One hundred and fifty ‘rules’ for writing fiction: 145 – 150

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Further words on writing fiction gleaned from interviews, and articles, by the award winners and published…

145).  Be ready for anything. Each new story has different demands and may throw up reasons to break [the] rules. Except number one: you can’t give your soul to literature if you’re thinking about income tax.   (Hilary Mantel)

146).  Finish everything you start. Get on with it. Stay in your mental pyjamas all day. Stop feeling sorry for yourself. No alcohol, sex, or drugs while you are working.  (Colm Tóibín)

147).  Tell the truth through whichever veil comes to hand – but tell it. Resign yourself to the lifelong sadness that comes from never being satisfied.  (Zadie Smith)

148).  Trust your creativity. Enjoy this work!  (Jeanette Winterson)

149).  Talent trumps all. If you’re a ­really great writer, none of these rules need apply. If James Baldwin had felt the need to whip up the pace a bit, he could never have achieved the extended lyrical intensity of Giovanni’s Room. Without “overwritten” prose, we would have none of the linguistic exuberance of a Dickens or an Angela Carter. If everyone was economical with their characters, there would be no Wolf Hall . . . For the rest of us, however, rules remain important. And, ­crucially, only by understanding what they’re for and how they work can you begin to experiment with breaking them.  (Sarah Waters)

and if indeed this is the end of this long running and much loved series, I have to draw a conclusion with:

150).  Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better.  (Samuel Beckett)

I hope you enjoyed.

Kaite x

Creative burnout…. time to in-put instead of out-put.

It’s not always possible to be creative.

This may not seem the most eye-catching of statements, but for the writer/maker/artist/practitioner it doesn’t hurt to be reminded of the obvious from time to time.

But actually, is this so obvious? I’ve often spoken to writer friends who get anxious when they’re not producing, or whose research/planning periods seem to be going on longer than usual, with no initiating idea to get them started on the rough draft.

When I look about me (in real life as well as online), there seems to be a culture of constant creativity, with no let-up in pace and productivity. Friends have no sooner delivered a novel or screenplay or theatre production when the next one is being anticipated. It feels as though we are in perpetual assembly line mode – out-putting constantly, with no dip in quality or originality allowed. In fact, more innovation seems to be expected each time.

And suddenly, I’m feeling very tired with all this activity…

And suddenly I long for something more organic, human-friendly and balanced.

And suddenly I’m reminded I am a farmer’s daughter, where there were seasons for planting seeds, fertilising, growth, and harvest – not forgetting those essential periods for laying fallow.

Have we forgotten the basics, in order to try and keep ahead of the game?

Many of my friends are exhausted, and it’s not just that tiredness that comes with dark winter evenings and the desire to hibernate. They are tired creatively. The juice is sluggish. The spark is failing to ignite quite as quickly as usual. I’ve had anguished emails from collaborators and former students lamenting the sudden dearth in ideas. My advice is simple and immediate, as I’ve been here so often myself: Relax, breathe, time to fill the stock cupboards and have some in-put as well as out-put…

How to in-put seems to depend as much on the kind of activity that has caused the depletion as what kind of personality or character we have.

Sometimes after long periods revising and editing, I long for visual stimulation and no language… I find myself wanting to take long walks by the sea, where my eye can carry on until the distant horizon, or if in a city, hours in art galleries (Rothko and Redon are incredibly refreshing for some reason).

When I’ve been storylining or devising, I have a sudden hunger for reading, but after teaching or working as a dramaturg in the studio, I want to lie down and listen to radio plays or audio books (one of favourites being Jim Norton’s reading of Joyce’s ‘Ulysses’). Sometimes I simply need to grab some friends and kick up my heels. I’ve found my productivity after a particularly raucous weekend with little sleep is surprisingly fruitful.

The central issue seems NOT TO PANIC…. Just accept there are times when we are tired – dull and jaded – and the remedy is finding the way(s) of getting your mojo back. We need to feed our imagination and creativity, as well as giving them moments of rest.

Whatever you think, think the opposite.

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Yves Klein throwing himself into the void. 1960.

I am not a fan of Saatchi & Saatchi, nor of manipulative advertising, galloping consumerism, and the hard sell. But as someone who supports herself through creative work, and guides and encourages similar practice in others, I am a fan of subversive, engaged, imaginative thinking – which is why this (very) quick read by the former executive creative director at Saatchi ended up on my blog.

