Sharing Your Script For The First Time, Part 1

I can’t stress enough how important the very first sharing of your work is.  You’re about to cross a line in the life of your project that you can’t ever cross back over.   Outside input will now enter your creative process for the first time.  And it’s going to have an impact, positive or negative or both.  It’s going to reshape how you think about your script.  

The initial feedback you get, therefore, should be from carefully selected sources and needs to be tightly controlled.  Many of the playwrights and screenwriters I’ve worked with rely on one or two trusted people who have become invaluable as early readers of their work.  In some cases, it took a long time to find these people.  Once located, however, the writers consider them a wonderful asset and an important part of their writing process--or, perhaps more accurately, of the birthing process.  These friends are, indeed, like midwives at the birth of children; they help guide each script into the world.  They often continue in the role of godparents as the child “grows.”  You, the writer, have to go through the labor, give birth, and care for each child’s development, but these people often play a crucial role.

As Wendy Wasserstein told me, “You’re very, very vulnerable when you write a play, and you want input--it’s like you’re dying for it--the way actors want input.  But you have to be very careful in choosing whom you listen to--that’s the best advice I could give you.  Because there are extremely brilliant people who could give you advice that’s just not right for you.”  

I suggest that the initial readers of your new script  be people who have three basic qualities:  a perceptive mind, a generous spirit, and a good working knowledge of the medium.  They should be folks you respect a great deal, who won’t be afraid to tell you what they really think.  And I think two people are better than one for this initial feedback because the second person will tend to reinforce or give some balance to the first person’s responses.  

Next:  How to proceed with your initial readers

The rewriting process: scanning your script

Here’s another simple little exercise that you might add to your arsenal:  

Before releasing your new play or screenplay to anyone for the first time and after you think you've made all necessary revisions and the script really works for you from beginning to end, I suggest you take your rewriting process one step further.

Put the script away for a few days, still not showing it to anyone.  When you pull it out again, get it out of the computer by printing a hard copy so you’re literally able to hold the script in your hands.  This will give you an initial degree of distance to and objectivity toward your material that you can’t ever achieve by simply charging back into it on your computer screen.  

Then, sitting there looking at the title page, try to reprogram your brain to become an ultra-sensitive scanning machine that you're going to put each page through.  Make yourself into this hyper-critical, word sensitive, fine-tuning device that can pick up even the slightest static or doubt or nag of uncertainty.  With this machine nothing gets through that isn't absolutely perfect.  

Then feed in the first page and begin scanning through each stage direction, description of action, and line of dialogue word by word.  When anything stops you--a word choice, the smallest whisper of "this isn't perfect but it's good enough" or "do I really need this?" and so on--have the beeper in your mind go off and stop and fix it.  Don't move on until you can scan back over the same material and, in all honesty, the beeper no longer sounds.

And when you come across difficult problems that you just can't get by the scanner no matter how hard you try, then at least you’ve discovered key issues that you may need outside help with--problem areas that can only be completely solved after you get trusted feedback from others or hear the script read by actors and/or feel how an audience responds to it.  But by faithfully going through this tough solo-testing first, at least you will have identified where and what these issues are.  You'll be aware of what to watch and listen for, what questions to begin asking once you release your project for the first time.   

The point here is to make your script as good as it can possibly get before you put it out there for others to respond to.  That's the only way you're going to make genuine progress with it from here on out.  If you're not happy with what you're asking others to respond to or at least aren’t privately aware of where you have potential issues, why waste their time?

The simple fact is that in this scriptwriting game there's no room for the slightest sloppiness or laziness.  Anything less than your absolute best effort just doesn't cut it.  In the end you never get away with it.  True professionalism means more than extraordinary talent.  It means patience and hard work and being honest with yourself as to how good your writing really is.  Every writer of plays and/or screenplays who has consistent success in the profession takes this as a matter of course.  Becoming your own scanning machine (or whatever you want to call it), therefore, is simply one of the essential requirements.  

Beginning the rewriting process: Keeping your script to yourself

As you enter the initial phase of rewriting your first draft, it's important that you resist the often times compelling urge to share your work with others.  That day will come soon enough.  Now more than ever as you proceed with this first examination of the draft, you still need to protect that private relationship between you and your script.  It's your impressions at this point that are the most important.  Your reactions.  Your ideas for changes.  I realize that the urge to share, to get the opinions of respected, trusted friends can be almost overpowering at this point.  You want to know how others respond, what they think, what they understand and don't understand.

