We all know the feeling of impending doom that comes when you feel your creative resources have been drained. (And if you don’t, stop reading right now! You’re making the rest of us look bad.) Here are some strategies for the next time inspiration ghosts you.
Micro Problems (“I can’t finish this page, scene, chapter, etc.”) This is your everyday, garden-variety writer’s block. You know what you want to do with your script overall, but you just can’t make it to the next step.
1.Give yourself a mini-deadline. For example, I will finish this scene in the next two hours, and quality does not matter. All that matters is that I make it to the end. Set a stopwatch if you have to. You might be surprised by the quantity (and hopefully, quality) of material you generate under pressure. If you’ve ever written something the night before a deadline (no one’s ever done this, right?), you’ve already used this method.
2.Write the end of a section (scene, act, etc.), then work backward. Sometimes it helps to get where you want to go then retrace your steps. Plus, if you are a by-the-book person, you might feel the thrill of getting away with something. Think of it as literary jaywalking!
3. Use improvisation. I know, I know. This is many writers’ worst nightmare. I understand your concerns, but this is my personal favorite kind of improv. The hovering-over-my-computer-with-the-door-closed-so-the-haters-can’t-judge-me kind. We’ll call it “desk improv.” Here are three magic words: Initiate. Copy. Heighten. These are tools that improvisers use to propel a scene or game forward, and it works for playwriting, too. Here’s an example: A: I love you. (A initiates a motif, pattern, or, in improv, a “game.”) B: I love you, too. (B copies A’s move in the “game” and shows agreement.) A: You’re my everything. (A heightens the game.) B: Yeah, you too. (B copies, but there is some serious subtext here.) A: Sorry? (A initiates something very different. Uh oh!) And we’re off! The drama! The angst! The psychological realism! And all from a little desk improv.
4.Take a break. Sometimes you have to practice self-care, whatever that means to you, in order to move forward. Take a walk. Eat a snack. Netflix and chill. This does not mean abandoning your project! But do give yourself some breathing room, if possible, and come back to your play with fresh eyes.
Macro Problems (“I can’t finish this play, screenplay, pilot, novel, etc.”) These tips are for when you are having trouble with the piece as a whole. Your issues are bigger than a single scene, and you are considering calling it quits on the whole project.
1.Go back to your outline or create a reverse outline. Review and adjust your game plan, if you have one. Or, if you don’t, reverse engineer your script and create an outline from the pages you’ve already written. This will give you a more detached way to figure out what is holding you back. If your script is presented in chronological order, take a look at how each event leads to the next.
As Trey Parker and Matt Stone famously said in a lecture at NYU (watch it here), each beat is deeply connected to the beat before it. Think cause and effect. A happens and therefore B happens OR A happens but then B happens. To use Romeo and Juliet as an example: Romeo is rejected by Rosaline, therefore he goes to the ball, therefore he meets Juliet and is enthralled, but then he learns she is a Capulet.
2.Discover your influences. Think about the story you want to tell and how it relates to similar stories that have gone before. Is it a love story? A cautionary tale about the abuse of power? A memory play about a messed-up family? It can help to read works by other writers with similar themes. To use the second example, how do the writers of Richard III, Frost/Nixon, or ENRON deal with the same themes of power and corruption? How would you? In what ways do you think they succeed or fail? How does their work reflect your own struggles with this particular project?
3.Get a little help from your friends. Reach out to your crew, whether that is something as formal as a monthly writer’s group or as simple as a friend or two whom you trust, and enlist their aid. Some of the best ideas I have gotten have been from other people who have provided much-needed perspective. Never be afraid to ask for help! Even if the ideas you hear don’t work for you, they might lead you to one that does.
The next time you get stuck, take a look at these tips and keep writing! I know you’ve got it in you.
Prompt 1 Write a play inspired by your last social media post. Repeat Bonus Prompt! Relatives going through a deceased loved one’s belongings find something shocking.
PROMPT 1 Write a play that moves backward in time.
PROMPT 2
SWAG SHOP REMINDER!
