Balancing Act

To be seamless in writing is important when writing dialogue. Excluding scene transitions or interupting actions, dialogue should flow naturally. One line shouldn't jump out of nowhere unless prompted by something. This is an issue when I was rushing a draft earlier.

At the start I was so confident in my structure of who said what in what order, trying to make it both realistic and punchy, but as I transitioned further into parts that didn't have such a potent structure, I found myself simply writing whatever came into my mind, which isn't great. My mind doesn't work as linearly as dialogue should work, I can barely speak through subtext let alone write it on the fly, and so I found I was just writing what I wanted them to mean, interrupting each other to say another point in this thesis and antithesis that was barely pretending to be a story. 

I failed at the balancing act.

I've always loved structures, not the physical kind, although they do have their beauty, but the abstract storytelling kind. From John Truby's Seven Steps of Story to Dan Harmon's Story Circle, I've a strong fondness for these tools, both crutches to help my story stand as well as ladders to elevate them into actually being good. The concept of a set-up and a payoff is, in and of itself, a structure, and can be used as a crutch to help one realise that what they wrote at the end came out of nowhere and should go back and set it up, but it also elevates the work as now it makes more sense and feels like something has been accomplished, with the audience gaining catharsis for noticing the set up, which is even furthered if it is set up twice and the payoff is in the third time it appears, often used for comedy.

Structures can also apply to the smaller-scale moments, from scenes acting as entire stories in and of themselves, as laid out by Savage Books and Lessons from the Screenplay, to appropriately or deconstructively using certain tropes, as illustrated by Overly Sarcastic Productions, and from the steps one must consider to make their storyworld appear real, as explained by The Closer Look, to ensuring dialogue feels natural and realistic while maintaining their purposes within the story, masterfully elaborated by Nerdwriter1.

But sometimes it's not so great to focus too much on the structure. With the dialogue of a draft of a play I wrote earlier tonight, I had laid the first half out in extreme depth. I'm talking about the purpose of each line used; the text, the subtext, the desire in it, the motivation behind it, the character revealed through it, the relationship building of it, and the comedic potential it had. I'm still very proud of this early scene, but I forgot one important aspect, the Now.

In that play I play around with wordplay, the story in itself is about miscommunication and so I think that's apt. To further illustrate the difference between what is said and what is meant, I incorporated Asides from the protagonist, allowing them to reveal their internal monologue to the audience, which shows what the protagonist means and compares it to what is being said, as well as showing what the protagonist thinks the antagonist means compared to what is actually said, allowing for the miscommunication to be more clear. In this play, I refer to the internal monologue as the Irreal, a warped but focused reality within the protagonist's mind, in contrast to the Now, where everything is more tense and messy and there is no time to stop and think about what's being said. The Now doesn't stop, it is real and unending and what happens just happens and we can't go back. So, what do I mean when I forgot the Now when writing the early scene?

I'm not talking about the usage of the Now, though I'm still skeptical about it and it may disappear in later drafts, I'm talking about the real-world Now. In writing the play, I'm aware of the characters and their backstories and their motivations and desires and favourite colours and where they are, where they're going, where they're trying to go, and what they're trying to avoid. To me, subtext is as clear as literally being stated, because it is literally stated in the outline I have on my second screen right here. However, if people are watching the play, if the audience don't have my meticulous and self-aggrandising form of an outline in their hands, then they will see everything at face value. They don't know a set up is a set up until the payoff shows them that. They are perpetually living in the Now, the Irreal only takes hold after the play when they're thinking about it, and so that is when all my supposedly clever structures and subtext and meanings may present themselves, but they will end the play in the Now and will base their conclusions on that. If I tell a whole story that works as a perfect allegory for real world social issues, but I don't pay any attention to the actual story being told, then people will just see a bad story. So how would they see the early scene?

While I have all my purposes, they will see what is said. They will simply see two bros reminiscing about their childhood and catching up during a party. They clearly won't catch the brilliant Oscar-worthy nuance behind the closed-off character wearing several layers of clothing while the open character wears simple casual clothes, nor will they notice the two tracks of dialogue both characters represent when they're talking about each other's lives while subtextually talking about their own as well as trying to steer the conversation to their desired outcome. The audience will merely see clothes and two people failing at communication, which is the point but not the full point, there's more meaning behind it, but if the audience don't see that then it's my bad.