Paul Arden’s ‘Whatever You Think, Think The Opposite’ is certainly not recommended reading, and I’m not trying to get artists to think like businesspeople. The contents are largely commonsensical and things we know already (‘If You Want To Be Interesting, Be Interested’), homespun philosophy (‘It Is Better To Regret What You Have Done Than What You Haven’t') and gung-ho go-get-’em triumphalism (‘Fired? It’s The Best Thing That Can Happen To You.’).

What it does do, which I find interesting, is give examples of ‘thinking out of the box’ (by the man who, arguably, created that phrase),  of innovators and pioneers who made the world perceive things differently by not doing things as they are ‘supposed’ to be done.

So Dick Fosbury and his revolutionary high jump technique opens the book – an example of how a ‘flop’ became a success, and changed the Olympic high jump record from 5’8″ to 7’4″ in 1968. This alarming and revolutionary feat came about by Fosbury thinking – and doing – the opposite of everyone else. Prior to the Mexico Olympics in 1968, the customary way of jumping was crossing the bar with the athlete’s body parallel to it. Fosbury inverted this. Rather than turning his body towards the bar, he turned his back to it and flopped over, setting a new world record.

A third of the way into the book, the iconic image of artist Yves Kline throwing himself into the void appears under the title ‘The Case For Being Reckless.’ Arden claims as we mature, we lose our edge, our freshness, and our fearlessness – we become grown up. Throughout the book he argues for considered recklessness, for a different angle or path to the usual. I was reminded of Beckett’s phrase about routine being ‘the great deadener.’

I particularly enjoyed Arden’s advice to ‘Do It, Then Fix It As You Go.’ This had resonance for me, and my often quoted phrase to playwrights ‘Don’t get it right, get it written.’

‘Too many people spend too much time trying to perfect something before they actually do it.‘ Arden writes. ‘Instead of waiting for perfection, run with what you’ve got, and fix it as you go.’

Perfect advice for writing, I think… Writing is all about re-writing. Too often I have seen writers get stuck in the quagmire of the opening chapter, refusing to move on until it is polished to perfection, getting the opening ‘right’ whilst the rest of the work isn’t even sketched in.

Likewise, with plays. From working as a script doctor and dramaturg, I’ve seen playwrights get stuck in the middle of a play – and are unable to move forward, or complete the draft. ‘Leap over it,’ I always say, ‘Start a scene somewhere else. Just by-pass this hole/pile-up/traffic jam/desert by turning your attention elsewhere. Don’t work in a linear chronology if it traps you when you reach an impasse. Continue developing the script elsewhere in the story and you’ll invariably find what you learn from that will ‘fix’ the earlier problem.’

This book is short, and can be read in twenty minutes. Many of the maxims are obvious, even irritating, but as a prompt tool to the writer, as an aid to those mired in the usual same-as-it-ever-was, or deadening ‘safeness’, it may be a window opening admitting some fresh air.

On writing and rewriting…

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Dorothy Parker. Photo from the Internet.

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I am circling and recircling the final chapter of my novel-in-progress. It’s been a long time writing, and an even longer time revising and rewriting…

I found solace in these quotations, which may also be of solace to you, fellow writers and makers…

I’m all for the scissors. I believe more in the scissors than I do in the pencil.

Truman Capote in Conversations With Capote, by Lawrence Grobel.

It takes me six months to do a story. I think it out and write it sentence by sentence–no first draft. I can’t write five words but that I can change seven.
      

Dorothy Parker, “The Art of Fiction,” The Paris Review Interview, 1956.

I would write a book, or a short story, at least three times–once to understand it, the second time to improve the prose, and a third to compel it to say what it still must say.

Somewhere I put it this way: first drafts are for learning what one’s fiction wants him to say. Revision works with that knowledge to enlarge and enhance an idea, to reform it. Revision is one of the exquisite pleasures of writing.

Bernard Malamud quoted in The Magic Worlds of Bernard Malamud, by Evelyn Gross Avery.

To be a writer is to sit down at one’s desk in the chill portion of every day, and to write; not waiting for the little jet of the blue flame of genius to start from the breastbone–just plain going at it, in pain and delight. To be a writer is to throw away a great deal, not to be satisfied, to type again, and then again and once more, and over and over.

John Hersey, quoted in The Craft of Revision, by Donald Murray.

