Writing Outside the Box - Writing Drama
Scroll to the end of the blog to watch the video tutorial for this session or read on for a full transcript of the workshop.
To find the other six sessions type #WritingOutsideTheBox into the Blog’s search engine.
Introduction:
When it comes to writing any kind of fiction writers need to work really hard to maintain the suspension of disbelief. The suspension of disbelief is just a fancy way of saying you’re helping your readers to enter into the make believe situation you’ve created on the page, to put aside reality for a few minutes and treat everything you’re telling them as believable truth. The suspension of disbelief is particularly important when it comes to writing for theatre. When a drama unfolds on stage it’s important that the audience not only believe the story you’re telling them but also transport themselves into the little world you’ve created on stage. You can use movement, dialogue, set and all sorts of tricks to do this. In this workshop we’re going to be creating a short dramatic scene using the world you can see through your window.
To make things even more interesting we’re going to be writing a piece of magic realist theatre. I’m a magic realist, as are some of my favourite writers: Salman Rushdie, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Gunter Grass. Magic realist writing is always set in the real world. Much attention is paid to creating an accurate, detailed and believable backdrop so when something strange and otherworldly happens, this happening is also believable. You can probably see why the suspension of disbelief is also incredibly important when it comes to writing magic realism. I find that a magic realist story always seems most believable and therefore works best when the otherworldly element is treated like a natural occurrence, the sort of thing which happens regularly and doesn’t shock anyone.
You might like to read a few magic realist stories and try to identify which aspects are magical and which real. Look at the detail the writers have put in to establishing both aspects of their story. I’d recommend starting with a fantastic Gabriel Garcia Marquez short story called “The Old Man with Enormous Wings” or you could have a quick read at this tiny magic realist story from my first micro fiction collection, Postcard Stories.
“Egg”
You were born with a bird’s egg grasped firmly in your right hand. It wasn’t big enough to be a chicken’s. It was pale blue with freckles like the eggs you sometimes come across in woodland nests. You don’t remember being born with a bird’s egg in your fist or how it got there; why it hadn’t cracked under the pressure of your fingers or the force of being born. It is a mystery to you, like breathing or knowing a thing you have not been told.
After you were born, they took the bird’s egg out of your hand and kept it for days under a heat lamp, but it did not hatch. Eventually they opened it, cracked its thin shell against a spoon and tipped it – yolk and all - into a teacup. There was a little dot, like the red of an eye in photographs. It was swimming in the yolk. It looked up at them and did not blink. Why would it?
So, there you newly were, with an egg in your hand, with an eye in this egg, like a set of Russian dolls or how we all are, secretly, inside.
Interactive Writing Exercises:
· Go over to the closest window and take a long look outside.
· Using a piece of paper and pencil roughly sketch everything you can see through the window. This will be the setting for the small piece of drama you’re about to write.
· Either invent two characters who might realistically be outside your window or pick two people who you actually see outside your window eg. a postman, a neighbour, children passing en route to school.
· Quickly jot down some notes. Why are these two people outside your window? What connects them or has brought them together? How would they relate and communicate with each other? This is going to be the scenario you use for your drama.
· Now we need to throw in a wild card element so that we can bring a magic realist element to the story.
· If you’ve got your own good idea for an otherworldly or fantastical element you’d like to add, please feel free to go with that. If you don’t have an idea pick one of the following to add to your story. 1. A talking cat 2. A portal to another time 3. A ghostly apparition in the window 4. A dinosaur 5. An invisible child.
· Now you get to have some fun coming up with your story idea.
· To help you shape your writing think about why this odd element might have appeared in the scene, how the characters are going to react to it and what action this will lead to.
· Remember not to forget about the suspension of disbelief. Focus on good detailed description of the realistic elements of your story and make sure your characters treat the unbelievable element as if it’s completely normal.
· We’re going to write this scene as if it’s a piece of dialogue in a play so you’ll begin with a quick description of your two characters, two sentences about the setting and then write your scene as if it is a conversation between the two of them as they engage with the fantastical element.
Example:
I’ve just had a quick look through my front window. I can see my tiny garden which desperately needs weeded, my car parked on the road outside and, across the road a large, empty warehouse. I’ve chosen two people I regularly see outside my window: my window cleaner Eddie and my neighbour, Jim who walks his dog up and down the street. My otherworldly element is going to be a dinosaur – specifically a flying dinosaur called a pterodactyl. I’ll give you a small snippet to demonstrate how a magic realist dialogue might play out. Don’t forget to have lots of fun with this one.
Setting:
A small terraced house in East Belfast with a man positioned up a ladder, attempting to wash the upper windows.
Characters:
Eddie: A fifty year old window washer
Jim: A man in his sixties with an elderly bulldog
Act One: Scene One
Jim: Are you still up there, Eddie?
Eddie: Aye. I’ve been here half the morning, trying to get this nest hoked out of the drainpipe.
Jim: Pterodactyls?
Eddie: How did you know?
Jim: We’re plagued with the blighters. One’s built its nest in the chimney. The wife didn’t know and when she lit the fire, all the soot came rushing back down the chimney. The mess was something shocking. We’d to pay to get the carpet cleaned.
Eddie: Nightmare. The thing about pterodactyls is they don’t know their own size.
Jim: You’re right there Eddie. They get on like they’re starlings, building their nests in drain pipes, splattering your car with their droppings, perching on the telephone wires, but they’re fifty times bigger than a starling.
Eddie: I know what you mean. They wreck havoc wherever they go. Take this one here. It’s build its nest in the drain pipe. The rain water’s overflowed and run down the windows. They’re an absolute sight to behold and it’s muggins here who’s got to deal with the consequences.
Jim: It used to be we only got pterodactyls in the spring but this climate change malarkey has changed everything. I’ve had six of them down the bottom of my garden since the middle of the summer……
Developed, written and presented by Jan Carson
Produced by Alan Meban
Funded by Arts Council NI
