Mercy! Mercy! That Dang Nabed PERCY!

Getting off on the Right Foot

Getting off on the Right Foot.

I have had two students so far take a swing at Lesson 1. Both got off to a good start and with each I suggested some ideas that merit further consideration.

It is so much easier to write a good stage play if you have all the right ingredients in place. That is why this outline in Lesson 1 is so important. It provides students with some rules of thumb that get then on a fast track to success. Believe me, that after writing half a dozen anemic plays only to discover some major shortcomings near the middle or end is discouraging and not something I recommend.

My mentor for the course is a guy named Buzz McLaughlin who wrote a book called the “Playwright’s Process.” He has been an Icon in the trade for a long time and has read many plays looking for theater worthy material. This is what he had to say about struggling playwrights.

“…I’ve read hundreds of plays, many by extremely gifted writers, that do not work. In almost every case it’s clear the writer did not conduct some sort of preliminary analysis of the central idea. It’s as if the entire script had been written blindly without regard to basic dramatic principles… Perhaps in the hope that in some mysterious way, everything would simply fall into place.

The sad truth is that this rarely, if ever, happens. People spend hundreds of hours, often slaving a year or more, over a manuscript, which having little chance of coming to life on the stage, is doomed to sit on a shelf. Like the carpenter who builds a house on sand, many writers build their plays with little or no regard to the essential dramatic underpinnings that plays need in order to work…”

This is the reason that lesson 1 is so important. This is why I will be hammering students on their outlines to insure they get off to a good start on writing a successful drama.