new scene is beginning. ‘Act’ and ‘Scene’ should be centered.
CHARACTERS names and blocking should be centered on page; NO underline.
If you find yourself writing a soliloquy or a monologue in a scene, break it up by having other characters insert dialogue in your speech. It then becomes less preachy and more dynamic.
Be certain YOU know the difference between a Ten Minute Play, a Full Length play (with two acts) and a One Act Play. The first act in a full length play is longer than the second act. Full length plays are about 100 pages/minutes. And no one ever uses an Act III unless your plays is over two hours or closer to 3 hours long. Also, a no-no. Remember the rule of thumb is one minute per page. This varies based on how ‘busy’ the blocking is as that takes time too. It is permissible that a 10 minute play might go over but never more than 18 to 20 minutes.
The first few pages of the book should be simple and convey the correct information. Keep it simple. The title of your book should be on the 1st page of your book. The next page [on the left] should be your copyright page. On the right should be your table of contents (centered)
Title with page numbers. (justified left)
On the page number of the play, the title should be on the 1st page. (odd numbered page, right side) the next page (odd numbered) should be the list of characters. The blocking and description of how the play should be produced does not need to be too detailed. Remember this is the job of the director to interpret the playwright’s Play.
When the formatting is not industry-standard, I have seen more than one director throw the book/script into the ’round file’.
Look at other scripts on line for guidance.
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