A Writer's Notebook, Day One-Hundred-Twelve
I am continuing work on the script for my play. The revisions are going well. I spent much of the morning making notes on the first few pages and then restructured the opening slightly. I have made notes on about half the play at this point, and should be through with the rest of it tomorrow. My intent had been to get further in that process today, but I wound up needing to fix the start while the ideas were clear, and that slowed down some of the other work. I do feel it is a good choice, though, as I think the new opening will work far better.
It is a fairly minor change that I made, in the start of the play. The initial opening the character is talking directly about the dog, but I restructured it slightly so it is the family eating and him raising the subject to ask about getting a dog. In this way, I also introduce a number of other elements, and am able to shift the focus to the family and not just Jeff's want for a pet. While I think that the first opening did have a charm and was in some ways a good start for a play, I think the new shift leaves in all of that same material from the initial version, but structures it in a way that makes the focus of the play clear to the audience from the start.
As I mentioned, this is not a major shift in the piece at all, and yet I feel it is going to make a big difference in how the work is understood. It is often true that the initial moments of a work will imbue the audiences experience with a certain mood or tone that can change their interpretation. By starting with a line about the friend having a dog, it becomes about that issue, and about the surrounding notion of getting a dog and it being in relation to that friend, but that is not really the focus any longer.
Initially, certainly, the play did focus on that largely, but now it has shifted to being more about the needs Jeff has to take care of someone and feel that bond. It is also about Jeff being prepared to leave his parents, who are aging. As such, the shift is towards the family, and the things that are going on in the play are a reflection of these changing dynamics. The new opening shifts the focus in a way that better reflects this.
In that opening, the starting lines are about the family sitting to have dinner and Jeff is telling his parents about the dog, specifically as an opening gambit in attempting to convince them that he should have one. This is a very different thing, and it established the opening tension of the story, about whether he will get a dog. It also makes it clear that the story is not about Jeff and Jackson but about Jeff and his parents. Jackson is incidental. Other details get established as well, which will be important later and help to build the world of the story.
As I have gone further, many of the changes thus far are fairly minor. Aside from some cosmetic changes, most are for clarity or because of a typo or other error in the initial draft. This is not to say that it won't need further work beyond that, but it is the point I am at in the process. As I said, my intent had been, this morning, to do this for the whole of the draft, but I found myself doing other work, and it seemed a wise and productive choice.
I expect that I will find more to work on in the second half, actually, as it has far more added material from my latest rewrite. I did add through the whole of the work, but I had a portion at the end which was entirely new, focusing upon events that were not part of previous drafts. That sequence is one in which the father is sick and goes to the hospital, and is also the point when Jeff takes the action himself to get a leash for Tigger. As well, I reworked a portion about Tigger growing and learning to walk on the leash into something that is done in conversation with the father in the hospital.
It may be that I can streamline certain things, shift them into that same kind of conversational frame and make it work easier, if I do more of it in that way. I am able to imagine at least one other moment in the draft that could possibly be handled that way, though it would require a bit of work to figure. It works well in some cases because it allows a shift in focus to be framed within the family relationship, and because it also combines what might be disparate moments, it can streamline and speed up the text. If I were to have two separate parts, one where Jeff visits his father, and one where he trains Tigger, that would be a longer thing. The combination works to strengthen each and makes it possible to shorten the length without leaving anything out.
Of course, it is not the only solution, and I recognize that much of what makes it work is the monologue structure here, as it is the same to have Jeff describe the dog directly or as he would in a conversation with his parents. That language has a similar impact and carries that same emotion and meaning. In a more traditional play with multiple characters, this would not work the same. It could be useful, but it might be a bit difficult to pull off in the same way. Here it works because it is always the same character in the scene.
So, today I feel that I accomplished a good amount of review and revision work for the play. It is taking a lot of work to get it ready, but I am very excited and am finding this quite rewarding. I don't know precisely what the reaction to the draft will be, but I am very happy with the progress thus far. In the end, of course, it is hard to see what a performance of the work would be, so I am very glad to have the help of others with more experience in that regard. For today, though, the work I have accomplished feels like it takes the play in the right direction, and I anticipate finding out what others think of that change.