Whatever your form, whatever the ambition, wherever you may be in your process, good luck and keep going….

One hundred and fifty ‘rules’ for writing fiction: 102-105.

More tips, ‘rules’, reflections and pieces of advice from some of the contemporary great and good.

102. Finish the day’s writing when you still want to continue. (Helen Dunmore).

103. Beware of clichés. Not just the ­clichés that Martin Amis is at war with. There are clichés of response as well as expression. There are clichés of observation and of thought – even of conception. Many novels, even quite a few adequately written ones, are ­clichés of form which conform to clichés of expectation. (Geoff Dyer).

104.  Don’t look back until you’ve written an entire draft, just begin each day from the last sentence you wrote the preceeding day. This prevents those cringing feelings, and means that you have a substantial body of work before you get down to the real work which is all in the editing.  (Will Self).

105.   All writing is difficult. The most you can hope for is  a day when it goes reasonably easily. Plumbers don’t get plumber’s block, and doctors don’t get doctor’s block; why should writers have the only profession that gives a  special name to the difficulty of working, and then expect sympathy.
 (Philip Pullman).

One hundred and fifty ‘rules’ for writing fiction: 97-101.

Further quotations and pieces of advice from established writers, taken from interviews, festivals, and articles…. Writing one hundred rules has almost taken a year, and  I’ve enjoyed compiling this so much, rather than finish the series here at one hundred, I’ve cheated and increased it to one hundred and fifty… Hope you continue to enjoy some of the gems I’ve gathered over the years…

97.   A true story can be falsified in the telling. Language is lazy, it wants to revert to what’s obvious, to what’s been said before, to short cuts…There’s no secret, of course, to writing a good story. But to strive against the clichés of perception and expression, to work to get down something true in words – this is the only place to start. (Tessa Hadley).

98.  Aim for a story that is both surprising and satisfying. The only thing worse than reading a novel and feeling like you know exactly what’s going to happen is reading a novel and feeling unfulfilled at the end — like what happened wasn’t what was supposed to happen. Your readers invest themselves in your story. They deserve an emotional and intellectual payoff.

99.   I know you’ve heard it a thousand times before. But it’s true – hard work pays off. If you want to be good, you have to practice, practice, practice. If you don’t love something, then don’t do it. (Ray Bradbury).

100.   Take a pencil to write with on aeroplanes. Pens leak. But if the pencil breaks, you can’t sharpen it on the plane, because you can’t take knives with you. Therefore: take two pencils. If both pencils break, you can do a rough sharpening job with a nail file of the metal or glass type. (Margaret Atwood).

101.  I owe my success to having listened respectfully to the very best advice, and then going away and doing the exact opposite. (G.K. Chesterton). 

How to write the ‘right’ ending? Part one: The Promise.

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When is a piece of fiction completed? How do we ensure that a play doesn’t just stop, but actually ends?

I was giving a workshop last week at Sheffield theatres, and this query about finding the ‘right’ ending came up. It was also an email query from my friend Antonietta in Chile, only in her case the question was more about recognising and then delivering the best ending for a piece of writing.

This is clearly an issue which concerns any writer or maker, regardless of form, and as an audience member there is nothing worse than that sense of wasted time and disappointment from sitting through a performance and feeling the experience was not worth the investment. But it is a complex question, with a variety of answers dependant not only on the form and the intention of the writer, but also the expectations of the viewer/reader/listener. So in order to address this, and in depth, I’ll take elements one at a time, beginning with the phrase so familiar in Hollywood and popular fiction: The Promise.

Many feel there is an unspoken contract between a writer and her audience, an understanding, a deal we make in this strange and wonderful dynamic between the spectator and the spectacle, the reader and the writer. Nancy Kress in Beginnings, Middles and Ends insists that a book makes two promises to a reader, one emotional, one intellectual. The emotional promise says

“Read this and you’ll be entertained, or thrilled, or scared, or titillated, or saddened, or nostalgic, or uplifted – but always absorbed.”

The genre of the novel, or film is also part of this inherent promise. A mystery offers intellectual engagement, a puzzle, confirmation that the mind can understand events and solve the central questions (whodunnit, whydunnit, howdunnit) and, like thrillers, after chaos and misrule, return balance, order, and justice to the world. A romance might deliver the emotional promise of ‘love conquers all’, whereas the literary novel, or the independent art movie, or the experimental performance might challenge and unbalance. As Susan Sontag said: “Real art has the capacity of making us nervous.”

