Lazy Writing: The Prelude
You know, two summers ago I wrote a play. It was inspired by a conversation I had on a front porch on the 4th of July. There were about 10 people there at the party, but only three of them were dominating the conversation, and as I’m not very good at group conversations, I just listened. One of the three was a professor, another a student. The third was a girl who was visiting from across the country. In a small town like ours, that’s a huge deal.
She was telling us about her life in another place, and we were all rapt with attention. The student expressed his desire to leave, to find himself, and the professor (in rather crude terms) seconded the notion.
Regardless, I found the conversation to be inspiring. They spoke in a very real, down-to-earth way, but instead of half-hearted smalltalk, this was passionate, fiery conversation. It felt like I was watching a play.
As soon as I realized this, I switched my brain into Line Memorizing Mode, where I remember things accurately and quickly. I dunno, it’s a trick I have, I guess. Anyway, as soon as I got home, I wrote the rough draft of a play. It wasn’t long at 25 pages, but it was a good start.
Over the next year, I polished it and refined it. The character personalities were heavily based on my friends on that porch, with several monologues coming verbatim (at least, as best as I could remember) from that porch conversation. I wasn’t ripping off their ideas — I’d already had those ideas. But they had articulated them in ways I’d never been able to do before.
So the character personalities were based on my friends, but the characters deep down inside were based mostly on my own experiences (which, I suspect, everyone else has gone through as well). The conversations were composed entirely of thoughts that I had had before or experiences that I had actually been through. I wrote the way my friends might say it, but the underlying message came from within, rather than from them.
After a year of polishing it up, I turned in a proposal at my school to direct it. It took six weeks to get a response.
The producer came to me, asked me to come to his office, sat me down, and said “This is crap. Lazy writing.”
His reasoning was the professor’s character cursed constantly. I just nodded. I couldn’t very well tell him that the character was based on one of his employees, that this was very, very realistic writing. If it had been truly lazy writing, then the other two characters would have been cursing as well. As it is, neither of them ever say a curse word.
So, my script sits on a shelf, waiting for a day when I can produce it on my own, when I have the resources and opportunity to put it on stage.
I suspect that many people will connect with it. I don’t think it will make Broadway, by any means. It’s not that good. But it’s good enough for a one-act.
Like the characters in my play, someday I know my dreams will come true.
January 30th, 2008 at 3:31 pm
Apparently, real life dialogue is just lazy writing. And, if he thinks swearing is lazy writing too, I can’t even imagine what he thought of HBO’s Deadwood!
January 31st, 2008 at 3:08 am
Don’t worry, when I proposed CLOSER, the main thing he said was there was 57 “fucks” in it. But the audience and cast and crew loved it! Old men and their old ways..
February 1st, 2008 at 4:33 pm
That happens. One person’s critique doesn’t equal truth, particularly when you never know what agenda he or she may have. It sounds like he may have had one.
February 2nd, 2008 at 1:16 am
It’s true, Mouth. He rejected four other proposals, until I finally sat him down and explained that I needed another shot at directing to help with getting into grad school. He essentially gave me a book and said “Pick one of these, and I’ll approve it.” Sucks, I guess.