Writing Report September 16, 2022

After taking a week and a half break on my previous WIP (blog posts excepted), my creative juices got flowing again last Friday.

It was one of those cases that occur to me frequently:  I see a word or phrase and as myself “What does that really mean?”

I’m not going to give the phrase away because it’s the title of a new play I’ve written. 

• Friday I spent time noodling possible characters around

• Saturday I began writing with no idea of how it would end (I knew how it wouldn’t end; see below)

• Sunday saw more writing with an idea of where it was heading finally appearing

• Monday saw me writing the climax

9,004 words.  Average of 3,000 a day.

Not a bad little clip.

Now, loath as I am to reveal details of a story before it’s published or produced, I will go into some detail here because it helps illustrate How This Writer’s Mind Works.

The phrase-cum-title pretty much compels me to focus on a limited number of characters.  If this were a movie or an episode of a TV series, I’d feel free to add a variety of supporting characters / series regulars / etc.

But as a stage play, it’s hard to justify minor roles in a story of this kind.

(What kind? 
Read on,
MacDuff.)

So I have my limited number of character and I have a single location to keep them confined to (some may go out to other locations and return, but the story remains in a single room).

Now, while there are stories that can use these limitations to tell different kinds of stories (see 12 Angry Men.  Seriously, go watch it.  It’s real good.), the most common use of such limitations is in variations of Luigi Pirandello’s “Six Characters in Search of an Author” i.e., a small number of characters assembled together under unclear circumstances who try to make sense of their situation.

If you think you’ve seen this before, you have: 
Virtually every old dark house mystery is this type of story.

Rod Serling was particularly enamored of it, and not always to good effect.

Indeed, playwrights as diverse as Jean-Paul Sartre, Samuel Beckett, and Bruce Jay Friedman have all used the same idea.

One problem I have with all of them: 
Any and all versions that end in an allegory are unsatisfactory.

Any ending involving the fantastic -- be it religious / supernatural / science-fictional / symbolic / metaphorical -- cheats.

The writer can whip any answer out of their nether regions to surprise the audience because the audience hasn’t been given enough contextual clues to make sense of the story.

It’s literally a deus ex machina.

Where it does work -- and again, not always well but at least more honestly than an allegorical out -- are mysteries where the characters must figure out what common thread links them and who might have brought them together and for what purpose.

So I have my handful of characters, I have my setting, and since the play is set in a specific era, the society that existed at that time.

I find writing stage plays goes much faster for me than prose, screenplays, or comics script.

Once the characters start talking, they tend to bring forth their own revelations and complications.

It feels less like I’m creating and more as if I’m a stenographer, jotting down everything they say as they peel back layers to get to the truth.

Mysteries -- good mysteries -- end rationally.  They may be sparked by any number of outré emotions, but in the end we know who did what to whom and why.

My play has a rational ending.  We realize who is responsible and what their motives are.  Whatever other criticisms may be leveled against this work, one can’t say it’s farfetched or irrational.

© Buzz Dixon