The intellectual promise, according to Nancy Kress, has three varieties:

“(1) Read this and you’ll see the world from a different perspective.                

(2) Read this and you’ll have confirmed what you already want to believe about the world.

(3) Read this and you’ll learn of a different, more interesting world than this.”

If working from this perspective, a completed piece of work must deliver on the initial emotional and intellectual promises. Forsaking the implied or expected outcome can lead to massive disappointment – but, again, I believe this is dependant on the form. An unexpected ending in a thriller or experimental piece could be part of the promise and therefore welcome, but a bloodbath at the end of a romance would, I suspect, be breaking the contract. As Lori Handeland says: “Do not promise apples and deliver oranges.”

So in the first instance, be aware of the promise your story, play, or novel makes. It will be introduced in the beginning, developed in the middle, and provide a satisfying ending by delivering on this promise at the close. Even if the ending is a surprise, if you’ve done your work well, it will feel inevitable, as it has grown organically from your set-up at the beginning, it fulfils the promise of the start, which has been developed throughout.

LeanerFasterStronger – a playwright in the rehearsal room

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Archive poster of 1948 London Olympics on wall of Centre for Sports Engineering Research, Sheffield Hallam University.

Companies working with new plays have to be flexible, patient, and with steely nerves. Unlike second productions, or reinterpretations of Classics, a new script is not tried or tested, but neither is it necessarily set in stone. Having the playwright in rehearsals means the script can be malleable, responding to the other creatives in the room.

This, however, does not mean that the script is devised or co-created. In the case of LeanerFasterStronger, the script I’ve written over the past eighteen months is solid and highly developed, in its fourth draft. It is a complex script, with multiple characters to be played by a small ensemble cast of four.

One of the joys of being in the rehearsal room when completing such an ambitious script is the potential for engagement. If an actor has a question about the script, the writer is on hand to answer directly – and the playwright has the pooled imaginations, skills, and intellects of the company at work on the script. Here is where true collaboration happens, with all involved responding and reacting to each other, the production growing organically. It is demanding, exciting, and joyful.

Previously, the central characters in the play have been disembodied voices in my head. Now they find substance, psychology, a past. Andrew leads the actors in a series of exercises which create a chronological history of their characters from birth until we meet them in the play. As the play is not naturalistic, during my own process I haven’t created ‘back stories’ for the characters. Individually, the performers make life stories for their central characters: siblings, parents, experiences at school, at college, in work; they build a psychological and emotional profile for these figures, mapping their dreams, fears, hopes, ambitions…

I observe all this, fascinated, as the background material dovetails with the details in the script. There are no contradictions, only discoveries: the identity of these central characters, their accents, their emotional baggage. This is all grist to my mill, as I polish and make the final tweaks to the script.

LeanerFasterStronger

A Sheffield Theatres and Chol Theatre Co-Production

Wed 23 May – Sat 2 June http://www.sheffieldtheatres.co.uk/event/leanerfasterstronger-12/

Working towards clarity – excerpts from a mentoring process for dramaturg geeks

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Paul Klee’s Angelus Novus.

Excerpts from a mentoring email exchange between Kelina Gotman and Kaite O’Reilly.

I was recently asked to interact and support librettist and director Kelina Gotman on an innovative interdisciplinary project she is making with composer Steve Potter for London Sinfonietta’s Blue Touch Paper: 100 Combat Troupes.

On 19^th Februry 2012, Kelina first sent me her draft libretto and some questions in an email she wanted engagement with – queries about structure and narrative. This began what I felt was a fascinating exchange, a process of mentoring where, through our interactions, Kelina clarified the concepts, dramaturgy, and intentions of the piece. By seeking my involvement – a stranger she had not yet met – Kelina had in effect decided to externalise her thoughts and creative process, responding to my queries and opening up in a remarkably fearless, and imaginative way. Her emerging thought processes became transparent; her rough initial explanatory notes consolidated into clear intentions and key concepts, culminating in the Preliminary Notes on her script, which I have included towards the end of this post.

Looking back over the development of her ideas and the forming of her thoughts in our emails, I felt I had participated in a wonderfully rich and rewarding exchange – and one which I thought might be of interest to those engaged with process and dramaturgy, too – so this is a one-off post, documenting a process, especially for the dramaturg geeks.