My plea is:  be patient.  Just keep thinking you first owe it to yourself and your script to go back through it "privately" at least one time.  It's crucial you become as confident and convinced as possible about what's on those pages before soliciting reactions from others.  Believe me, the process changes radically and irrevocably as soon as you've exposed your "child" to the world.  This is your last opportunity to get it right as you see it.  Once you've let even one other person into the process, you can't retrieve what you had before.

Imagine, for example, you’ve written a first draft of a play or screenplay filled with characters you’re convinced are all unique and original creations with zero links to your own real life experience.  You’re excited by this as you should be.   And proud.  And you’re dying for just a little feedback.  So in spite of your better judgement you can’t resist sharing the draft with your closest and most trusted friend.  And the first words out of the friend’s mouth after reading your new creation is something like, “Wow, I loved it, but I never knew you felt that way about your father.”

Your head immediately starts spinning out of control.  “My father?  What?  My father isn’t a part of this story.  No way.”  But of course the “damage” has been done.  Suddenly you can’t approach your script the same ever again.  That outside reaction is now and forever part of the mix as you go back into the draft.  You’re now looking for something that wasn’t there before.  And all bets are off in terms of how you’re able to approach your story from here on out.  

My point is that there’s a time for sharing your new work.  It’s all part of the process of writing.  But be careful that you don’t release it too soon.  Cherish your private relationship with your script as long as you can, resist that early urge to share it with others, and work at getting it as close as you possibly can to what your private vision is for the material before handing it over for the first time.    

The First Draft of Your Script: Getting Some Distance

A finished first draft is like a freshly baked pie.  When you first take it out of the oven you have to put it on the rack to cool.  If you try cutting a piece hot, it falls apart, the insides oozing out as you attempt putting the piece on a plate.  If you try tasting it, your tongue gets burned.

It's mysterious how this works, but distancing yourself from a finished first draft is absolutely essential.  The degree of objectivity gained with even a few days of cooling off helps enormously as you go back to appraise what you've come up with.

More often than not, when you finish writing that final page, that negative voice will have grown from a whisper to a shout.  However loud it may be, resist concluding that what you've written is terrible.  Realize these feelings are normal.  There’s also the outside chance the opposite may happen and you're so excited about what you've written you can barely contain yourself.  Or you may be somewhere in the middle, uncertain as to its merits.

Whatever your feelings are toward that stack of pages, however, the worst thing you can do is to immediately start reworking them.  You need, instead, to put your newborn draft away and totally forget about it for awhile.  Two weeks to a month will permit you to gain some distance, but some writers need much more time.  During this break try to engage yourself in some other all-consuming project, perhaps even starting work on another play.  Or, as Marsha Norman suggests, "You should just find wonderful things to read between the time you put the play away and the next time you pick it up.  You should fill your mind up with other language, other characters' concerns."

I also highly recommend that you still don't share your work with anyone else even though the urge to do so now that you have a completed draft is often compelling.  During this cooling off time you and your play are still incubating together.  It should still be a private process.  Getting input from others now could forever destroy that special, intimate, personal relationship you've been nurturing.  So fight off the impulse to share your play quite yet.  You'll be happy you did when you come back to it.

Usually what happens when you return to your draft after such a distancing period is that it'll surprise you.  If you hated it when you put it away, now it'll most likely read  better than you thought it would.  If you loved it, now it'll probably be obvious that it needs more work.  The point here is that your ability to judge its merits can only really be trusted if you've allowed yourself to gain some objectivity and the only way you can achieve that is to put it on the rack and let it cool off for a while.  I've never encountered an exception to this.

Film Festival Magic

Last weekend I attended a new film festival in the heart of New England called the Monadnock International Film Festival named after the famous mountain that looms over the region.   Put together by a group of dedicated folks who simply decided they wanted to celebrate the artform, this three-day inaugural event was nothing less than a blowout success.

 

Held in Keene, New Hampshire, it became quickly apparent that this seemingly modest attempt at pulling off a new film festival was turning into something much more.  Public support was amazing.  Every screening was standing room only.  So were the panel discussions.  As were all the downtown after parties.  Ticket and pass-holder lines for closing night went around the corner from the main venue and stretched on for over a hundred yards back into a parking lot. I was amazed (as were many others) at the overflow crowds for every item on the program.  Throughout the festival, there was a special and highly charged energy that was clearly felt by everyone attending. 

     

The culminating screening on Saturday night was the pre-television release of Ken Burn’s powerful documentary The Central Park Five to be broadcast nation-wide on PBS next week on Tuesday, April 16^th.   Burns, who with his daughter and son-in-law, wrote and directed the film, was there in person to receive a special award.  And along with two of the men whose story was being told in the film (Raymond Santana and Yusef Salaam), Burns took part in a stimulating Q and A with a packed house of over 900 people who to a person stayed for over an hour after the final credits rolled to discuss the film. 