So, as I wrote the early scene, I was too focused on the clever structure, the nuanced tracks, and the layers of subtext, that I completely forgot that what they're saying is essentially boring as hell. You can say the most brilliant thing in the world, but if you don't make it clear and hide it under boring dialogue, then you're just boring and think far too highly of yourself.

This problem goes both ways, too. Somehow I wrote too much structure and not enough realism in the first half and then too much realism and not enough structure in the second half, which in itself if an interesting and realistic structure for how my brain works. Sometimes my genius is almost frightening.

In the second half, with too much focus on the first half that I entirely rushed the ending, there was very little structure. I was flying by the seat of my pants. I was trapped in the Now, and mismanaging my workflow towards the end of the deadline meant I didn't give myself enough time to stop, enter the Irreal, and plan anything out.

To be honest, I'm writing this very blog on the same night, and so I'd understand that in reflection after finishing this that I might have encountered the exact same problems I'm literally discussing; again, my genius know no bounds, I'm very good at talking about talking, it's just the talking bit that I struggle with.

Subtext fell away in the final scene, not because the artiface was lifted but because I didn't know how to tell it slant without first stopping for an extended period of time. I tried to be too clever for my own good, hoping to end it with a Shakespearan soliloquy of various meanings and interpretations, all written in the protagonists's Irreal, before pulling the rug from the audience and revealing that, since it was internal, the antagonist heard none of it, and then have them watch as the protagonist struggles to convey that in the Now, illustrating the theme as clear as I could. Little did I know that I was essentially writing the same experience I was going through right that minute. Except, the soliloquy itself was written in the Now, and so had none of the well-thought-out lines I had hoped, and so the ending was more me failing in the Now to communicate to the audience through my characters. Life imitates Art, I guess.

I hope I find my way out of this problem; the problem of too much big-brain times and too little actual wording. I hope I figure out how to talk without talking about talking, or to have a conversation that doesn't deconstruct itself into a conversation about how I have conversations, or write a play that doesn't share my experiences to closely to the point that the play itself suffers from the same communcative problems that my protagonist suffers from. It's a big problem that paints a bold image of where I could go from here.

I find it wildly ironic that in a play about miscommunication, I accidentally miscommunicate a lot of things to the readers and the audience.  I'm not great at communicating, personally, though I try to make myself as clear as I can, hence why I don't use subtext when I speak normally, at least as far as I'm aware.

It's also interesting, at least, that I essentially began these blogs talking about trying to trust that my audience would understand what I mean, worrying that I would spend too much time explaining myself, and now that problem has evolved to trying to trust myself to write in a way that would allow my audience to understand, as if I've merely moved the goalposts from trusting they will know what I mean through what I say to trusting I will say what I mean. Whether that's deconstructive progress, revealing a deeper layer of my writing I need to work out, or vague progress, trusting in my meaning but now trying to convey that appropriately, or outright going backwards and starting all over again, failing at my first task and now starting from before square one, I can't say. I mean I literally can't say, that's the problem, I have no idea how to convey it clearly.

I swear, the amount of accidental wordplay in this blog is kind of infuriating.

Through this programme I have absolutely made great progress. I'm more critical about every line I use, I'm more confident in the ideas I have, I'm more aware of the potential every aspect of theatre presents, and I've formed relationships with creative people that I believe will stick with me for a long time.

Don't get this blog wrong, I don't see myself as in a worse place than I started, instead I'm more aware of where I started and I'm working on more aspects of my writing to improve it, and I'm very confident that I will. Again, ironic that I think my audience might read what I say in the blog and not understand what I mean, it's wild.

The future is bright, the more problems in yourself you're aware of, the more issues you can tackle, and the better the holistic self will be in the end. What I can say, with absolute certainty and potential for interpretation, that summarises this blog and my current bold problem, is this; I'm taking a step back to look at it.

Good Luck to us all.

Thomas McClure

Thomas is part of the Bunbury Banter Young Playwrights Programme 2019-2020