You’ve written your play, first draft, wowie, and you reckon you have some cracker scenes and you think the whole thing is hanging together they way you thought it might….or that is until you read it out to yourself ( or worse, hear a group of actors reading it).

The disappointment can be real. Suddenly those beloved characters are limp as lizards, flatter than the paper they are written on; the plot feels clunky like some old bike trundling along a pot-holed road to nowhere; the emotional life of the work is either desperately overworked or hopelessly bereft; and the whole thing is thematically so far wide of the mark as to be in another thematic paddock entirely (or worse, sitting randomly in several disconnected paddocks that you never intended them to be).

Don’t feel bad.

Rule 1. The First Draft of Anything is sh*t.
Unless you are Samuel Beckett and you’re not, babe.

Your first draft is just you telling yourself the story. (thank you Terry Pratchett for this undeniable gem) You might make it up as you go along, or you might plan every scene, every sentence, but in truth, first drafts are just you muttering to yourself about the possibilities of the story you have in mind. And yes, it probably is pretty shallow and disorganised as a result.

I want to write a series of posts about rewrites. Pretty much anyone can write a first draft. Fill ya boots. But it’s in the rewriting where the real business of playwriting craft happens.

Writing plays is such a rarified work. It is not just a set of events populated by some incidental folk who happened to come across each other. Obviously. I’ve heard someone describe plays as a story about ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances. Yes, some are. But more accurately, plays are about the most dramatic moments of a story, the most concise and intense expression of it, and only in the tightest format.

SO HOW DO YOU GET THERE?

There are two sides to writing plays; we need to use the right side or creative, non-critical side of your brain to write and we need to use the left side, the analytical side, to complete the task of making a good script amazing. And some of the issue is that creative people do not have much in the way of competent neural pathways to cope with a lot of critical thinking.

So I want to make it easier. I want to give you a few critical tools for your rewrite toolbox.

So here’s your first tool. Your own voice. You have to read your first draft. Aloud. Tell yourself the story. All the way through. Without stopping to correct it. Read the stage directions as well. Record it if you want so you can hear it back for a second run. I actually recommend this BEFORE you give it to a group of actorly friends to read it for you. Hearing it aloud, by yourself, will help you form a honest picture. Does the play read the way you imagine it should sound?

Are there parts where it sounds wrong or illogical or inauthentic or too much or too little. You don’t have to know just yet why you felt this way. This is your storytelling instincts speaking. Make a set of notes about when your instinct said something was not working, just a little scribble-note, not a full blown self-critique. Tuck this set of notes aside for a week or so while you go through a few more exercises….(stay tuned)

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