I’ve been reading Stephen Jeffreys’ ”Playwriting” more
or less without putting it down and it’s been like having energy poured
straight into my veins. Something about all the different ways of thinking
about or approaching writing and story has felt really invigorating. The last
year or so I’ve been craving books and talks about (play)writing, but more
specifically about form and structure and Jeffreys’ feels like the last in a
line of books that have made me excited, rather than terrified, by the idea of
consciously working with structure and form.
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| Sapfo the dramaturgicat keeping an no eyes on the book |
When I started writing I just did it, I just wrote
things down and found out what was going on as I went. I knew there was such a
thing as structure, it tended to be talked about as dramaturgy, but it scared
me. My thinking went: If you know and understand structure then you apply it to
everything, consciously, all the time! And if you don’t understand structure
you’re an intuitive writer and you don’t plan anything, or make any conscious decisions,
ever.
I do to this day consider myself an intuitive writer
but I’ve, slowly, come to realize that I can still think consciously about
structure and form. If I’d read any books about dramaturgy 15 years ago they
would have probably terrified me. All the rules. All the different, and
sometimes contradictory, rules. For every scene, for every line, for every
single beat of the play. It’s easy to feel like you’re going to fail before you
even start.
Starting out I was so convinced that if I in any way
consciously worked on the structure aspect of a script it would turn out to be
hopeless shit and fall apart and die instantly. A play had to be written in
some state of pure inspiration and flow, because it sure as hell wasn’t
consciously crafted. So it took me a couple of plays to understand that my
writing wasn’t just a lucky fluke and that thinking in terms of dramaturgy wasn’t
going to leave me crying or turned into a ball of anxiety under the desk.
Somewhere I had heard about people using index cards
on corkboards to plan out their stories and I just couldn’t get my head around
it. Why would you do that? Now I use loads of post-it notes on my living room
door when I’m trying to work something out. And it feels like a good, and
equally creative, part of the process rather than a test to either pass or
fail.
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| If you haven't got a cork board, use your door! |
I think that’s why reading something like
“Playwriting” is, at least for me at this stage of my life, so energizing.
Rather than rules it feels like a conversation with a friend that’s smarter
than you and gives you new ideas and thoughts all the time. They’re not telling
you how to write your play, they’re just talking to you, showing you different
paths you can take, but ultimately letting you decide for yourself what you
want to do, and how.