Reminder: This year all the money made off of the 31/31 Swag Shop will go to the National New Play Network! The National New Play Network supports playwrights and theaters across the country and internationally with a bevy of wonderful programs like Rolling World Premieres, the New Play Exchange, the National Showcase, and so so so much more. We are proud to support an organization that’s dedicated to new plays so ferociously. We just ran an awesome little piece about NPX by our co-founder Rachel Bublitz. Check it out!
(Photo: OF SERPENTS & SEA SPRAY by Rachel Bublitz -Custom Made Theatre Company production from 2016)
As you’re getting through the month, you might be wondering what you can do with all the work you’ll be generating over the days of August, and I’m here to tell you about one possible place for you to share them: The New Play Exchange.
The New Play Exchange, also called NPX or @NewPlayX on Twitter, was created by the folks over at the National New Play Network, and is a new avenue to get your work read and to connect with new play advocates. As the National New Play Network puts it, the New Play Exchange is, “A cloud-based script database, enhanced with a robust search-and-filter mechanism, crowd-sourced recommendations of plays, and personal script and coverage information storage, plus the connectivity of a social networking site.”
Once you create a profile and upload scripts, you’ll be emailed opportunities as your plays qualify and you’ll have the chance to “tag” your work. Once your play is tagged, the theater or festival that put out the call can include that script in what they’re considering for the project. Gwydion Suilebhan, project director of the New Play Exchange and fierce new play advocate, wanted to give some of the power back to playwrights when it came to submissions. To create a space in which playwrights had more options for production and development, where theaters found us, instead of the other way around.
And, while all of that sounds pretty great, it took me a bit to figure out how to use the site to its maximum benefit. I’ve had a membership with the New Play Exchange for years, and it wasn’t until last Fall that I felt I’d really cracked into its true potential. Because, while it is a place for theaters to find plays, it’s also a place where new play lovers to read thousands of scripts and promote the work of other artists. And that to me, is the biggest boon of the New Play Exchange, with their recommendation system they have created a vibrant new play loving community.
Anyone with a membership has access to all the plays on the site. You can download and read as many as you’d like, and recommend any that strike your fancy. Reading a ton of new work has been so beneficial to my own writing. It’s inspiring, thought-provoking, and even when I don’t love the play, I feel like I learn something new about the craft of writing for the stage. Through the New Play Exchange I’ve been introduced to a ton of new artists, and new styles, and the funny thing about writing recommendations is that once I started writing them for other plays, I started to get them on my plays. The New Play Exchange is a magic place of karma, apparently, and, for me at least, the more I put in, the more I get out.
(Photo: CHEERLEADERS VS. ALIENS by Rachel Bublitz at the Egyptian Youtheatre 2018)
But that’s enough from me…. Here are some other wonderful playwrights and their thoughts on why the New Play Exchange is the cat’s pajamas:
Hannah C Langley (playwright): “The community. I’ve met so many amazing writers and artists from around the country that I now consider friends and colleagues.”
Emily Hageman (playwright and educator): “Having incredible current playwrights posting their work to be read, admired, and studied! New friendships, networking opportunities, and being able to get your work out there.”
Shaun Leisher (producer, director, dramaturg, and nominator for The Kilroys): “NPX has made it clear to me that Broadway is not representative of the state of today’s theatre. New York isn’t representative of today’s theatre. Without NPX I would have no true grasp of how rich, diverse and vibrant the state of theatre is today.”
Andrew Roblyer (director, acting coach, playwright, and actor): “My favorite thing is that it levels the playing field a bit in several ways. First, ease of discovery and access makes it more appealing for small theatres to produce new work. Second, search parameters make it harder to argue that lack of exposure is the reason playwrights from marginalized communities don’t get exposure. And third, it just makes it fun to read new plays!”
Diana Burbano (playwright, actor, and teaching artist): “Feeling heard and paying it forward. It’s a golden age of new plays and the @NewPlayX is leading the way.”
Rachael Carnes (playwright and educator): “NPX is a wonderful way to read new work, and build community. Through sharing my plays on NPX, and reading other writers’ work there, I’ve developed meaningful and supportive collegial connections with writers all over the country. I’ve made friends through NPX! So much so, that when I’ve seen these same playwrights in real life, it feels like we already know each other. NPX has been an incredible resource for me — I take better care of updating and archiving on my NPX profile than I do my personal website.”
