More Writing Tips

Fast Writing Can Be Great Writing

'Some of the best things I’ve ever read were cobbled together on deadline. I’ve read overnight obituaries of people who died unexpectedly that crystallized their lives more eloquently than pieces written months after the fact. I’ve read editorials about historical tragedies written within hours of their occurrence that fix my tangled feelings like an emotional snapshot.

These pieces are great not in spite of the fact that they were written quickly, but because of it. Writing fast means writing on instinct. When you write on instinct you can’t do much second-guessing or revising. You have to give up your inhibitions and let your fingertips dance on the keys. Sometimes the result is gibberish. But other times it’s better than you would have done if you’d had more time, because it comes from a pure place. The core of your being — the deep self that emerges during sports, dream-sleep, and sex — stands up, cracks its knuckles, and tells the conscious mind, “Move over, kid. I’m driving.”'

 - Matt Zoller Seitz, Vulture 

Vonnegut Tips

These seem to me to also be excellent policies/suggestions for a dramaturg.

Kurt Vonnegut's 8 Tips for Writing Stories

1.          Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.

2.          Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.

3.          Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.

4.          Every sentence must do one of two things-reveal character or advance the action.

5.          Start as close to the end as possible.

6.          Be a Sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them-in order that the reader may see what they are made of.

7.          Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.

8.          Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To hell with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.

Original article found on Brainpickings.org (includes video).

New Dramaturgy

I'm working on a presentation on Dramaturgy and on Adaptation - so naturally, I found an absolutely amazing article just after finishing the power point.

It's brilliant (I'm an admitted Hans-Thies Lehmann fangirl, but this really is good!): http://193.146.160.29/gtb/sod/usu/$UBUG/repositorio/10310536_Lehman.pdf

If that link doesn't work, look for 'Dramaturgy on Shifting Grounds' by Hans-Thies Lehmann and Patrick Primavesi. It was in the January 2010 issue of Performance Research, just a short little article - and I think it's starting to open up for me ideas on how the development of dramaturgical practice is feeding into development of dramaturgy (theatrical dramaturgy, anyway) theory!

Good times.

Structure Short-cuts

Last week (driven by curiosity and more than a little 'What if?') I sat in on a class on stand-up comedy. For a MASTER'S course.

Pretty cool, eh? You didn't know you could take university courses on stand-up, did you? (I didn't, anyway.)

The lecturer has a doctorate, and looks just like the guy you'd think would be doing stand-up; laid back, lanky, walking the line between 'geeky' and 'cool'. (He has the greatest Doctor Who t-shirt ever.) He's got seven in the MA program(me); during their seminars they try bits out on each other and give feedback, and then they run a comedy show on campus Thursday nights. It was a pretty riveting seminar, actually - some of the pieces were funnier than others, naturally... but the fascinating part was the feedback. It was all dramaturgical! Ollie (the lecturer) would suggest that a particular joke be moved earlier (or later) in the set to strengthen the overall story; he'd focus on a certain word or phrase and ask the student to mine that idea for more material; he'd get them all brainstorming additional jokes or ways to tell stories or other options for what was presented. It was like a shorthand seminar on how to act as dramaturg (and/or editor) for a theatre production!

The class demonstrated an exercise called 'Find the Link' - one person offers a topic, the next counters with a totally unrelated topic, and the third person comes up with a link between the two. (Fantastic for playwrights, improv actors, comedians, and theatre students in general. Try it.) Another exercise was to ask the comic to go back over their routine and cut out every unnecessary sentence or word - only that which is STRICTLY needed to be funny/tell the joke is kept. Things become concise, you get to the joke much quicker, and the pace really picks up. (Think monologues, scripts... right?) Along with that, though, you also need to consider 'atmosphere' - as differentiated from 'filler'. If it helps to paint a clearer picture and so makes the punchline more effective/interesting it can stay, even if it's not totally vital to the joke.

And so on... All I'm saying is, playwrights and dramaturgs should definitely look into classes on stand-up comedy. Structure, flow, storytelling, hitting punchlines and buttons, layering, character development - in a condensed form, everything you need to write a play is right there.

And you might just feel inspired to go for that open mic, as well...

Friends With Blogefits

This (from what I can tell so far) is a stellar dramaturgy blog.

Poor Lessing's Theatre Almanac

The title alone makes my geeky little heart very happy, so it's a plus to find they've got interesting things to say, as well. Start with the 'About' tab (titled 'Dear Courteous Reader') to get some base context, and then check out what's happening in the world of intellectual discourse about plays!

(Fine. I know that doesn't sound all that exciting. It is, however, still very very interesting!)

((And remember, as we come into this holiday season of charity and giving, to donate to a dramaturg if you get a chance. They can use a good meal more than most.))

Dimension

Tonight I attended a lecture on "Two-Dimensional Versus Three-Dimensional Pictorial Organization" (which sounded a lot more interesting when I first considered it, and I really thought it would have more to do with graphic design) and I came away with an interesting quote I thought would work well here.

Basically, 2D Pictorial Organization (PO for short) was how artists functioned up until the 16th century or so - the concern was mainly with strong geometric lines and with non-occlusion (making sure no figure was masking or blocking another figure). Art moved into 3D PO by blurring the overall compositional shape lines and stacking figures in front of each other (gracefully and elegantly, of course). The Sixties have a real aesthetic feel for the 2D, with the clean, strong lines and un-blocked perspectives. Essentially, the point of the lecture was that you can function in 3D design and be aware of 2D principles (particularly in regards to photography and film). I was trying to figure out how to ask the speaker to relate his topic to theatre presentation, when I happened to read the quote on the handout he'd given us:

Henrich Wolfflin: "It is characteristic of 'painterly disorder' that individual objects should not be fully and clearly represented, but partially hidden. The overlapping of one object by another is one of the most important devices for the achievement of painterliness, for it is recognized that the eye quickly tires of anything in a painting that can be fully grasped at first glance. But if some part of the composition remains hidden and one object overlaps another, the beholder is stimulated to imagine what he cannot see. The objects that are partly hidden seem as if they might at any moment emerge; the picture becomes alive, and the hidden parts then actually do seem to reveal themselves. Even the severe [linear] style could not always avoid overlapping objects, but all the essential features stood out clearly and any restlessness was softened." (1888/1964, p. 33)

Also: "Since the spectator cannot possibly absorb every single thing in the picture, he is left with the impression that it has unlimited potentialities, and his imagination is kept constantly in action, a reaction, of course, intended by the painter." (1888/1964, p. 34)

Cool, huh? Take note, dramaturgs, directors, designers, and playwrights - if an audience's imagination is stimulated, if the picture comes alive because of what cannot be completely seen, if a little restlessness is not only a good thing but a goal, then you've got an exciting, intriguing, (slightly dangerous in the good way) production on your hands. Think in lines and shapes and images and layering as you put together your show, and see if art philosophers can help you find a more interesting theatre!

It's flat, strong geometrics, and no figure is actually blocking any other. 2D PO!

In this picture, the figures have much more of a sense of inhabiting the space - there is some occlusion, or overlapping figures, and the lines and shapes are softer. There is still 2D at work, here, but it's a good transistional illustration to 3D PO.

Wow, those captions are super-nerdy. Next time I will definitely find something snarky to say, just to get the taste of pompous out of your mouth...

New Page - 'How To Do What You Do'

Wonder what to do next? Check out the (ever-growing) list of possible dramaturgical tasks, pick one (or several) that seems interesting, and carry on.

And when you discover a new job detail to add to the list, please let me know!

http://dramaturgytalk.blogspot.com/p/tasks-how-to.html
(also, see sidebar at right)