Kelina and I met twice, and I met her collaborator, composer Steve Potter, once over the past two months.  The following are excerpts from Kelina and my private email exchanges on dramaturgy and meaning – they were never intended for public scrutiny, but I have received Kelina’s permission in reproducing them here.

The emails are slightly edited (identified by a series of dots), but otherwise I have not rewritten anything with a view for publication, nor have I changed the layout, spelling, nor corrected any typos. The occasional word has been inserted [like this, in square brackets] to assist comprehension and there is a ‘dialogue’ where I inserted my responses to Kelina’s questions into her original emails, using capital letters or a different font.

None of Kelina’s script (apart from her preliminary notes) is reproduced here, just our email exchange. 100 Combat Troupes, as part of Blue Touch Paper, will be previewed on Wednesday 16 May from 7.30 at Village Underground, Shoreditch, London.

100 Combat Troupes   

Music by Steve Potter

Libretto by Kélina Gotman

 First full exchange by email – initial thoughts and queries from Kelina (KG) to Kaite O’Reilly (KOR) on her draft of 100 Combat Troupes:  9^th February 2012.

 KG:   Here is some of what I’m thinking about / what I would love to talk about and look at when we meet:

1.  Structurally, flow / narrative (or conscious lack thereof, in the case of narrative): we have developed an episodic structure, with virtually no narrative through line, though there is some sense of characters, and they do evolve…. But is the piece legible? Accessible? An episodic structure, with juxtaposition of scene-worlds, can create a wonderful sense of chaos and ‘sense’ emerging out of non-sense. If it is pulled off well- it approaches dream logic; but if not, it just loses people. I hope we can achieve the former, not the latter. So perhaps we can think about this in terms of the script and mise en scene.

2. Structurally/framing:…. you may have read in the press release that we were working with a Borges story (‘The Circular Ruins’), but transforming the Dreamer into a cast of revolutionaries, working together to dream up other possible worlds. This has sort of receded- or shifted- yet I think it remains formally significant, in terms of a framing device. We currently have the musicians standing in as these dreamer/revolutionaries, though nothing indicates it formally in a very explicit way…. I realised as if a thunderbolt had hit me that actually we were staging not so much an episodic structure as a denkbild (thought-image), specifically the Angelus Novus that [Walter] Benjamin describes, after the painting of the same name by Paul Klee. You’re probably familiar with it, but basically it’s the angel of history being blown inexorably into the future, with its back to it, looking at all the rubble of history, helplessly (and in despair). In a way, what we have is – in fact – not so much an episodic structure as a series of flashes- these scenes all go by very, very quickly- of history, and dreams. The angel actually emerges in the last scenes. I’m not interested in saying this explicitly- perhaps it’s just a figure we’re working with- but this notion of the explosive constellation at the end of time…. operates slightly differently from the episodic form… So, is the overall frame clear enough, or are the foundations clear enough at least on our end for the whirl of text and image to be anchored (and thus for the audience to enjoy this, even if they don’t understand what they’re enjoying exactly, and puzzle over it after- which I think is a great response to any work) (I’d much rather the audience feel stimulated, excited, and puzzled, as if they couldn’t put their finger on what they had seen, than to offer something simple and digestible on first watch…).

3) Moral/political ambivalence: Another thing we’ve gone for is an ambivalent sense as to the value of this ‘dreaming’. To a large extent, of course the take-home message is: dream! We need to dream. This is the year of Occupy, and the decade of the Arab Spring. Crony capitalism won’t go on forever. What do we want next? But rather than look just at political alternatives, we’re going the whole way and juxtaposing this with wackier worlds, nonsense worlds- also politically to say, these are important too. We need to remain playful. Joyce and Lewis Carroll are part of this world too (art needs to be funded, etc.) (this is also a political stance)…. Revolutions also produce dictatorships; technicolor dreaming in fantasyland also produces Disney, which in its sickliest version wrecks lives through too much disconnection with ‘reality’. We’re interested in these contradictions.…. it’s the ambivalence we want to inhabit… How do we make this moral complexity productive, rather than just confusing? The idea is that there are no simple answers… and we should be able to be okay with this…

KOR’s email to Kelina. 5^th March 2012, after a face to face meeting.

