It’s all connected
In our last Young Playwrights workshop, we had the opportunity to work with the wonderful Nicola McCartney. We had a really helpful and engaging conversation all about characterisation, and how important it is to really understand our characters in depth. I’ll be honest and admit that this was something that I thought I understood, but after Nicola explained it, I realised that this was not the case.
Nicola encouraged us to spend time with our characters. What
does that mean? Well, spending time with your characters means imagining them,
thinking of them, and hearing their voices. What are they trying to say to you?
What do they look like? Where are they? What are they doing there?
Now, this is probably more time than I have ever spent thinking about a character in one sitting. Honestly, I used to get bored. And I think that was because I didn’t care about them enough – they were just mechanisms to make the story work. Empty vessels to speak my words and do my actions. They didn’t really mean anything to me, I never got attached to any of them. I didn’t see them as real – they were just moving pictures in my head.
Well, all of that changed when I was doing a writing task
from May’s workshop. Long story short, we had to write three scenes of a play. So,
I did. I wrote three scenes and just that. Honestly, I wasn’t really thinking
about the characters, I was trying to think about how to make the scene work
structurally, what they should say, what incident I was trying to convey… and it
did make me look like this at some points:
I handed it in and got the most encouraging set of notes
from Nigel Ashworth, a wonderful director, playwright, and Assistant Programme
Director for the Young Playwrights Programme. Nigel suggested that I should
take a closer look at my characters to find my story. My main character was
called Maya, and before I sent the scenes away, I honestly didn’t know that
much about her. I didn’t know what she looked like or sounded like. But after
doing some of Nicola’s exercises, I really got to know her. I learned little
things like how she takes her tea, how she walks up long staircases, that she’s
tired of being treated like she’s immature and naïve.
Turns out this is exactly what I needed in order to write these scenes. Suddenly, my hands couldn’t stop tapping. The dialogue flowed; I could hear the characters speaking to me in their own voices now not mine, I could see them move! It was incredible! I got so excited that I actually scrapped all of my previous work and started again – and I’ll be honest, pressing that delete button was one of the scariest things I have done…even after pressing the undo/redo button multiple times afterwards!
So, this is all great, but why am I writing this blog? Why
am I telling you all of this stuff? Well, I just found it really exciting that
I am now starting to see all of our workshops coming together. I can now see
structure linking with characterisation linking with ideas etc. And I really
think that I am starting to figure out my own writing process. For me, I need
to start with my characters, and the rest comes easier.
I am absolutely certain that this epiphany of sorts will work wonders with my writing in the future. I’m not so scared to spend time thinking about my writing anymore. I used to think that writing was all about word count; one penny per word sticks in my head a lot when I think about this. I had to show great productivity in my work, so I just had to get words down on the page – regardless of whether I had thought about them or not. But, now that I have spent some time really thinking about my writing and characters, I now understand how I process things and what I need to work.
Now, I’m not saying that my way is the correct way, but
that’s not the point. There is no correct way of writing, and that’s how it
should be. It took me a few months to realise my own way of connecting things,
but that’s what I’m here to do. And you know what? I’m loving every minute of
it.
Erin Craighead
Comments
Post a Comment