Jessica Austgen (playwright and actor): “Not only is it a great way to make your work available to a national network of theaters, but it’s a powerful tool for community building among playwrights. On NPX, I can read and recommend the work of my peers, make connections with playwrights around the county, and feel like part of a community.”
Caroline Cao (playwright): “Getting stuff done, playing with content.”
Hope Villanueva (playwright and stage manager): You don’t need to be famous or established to be on NPX. All playwrights are welcome and, if you show dedication to the craft, you will be embraced.
Jordan Elizabeth Henry (playwright): 1. COMMUNITY – 2. reading brave/strange/wild work encourages me to make brave/strange/wild choices with my own work – 3. totally changed the way I think about scarcity and abundance re: submitting/rejection/etc
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I could go on and on and on, seriously, I got a LOT of messages from folks telling me how excited they were about the New Play Exchange. So head on over to the New Play Exchange, get a profile, put up your plays, and dive in, the water is fine!
Everyone talks about how being a writer, requires discipline… It seems unnatural and weird but it is absolutely true! Writing is sometimes difficult though. Sometimes, you want so badly to say something but the words feel lodged in your throat; your fingers feel broken, joints lacking the strength to create the proper movements to press down onto the keys and it hurts.
I feel like it compares to being nauseous but never being able to throw up and relieve yourself from that uncomfortable feeling until one day… it happens. Word vomit everywhere. You sit down and you force yourself to write and there it is… The end of the discomfort. Some people might call this writer’s block but I think it’s more like “ ” or “ .”
I’ve noticed that most of the time when I feel like I can’t write, it’s because I haven’t sat with myself and the emotional issues or energy issues I have been having. For me, it’s easy to write when I’m sad but not when I’m angry, annoyed, frustrated, feeling helpless, etc. Those feelings tend to send me more into a little depressive season than anything else and lately, I’ve been a little angry or a lot angry, if I’m honest. So, I’ve been sleeping. I’ve been practicing my French (a lot), I’ve been washing my face more (which is crazy… I’m the worst at this kind of thing), I’ve been watching TV, answering emails, and messages… No writing.
Then two nights ago, I decided to take to my manifesting journal and write an entire page for someone who I care about so deeply who is going through a rough patch and boom… I felt better. I wrote about how I wished I could manifest a life for her, one that she so deeply deserves but never seems to get her grasp on and put all the things that I thought she deserved into a beautifully painted image with my words.
I wrote a gratitude list for the first time in a week after that. Then I received a reminder for a deadline for an anthology that I was thankful to be invited to submit to and here I am writing for you now. I’ve written two poems this morning and am now going to work on two different anthology projects because it’s like I have remembered what I wanted to say…
Our energy and our feelings/emotions have so much control over everything in our lives; even writing. So if you have been feeling “blocked” lately… Try to sit with yourself and figure out, what emotion/feeling/problem/bad energy is blocking them? I’m not a guru or anything (yet?) but it’s worth a try right?
writers are just like “im taking a quick break from this project” and they either go write a whole other book to procrastinate or they just leave and don’t come back for 5 years
to the writers who struggle to focus who deal with mental illness who work several jobs who write words slowly slowly who need lots of encouragement who write the books they need but can’t find who are proud but anxious about their work
the writer’s urge to ask your friends “do you wanna see a little somethin’ i’ve been working on?” when the little somethin’ you’ve been working on is 800 words and ends in the middle of a sentence
YES
Me: Better keep this new project as secret as possible. That way what happens has a better reaction.
Also me at my friend: Do you want to read this one scene I wrote? :D
You know when your friend brings hot cocoa spiked with Bailey’s Irish Cream, it’s going to be a kick-ass December hike. Thanks for a great day, Jody A. Kessler! And you too, Courtney Farrell! ❤️
what she means: I have approx 2647 plot/character ideas floating around my head at any given time but there is no way in hell my disorganised ass is getting any of this down on paper any time soon