 KOR: ….I think some of the confusions I experienced were based on the draft nature of the text – ie, as director and writer, perhaps you were writing in shorthand as you had a strong sense of how each moment might be realised in your mind – ensuring this information is on the page may ensure misunderstandings don’t occur again and may help clarify themes, actions, motifs, and aesthetics both for you and your collaborators.

I love the truth in the old EM Forster quote – ‘how do I know what I think until I hear what I say?’ I think it was very revealing, the distance between what you described [when we met] in response to my query of themes and intentions of the work, and what’s actually on the page. Sometimes when in the process, it takes a while for everything to co-exist in the same time – and for the lingering ghosts of ideas to quit or be excised from the stage.

I think looking at each structure as an entity in itself, then scrutinising what the content is, how that might be read, plus the meaning it takes on when in juxtaposition with the other structures and the order in which they appear and therefore the whole – is essential.

I am also curious about the music, its tempo-rhythm, quality, energy, content and ‘sound’ and the impact this will have on the scenes. In many ways I was commenting on a fragment -

 Email interaction – KOR’s inserted responses into Kelina’s email. 12^th March 2012

KG:   …..Narrative/not-narrative. I was really struck by the extent to which you were finding narrative in there, and this has gotten me to rethink how to create radical polyvocality/push at the limits of incoherence to arrive at something that still is cogent, precisely as multi-perspectival. What I mean is that I want to push further in the direction of mood/different worlds, so that we’re not seeing narrative through lines, but rather a juxtaposition of worlds, as we had intended. (Having just seen the Cage Songbooks at Café Oto last night, I’m even more thinking about how to create these slightly anarchic multiple perspectives/non-hierarchical, but still with some coherence- that’s the challenge). What I’ve also realised is that this is not to discount the presence of ‘characters’ in these worlds, only that we need to reinforce the fact that they’re same actors, different people across these worlds. Like I said verbally, I think this will be greatly aided by the fact that they’ll radically be changing their voice and body masks, but I’ll need to really emphasise that, and have it be clear in the script.

KOR:   GREAT! I agree, it’s clarifying the DIFFERENCE between the figures/characters per ‘world’ – I’m doing similar with a show I’m doing for Sheffield Crucible – doubling and tripling – showing it is the same 4 PERFORMERS, but different ‘characters’. i think the change of body mask/voice will be essential – that was not clear in the draft I saw and so it invited the notion of narrative/journey of ONE figure/character throughout  - that’s what I mentioned re-[getting an undesired sense of] progression/continuous action.

I worked with a neuroscientist on my play about the brain – The Almond and the Seahorse – and he couldn’t emphasise enough that we are hot-wired for narrative and our brains will always try to find links, patterns and logic in even the most fragmented situations…. There are experiments where people are given a few tiny fragments and yet the brain/imagination will draw in something that is coherent and has a unity. Grotowski always said the montage exists in the eye of the audience – and of course that’s true. It’s, ironically, the balance between showing enough illogic to prevent a linear narrative (as the brain will look for narrative and connections), but also ensure it’s not so abstract as to irritate the audience and make them feel it’s ‘non-sense’ they’re witnessing…. There needs to be that pleasure and satisfaction, too….

KG: Frame: we’ve decided that really this piece is staging the Benjamin Angelus Novus, and so to just forget all this stuff about Borges, and stop trying to tell that story as background-to-where-we-got-now. I need to relearn to tell the story as a denkbild, and as the angel of history looking back over the rubble of history, being blown inexorably into the future. And that rubble is contemporary market capitalism, so the rubbish is definitely junk from the marketplace. And the musicians are the 1%, in grey suits, with ashen faces. …Will also cut the Beckett reference, which is unnecessary. But yes, in a way we’re streamlining the story/structure: this is just Benjamin/angelus novus, and we’re going to try to tighten up the mise en scene.

KOR: … Fantastic…

 Exchange by email – 14^th March 2012.  Capitals are by KOR, inserted as responses into Kelina’s original email:

 KOR: …WE HAVE TO ASPIRE – I ALWAYS THINK OUR AMBITION SHOULD POTENTIALLY EXCEED OUR GRASP, SO WE ARE ALWAYS YEARNING AND STRETCHING OURSELVES AND TRYING TO ATTAIN THE (IM)POSSIBLE…..  I THINK YOUR INTENTIONS ARE SO MUCH CLEARER AND THIS WILL MAKE EVERYTHING FAR MORE ‘CLEAN’…

KG: …I’m not sure this is helpful as an email. I should really rewrite the script – or just revise, making all these things more clear.

