Down Time

Down Time

by | Dec 16, 2024 | Inspiration, The Working Playwright, Theater, Writing Tips

 The Working Playwright 

by Melissa Bell

I know the deal.

You wake up. Maybe you hit the gym. Deal with hungry kids and needy pets. Work a full
day. Walk into work to find 85 email messages in your Inbox. Work a full day. Make dinner. Afterwards
maybe you find time to write a scene in your play.

Or maybe you’re working on a commission or making revisions after a read-through and preparing it for a staged reading. You’re going over every line, every stage direction – but you’re drawing a blank and your head feels blanker than the sheet in front of you.

When I took a Logic class in college, the professor gave us some advice: If you get stuck on a problem,
don’t try to solve it by trying harder. Get up. Take a walk. Move your body. Read a book. Then return
and try it again.

And dang, she was right. It worked every time.

 

It’s the same with playwriting.

Maybe you’re stuck. Or done for the day but there are still problems to
solve. Get up. Go to the gym. Or the grocery.

I was on the elliptical and got an idea for a new scene between a college bound teen and her father who
gambled away her college savings account. I was taking a walk when my feet started a rhythm that led
to a chant that became the song to lead a parade filled with puppets and stilt-walkers.

You may have heard the adage that humans only use 10% of their brains. But it’s not true. Our brains
are constantly, furiously working, regulating our bodies and solving problems while awake or asleep.
Like a security program that your computer runs in the background, part of your brain is always running,
looking for connections, fitting the pieces together. It just needs a little space and for the anxiety—the
true reason for block in the first place—to stand down and let the neurons flow.

There you’ll be, standing in the grocery aisle, reading the label of ingredients and bam — that ending
line you were searching for all day comes waltzing in over a can of pink beans. That button that sums up
the scene, untangles the knot and lets the words flow comes watching your kids shoot nerf darts at each
other in the park. You scramble to find a piece of paper, or run to the nearest exit, repeating the idea
over and over until you get home then feverishly add it to your script. (Don’t worry, you got it!)

This is why when characters have their Sherlock moment in a play or movie, we believe it. Because in
life, like art, we experience our own AHA! moments, and they come at unexpected times. Most of all,
they likely come when we are at ease, doing something else.

 

So don’t underestimate the value of down-time.

When the kids challenge you to a game of nerf darts, don’t demure or tell them you need to crack this scene. Get up. Put on those safety glasses. Play the game. You might hit a bull’s eye in more ways than one.

 

Melissa Bell’s work has been featured in The New York Times and been nominated for Best Adaptation &
Modernization by New York Shakespeare and awarded Finalist for Henley Rose Playwright Competition
for LADY CAPULET and awarded Honored Finalist for the Collaboration Award by the Women in Arts &
Media Coalition for COURAGE. Read her work on the New Play Exchange and on her website, themelissabell.com.

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Be Specific

Be Specific

by | Nov 11, 2024 | The Working Playwright, Theater, Writing Tips

The Working Playwright 

by Melissa Bell

It’s All in the Details

Do you know your character’s favorite color? Favorite dish? The street they lived on as a child? What was the game their mother played with them when they were five? Why do they keep an item in their pocket and when do they take it out and stroke it? What memories does it provoke? What emotion does it conjure in your character?

Details. From the larger, to the smaller, and from the smaller to the larger, details make the character specific and unique. This unique person is facing the challenges you give them, the puzzle to solve, or the recognition they must make to bring catharsis to the play. What are the details of the character’s life, and how will those details help them obtain the thing they want or be the obstacle that stands in their way?

In Sophocles’ tragedy Oedipus Rex, the king, Oedipus, has vowed to cure his city of a pestilence by finding and exiling the murderer of the previous king, Laius, late husband of his wife Jocasta. To discover who this man is, Oedipus consults many people: Oracles, herdsmen, and slaves who offer clues to the murderer’s identity. But the most telling clue is a set of scars on his ankles. Oedipus bears the same scars on his own ankles, which had been pierced by his father who sent him away as an infant to be killed. The herdsman given this grim task took pity on the baby and passed him along to another herdsman, who then passed the baby along to his king, and Oedipus, named after his swollen feet, grew up not knowing his true identity or heritage. When Oedipus learns that the murderer bore the same scars he carries, Oedipus realizes that a man he once killed in a roadside brawl was none other than King Laius, Jocasta’s first husband, and that he (and his actions) is the cause of the plague on his city. Moreover, he discovers that Laius was his true father and that Jocasta, his wife, is his mother. This had been predicted by the Oracle at his birth and had now come true.

Wow. Talk about why detail matters. It was the clue that solved the entire puzzle, unlocking his past, present and future.

Your character may not be a king who murdered his father, but they do have a want and a need and those wants and needs will lead your character on a journey of consequences and reckoning.

The same rule applies to objects. Does an object have a special meaning for your character? What does it symbolize? Is it shared by another? How is it used for them or against them?

In Shakespeare’s Othello, the Moorish military general Othello is manipulated into suspecting his wife, Desdemona, of adultery. While wooing her, Othello gifts Desdemona with a handkerchief, which she cherishes. When she accidentally drops it, her maid finds it and turns it over to her husband, Iago, who uses it in his manipulation of Othello as revenge for denying him a significant military post. When Othello asks Desdemona to show him the handkerchief and she is unable to produce it, Othello becomes convinced of her infidelity and smothers her. It is only after her death that he realizes the significance he had placed upon an object as easily lost as a handkerchief, which allowed him to be manipulated by an evil and cunning opponent.

What are the details in your character’s lives? What do they represent to the character and to the theme? How does the physical enhance the metaphysical? In a play, every detail matters.

Try to give your characters details that reveal and reflect their journey. Are you working on a play right now? Have you finished a play? Make a list of the details that you have used to support the theme of your play and make sure they are placed in a way that affects the outcome. The details often provide the “button” that your audience can hold on to after the curtain goes down.

Melissa Bell’s work has been featured in the New York Times and has been awarded Finalist for Henley Rose Playwright Competition and nominated for Best Adaptation & Modernization by New York Shakespeare for LADY CAPULET and awarded Honored Finalist for the Collaboration Award by the Women in Arts & Media Coalition for COURAGE. Read her work on the New Play Exchange.