It is a fairly minor change that I made, in the start of the play. The initial opening the character is talking directly about the dog, but I restructured it slightly so it is the family eating and him raising the subject to ask about getting a dog. In this way, I also introduce a number of other elements, and am able to shift the focus to the family and not just Jeff's want for a pet. While I think that the first opening did have a charm and was in some ways a good start for a play, I think the new shift leaves in all of that same material from the initial version, but structures it in a way that makes the focus of the play clear to the audience from the start.
As I mentioned, this is not a major shift in the piece at all, and yet I feel it is going to make a big difference in how the work is understood. It is often true that the initial moments of a work will imbue the audiences experience with a certain mood or tone that can change their interpretation. By starting with a line about the friend having a dog, it becomes about that issue, and about the surrounding notion of getting a dog and it being in relation to that friend, but that is not really the focus any longer.
Initially, certainly, the play did focus on that largely, but now it has shifted to being more about the needs Jeff has to take care of someone and feel that bond. It is also about Jeff being prepared to leave his parents, who are aging. As such, the shift is towards the family, and the things that are going on in the play are a reflection of these changing dynamics. The new opening shifts the focus in a way that better reflects this.
In that opening, the starting lines are about the family sitting to have dinner and Jeff is telling his parents about the dog, specifically as an opening gambit in attempting to convince them that he should have one. This is a very different thing, and it established the opening tension of the story, about whether he will get a dog. It also makes it clear that the story is not about Jeff and Jackson but about Jeff and his parents. Jackson is incidental. Other details get established as well, which will be important later and help to build the world of the story.
As I have gone further, many of the changes thus far are fairly minor. Aside from some cosmetic changes, most are for clarity or because of a typo or other error in the initial draft. This is not to say that it won't need further work beyond that, but it is the point I am at in the process. As I said, my intent had been, this morning, to do this for the whole of the draft, but I found myself doing other work, and it seemed a wise and productive choice.
I expect that I will find more to work on in the second half, actually, as it has far more added material from my latest rewrite. I did add through the whole of the work, but I had a portion at the end which was entirely new, focusing upon events that were not part of previous drafts. That sequence is one in which the father is sick and goes to the hospital, and is also the point when Jeff takes the action himself to get a leash for Tigger. As well, I reworked a portion about Tigger growing and learning to walk on the leash into something that is done in conversation with the father in the hospital.
It may be that I can streamline certain things, shift them into that same kind of conversational frame and make it work easier, if I do more of it in that way. I am able to imagine at least one other moment in the draft that could possibly be handled that way, though it would require a bit of work to figure. It works well in some cases because it allows a shift in focus to be framed within the family relationship, and because it also combines what might be disparate moments, it can streamline and speed up the text. If I were to have two separate parts, one where Jeff visits his father, and one where he trains Tigger, that would be a longer thing. The combination works to strengthen each and makes it possible to shorten the length without leaving anything out.
Of course, it is not the only solution, and I recognize that much of what makes it work is the monologue structure here, as it is the same to have Jeff describe the dog directly or as he would in a conversation with his parents. That language has a similar impact and carries that same emotion and meaning. In a more traditional play with multiple characters, this would not work the same. It could be useful, but it might be a bit difficult to pull off in the same way. Here it works because it is always the same character in the scene.
So, today I feel that I accomplished a good amount of review and revision work for the play. It is taking a lot of work to get it ready, but I am very excited and am finding this quite rewarding. I don't know precisely what the reaction to the draft will be, but I am very happy with the progress thus far. In the end, of course, it is hard to see what a performance of the work would be, so I am very glad to have the help of others with more experience in that regard. For today, though, the work I have accomplished feels like it takes the play in the right direction, and I anticipate finding out what others think of that change.
Comments
Post a Comment