1. The play is enacting Benjamin’s figure of the angelus novus.

2. It is a constellation of image fragments, depicting scenes from the last couple hundred years; they should be jarring, discontinuous, but also funny, critical, and evocative of tropes from popular and political culture (feminist critique in Disney sequence, eco-critique in cereal box sequence, etc.).

3. The audience experience (if there is such- of course they’ll all experienced this differently) is a massive shock to the system/don’t know what hit them/bordering on overwhelming/baffling/hilarious, but that’s also what we’re interested in… through that mess, shafts of light, that reconfigure how they see themselves in a world… yes… gone mad (because our world has gone mad/is mad, and it’s healthy to see it that way sometimes, even if in Technicolor/exaggerated and sped-up form).

 KOR:  THAT ALL SOUNDS GREAT – AND SO CLEAR AND FOCUSED! I THINK WITH SOME OF THE MONOLOGUES YOU’VE WRITTEN – THE CEREAL BOX, ETC – THERE WILL BE A REAL LINGUISTIC SPIN FOR THE AUDIENCE – THE SENSE OF DAZZLE FROM WORDS, WITH WIT AND HUMOUR AND ‘STRANGENESS’, TOO….

KG:…Um.. signing out for now… I really hope this is not more confusing than before. It feels clearer in my head! Will send updated script as soon as I can… have been really swamped…

 KOR: THIS IS SO CRYSTAL CLEAR…. IT IS THE OPPOSITE OF CONFUSING. REALLY WELL DONE AND MY WARMEST WARMEST WISHES DURING THIS REVISION PERIOD….

Kelina’s preliminary note for collaborators, extracted from the new, revised draft after our second face to face meeting, with Steve Potter.  1^st April 2012.

 KG: From script: Preliminary note about the text and mise en scène: This piece stages a denkbild, or “thought-image”: that of the Angelus Novus, or Angel of History, painted by Paul Klee and described by Walter Benjamin in his “Theses on the Philosophy of History.” The Angel of History is being blown inexorably into the future, facing the past with horror. He can do nothing of the detritus spread out before him at his feet, which he witnesses in flashes. This is a constellation, a time fragmented, exploded, outside time: it is messianic, perhaps – time in which (here) all of modernity and capitalism is exploded, in shards. We stand in and outside of it simultaneously, from a vantage point that is estranged, but caught; trapped, but lucid.

The scenes, thus, operate as shards in this explosive constellation: they may partake of a single world, but they are discontinuous. These are not characters whose trajectories we follow, but personages woven in and out of disparate scenes, coexisting, bleeding or blending in and out of one another, without constancy, and without a singular narrative through line. This is a radically polyphonic universe: voice and body masks indicate shifts in the quality or mode of delivery from scene to scene, which change pitch, tone and hue. Some scenes are humorous, even hysterical; others are more sombre, or tranquil. All pass by so quickly that the audience hardly has the occasion to process what has happened before we move onto the next. Yet through this constellation, and these flashes, a sense of powerful alienation emerges, estranging these fragments of modern capitalist life: we see desperate dreams of Disney princesses; eco dreams of houses built romantically from scratch. Anarchism flashes by as a possibly viable alternative, before being tossed into a psychedelic dreamscape of hallucinogenic proportions: speed leads to exhaustion, which leads to insomnia and manic desires – a conquering Adam’s redrawing the rivers and oceans of the world – before all this folds into the messianic hum of quiet laughter, old jokes, and a ghostly forgetting: not quite redemption, but a sense of community or commonality that is oddly, uncannily familiar…. 

KOR’s email response to the revised draft. 1^st April 2012:

KOR:  I think there is much more clarity here – I do think some of the very good introduction you have written [above] would be useful as a programme note – you don’t need much, just that clarification of thought-image, shards of discontinuous exploded world(s) and not ‘characters’ with linear consequential action, but figures woven in throughout…

I think there reaches a point where we go ‘enough on paper – we need to see it, now’ – and I feel we’re virtually there. I think it’s very ambitious, what you set out to do (especially with our hot-wired for narrative brains!) and I think that multi-vocal, fragmented thought-image you wanted to create is certainly in existence in these few pages – the concept is clear, the work of the actors and musicians defined – time to flesh it!