As I sat in the last row of the old restored Colonial Theatre in downtown Keene that night, I was struck yet again at the power of film when it is screened for a flesh and blood live audience.  And how this was proven again and again with every screening I attended during the festival.  I was reminded of the continued hunger that people obviously have to gather together as a special community for a brief time to experience a work of art.  Live theatre offers this special coming together, but so does cinema. 

With all the talk and speculation about how the digital age is rapidly eliminating the desire or need for people to see films in theatres, this festival was, in a sense, an answer back.  Or, maybe more accurately, a shout back, saying that the movie theatre experience still has life in it and that cinema is only fully realized when that community of audience is there experiencing as one the unfolding of a film’s story. 

So I send out my own shout to the Monadnock International Film Festival with a loud BRAVO!  And for reminding me and everyone else who was lucky enough to be a part of this event that there is still real magic to be found in going out to the movies.    

Too Many MFA Programs in Playwriting and Screenwriting...?

Yesterday I came across a comment in a LinkedIn discussion that suggested that there are too many MFA programs out there turning out second-rate playwrights and screenwriters.  The thrust of this person's thinking was that as a result the market is being flooded with new mediocre scripts that are actually doing damage to the profession.  And inferring that most of those who graduate from these programs--in addition to sending out their inferior scripts to every theatre, production company, and literary agent in the country--are looking for teaching jobs that will allow them to turn out even more wannabe successful writers, creating a vicious cycle and further exasperating the problem as the years tick on.

Having taught scriptwriting for over three decades on both the undergrad and grad level, worked professionally in new play and screenplay development nearly as long, and had many of my own scripts developed and produced at writers' conferences and productions, I have to say the comment may have hit on something that's been bugging me for years.

To my mind, the only kind of MFA program in playwriting and/or screenwriting that is worth its salt is when working professionals are doing the teaching and the focus of the program is on the serious testing of student work with other working professional collaborators.  Student scripts need to be put through the ringer of a carefully structured lab environment where actors, directors, designers and other theatre and film artists are allowed to get their hands on student writing and see what works and what doesn't. An environment where the student writer engages directly with seasoned people who have been in the trenches for a long time--and still are--and who know how to give voice to material, spot strengths and weaknesses, and offer targeted suggestions for improvement in a way that may sometimes hurt, but is offered sincerely and can be trusted.

It's this kind of writing program on the graduate level that is sorely lacking (with a few notable exceptions) and the main reason there's a growing negative attitude in the professional world about the perceived treadmill of MFA programs turning out writers whose work has not been truly battle-tested and that, for the most part, forever remains gathering dust on the page.  So when I was approached with the prospect of designing yet another new MFA in playwriting and screenwriting, I jumped at the chance to put together a different kind of program that would be truly hands-on and have the capacity to turn out writers of plays and screenplays who know the ropes and whose work reflects a professionalism several notches above the norm.

The Initial Test of Your New Script

One of the things I've observed in my career as a writer of plays and screenplays and as a producer of new scripts is the critical importance of that very first test of new material with other artist/collaborators.  In other words, there's a lot at stake when your new script is being given voice for the first time.  This phase in the life of a new screenplay or play is--for you, the writer--often a make or break moment.

When I founded the Playwrights Theatre of New Jersey many years ago, my primary motivation was to help writers with this delicate first "release" of their new script to the wider world.  I knew that the actors assembled to give the work its first read had to be carefully chosen for each role and had to be very good at bringing words on the page to life with little or no rehearsal.  I knew that to do otherwise would risk the writer concluding that they'd lost their hearing, as playwright Wendy Wasserstein told me when she described her response to a first reading of a new play of hers.  Some of the actors were simply not right for the roles and she had trouble recognizing the play she'd just finished writing.

Or as playwright and Academy Award-winning screenwriter John Patrick Shanley told me when he first released his wonderful play Danny and the Deep Blue Sea:  "I thought [it] was a dead loss on the basis of a reading.  I heard the reading and I said, 'Well, I guess I was wrong.  I thought it was good.'  Then I did another reading and I thought, 'Well, it's better.'  And then I got some good people and I thought, 'All right, now we're talking!'  So you have to be very careful not to write off a [script] on the basis of a bad reading."

Just realize that your initial launch with new material--allowing other artists to connect with it for the first time--is more significant than you may at first realize.  As eager as you may be to hear your script come to life for the first time, be careful to gather actors that are talented, are a good match for the character they're reading, and know what their character's function is in the play or screenplay.