Blurred vision

At last, I’ve managed to get back into my writing! Spurred on by the result in the cricket, I jumped behind the PC and started work on finishing my current work in progress.

This did cause a slight problem though – I had to get myself back up to speed with what was happening in the play. So I read the preceding scene… Damn it! Problem…

There are a few fundamental differences between writing a novel and writing for the stage… the first is fairly obvious: in a stage play there is a lot more dialogue. But the second can get away from a playwright from time to time: Focus.

When writing a novel, it can be ‘easier’ to accomplish, as the reader tends to follow the book through a single set of eyes dictated by the author. But in a stage play, you have to ensure that the audience are looking at the part of the stage you desire. When there are actors on the stage that don’t have a line for a while, you have to determine if you really need them there? If you do, you have to engineer a way to ensure that the audience are focusing on the action on the stage, rather than looking at the mute actor trying to figure out what they are going to do next.

Re-visiting the preceding scene, I realised that I had been swept away in the process of writing the dialogue and had forgotten this matter of focus. For the next two hours I reworked tiny sections of the dialogue and added a couple of stage directions (contentious, but that’s a subject for another ramble!). In all, I think I made 9 changes in total, but it took me all that time to accomplish them.

It makes you realise that you have to think in 5 dimensions when writing for the stage: The first three are easy enough; up, down, in, out, left, right (do the hokey-cokey and we turn around…). The forth comes with practice: Time – ensuring you know how to set the pace and give realistic timescales for action to take place. And the fifth – you have to be able to see the stage from the viewpoint of different members of the audience.

And when I say different members, I’m not talking about different seats – I mean different mind sets. You have the nit-picker, looking for errors; the traditionalist, who doesn’t like silent actors on the stage; the new-comer, that doesn’t know what the ‘rules’ are, the young, the old… With each line of dialogue, with every exchange, you have to think of them and calculate how you are going to get them to focus on the element you need them to take on board to ensure that the plot develops…

It’s no wonder that I feel like I need to visit the optician every now and again.