…I think the concept is much clearer, as is the aesthetic and ‘rules’ of the worlds you are creating and getting your figures to inhabit, be it briefly. I think the clarity of images and what you are communicating will be obvious once you start rehearsals.

My only thoughts when we met were

1) about linking the Angelus Novus to the singer on her stage truck…. You may want to decide how pronounced or subtle that is once you start getting the work ‘up’

2) drawing out that link between the central concept/image (Angelus Novus) and the quote from Marx  [“The social revolution […] cannot draw its poetry from the past, but only from the future. It cannot begin with itself before it has stripped off all superstition in regard to the past.”] – you’ve started to pull that out more, and it’s pleasing to me – question is, whether you need to tweak or echo or develop that connection more in the end…

I also wonder if you want to be more explicit (as opposed to putting it in brackets!) when you refer obliquely to the 99% and Occupy Wall Street/St Pauls, etc movement. If it’s important that reference is understood and received by the audience, you may need to make the reference precise. Your scenes are dystopias and not necessarily this world we inhabit now – if a figure refers to political activity/peaceful social disobedience and you want the audience to know this is referring to the occupy movement, you need to make it explicit, as the audience may assume you are referring to an imaginary world. If this isn’t important, no matter – but if you really want the audience to get that reference, you have to say so.

One other thought is probably unnecessary to state, as you are also director – but as a writer, I would never leave responsibility of an important moment to an actor to have to improvise…. You need to script that – even if roughly, otherwise you’re putting a lot on the actor (even if you are also directing the performer)… To a strict dramaturg (which I can often be), this looks like the writer copping out of an important moment! I often pull people up on this – when the stage directions tell us how scary or amazing this improvised or rehearsed moment will be…. As strict dramaturg, I would say if this involves language and text, a script should be provided for the actor to improvise or jump off from – so I think you have a little bit of extra work to do here!

That aside, I wish you all the best with this. I’ve really enjoyed our short but stimulating interaction – I will also write something at some point on my blog, but will run it by you first, to get your blessing before putting it in public domain.

Kelina’s response to KOR’s edited email exchange as possible blog post. 4th April 2012:

KG: Hi, this is GREAT! It is so great to see the conversation traced… as narrative (of course, now am conscious of a different ‘voice’- the voice that becomes the blog post… but no matter)… You have my blessing.

Thanks again for such a stimulating set of meetings and exchanges. I’ve learned hugely, and hope dearly that we’ll continue to be in touch!

Kélina

Reflections on revising a theatre script (2): Give it space

Publicity photograph for LeanerFasterStronger, to be produced by Sheffield Theatres/Chol Theatre in May 2012.

It is so difficult to get perspective on a script when in the process of being revised.   Computers allow us to ‘futz’ with the work continually – deleting, copying and pasting, shifting order, reallocating speeches to different characters… It wasn’t so long ago when such editing processes were time-consuming and demanded commitment: we thought long and hard before taking the scissors to the page, actually cutting and pasting. Perhaps today making changes are too easy and so we try different versions within seconds – and then lose perspective on which of these various edits, which we can effortlessly make, is the best.

I’m not suggesting we return to those ‘analogue’ days (if I can creatively use the term so) – but I think a small shift in our consciousness may assist when rewriting.   Writers can become exasperated with all the editing possibilities open to them, they can get tied up, knotted in the throughlines. I’ve lost count of the times writers I’m mentoring have lost their way owing to a dizzying succession of edits on parts of their scripts. They try a section that doesn’t seem to be working one way, and then another, and another – and then lose sight of the original intention. They really can’t see the wood for the trees.

I’ve learnt to take my revisions at a slightly slower rate. When editing a scene, I’ll try one version and then walk away – go outside, look at the sky, have a wander around, change my mindset and the view – and after twenty or so minutes, I’ll return and be able to read the revised section with fresher eyes. It seems time consuming and a little tree-hugging, but it works and saves time in the long run. For larger edits, I sleep on it and can get perspective on the script the next morning. For serious manuscript-length edits, I put the script away for at least a week.

This process enables me to commit to each decision I make in the editing process; it makes me treat the actions I take seriously, knowing there will consequences – and yet I know the decisions are not necessarily final, I can still shift and change. I’m simply giving space around revisions, so the air can circulate and I can clearly see the changes I am making, and whether or not they are improvements. It is allowing work to evolve and settle at a slightly more organic, human rate.

copyright Kaite O’Reilly 28/3/12