Writers' Tuesday - My Week As A Writing Student
Last week I began a playwriting course. How did it go?
It was an unfamiliar experience sitting at the end of a table, listening to a tutor pour forth their tips and strategies for learning how to write. After all, teaching writing is what I largely do for a living, so I wasn’t expecting to learn much. I just thought it would be fun.
I was right - it was fun, And I was wrong. I learnt a lot.
This is one of the things I do love about being a writer. The potential for expanding your abilities and craft are neverending. Here, at the Arvon Lumb Bank centre in Yorkshire, in the building once occupied by Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath, I sat with a dozen other students of all ages, gender identifications and ethnicities. We all had just one thing in common. We wanted to know better how to write a play ( which I have never done).
I came onto the course with a tinge of hubris, thinking I might amusedly observe others learn all the things I have known in my bones and in my intellect for many years. But the potential for new knowledge it seems is infinite.
The tutors - Simon Stephens, Carmen Nasr and one occasion, Laura Wade - taught me not only much about playwriting, but also about teaching, such was their generosity, good humour and diligence. I realise now that when I teach one of these courses myself, I am going to have to raise my game.
So what did I, a novelist, learn on a playwriting course? First and foremost I realised how much more I would enjoy being a playwright than I enjoy being a novelist, As a form, it isn’t any more or less valid - but it is so much more collective and that is what makes it enjoyable. Of course the writing itself is still solitary, but writing a play is only the first step in creating a theatrical experiencs. The director, the actors, the dramaturge, the artistic director - all have an input.
We didn’t work with any of these functionaires on the course, but we worked with one another - throwing our work out there, critiquing it and far more often, praising it. I often think on novel courses the praise is a bit - well, strained, since some of the submissions struggle to achieve a minimum level of competence. On this course, every single writer knew something of what they were doing. They were all immersed in theatrical culture - many of them were actors - and made me feel like the novice I am, since all I have ever done is go and watch plays, not write them.
I also came to understand the richness of playwriting. The potential for playing with the theatrical space and for experimenting with movement and language. Unlike novels, a great part of playwriting is visual rather than textual, so using the movement of the actors across the stage, and the physical surroundings of the play provides the sort of variety a novelist cannot.
I was very nervous when I took my putative play in for reading by the tutors, and I began with a plea that they didn’t bullshit me. I wanted to know if I had the potential to master this kind of form. They didn’t - but they were also extremely incisive. They praised the quality of my writing - which I admit I only half believed, since I am very insecure in this medium - but also came up with no end of incisive useful analyses.
We had a reading half through the week with the guest playwright Laura Wade ( ‘Posh’, ‘Home I’m Darling’ ‘The Watsons’) who blew us all away with her creativity, imagination and wit. Her plays are marvellous and seeing her reading from them ( members of the group took some of the parts) was thrilling,
I could go on for some time about the exercises we did and how we learned. My favourite was being given a few pages of dialogue and being told to shout ‘Tactics!’ every time we felt a character was manouvering or manipulating the the other character - how dramatic speech is about not speaking, but one character ‘doing’ something to another through language. You quickly learn how this happens in ‘real life’ too. It was instructive and entertaining and not a little disconcerting.
The week ended with each of us ‘casting’ our plays and getting other members of the group to read them out loud in front of tutors and students. I had - and still have - no idea if my work was any good, because it was informally obligatory to whoop and clap. But the work I heard read out by the other writers inspired me. I could no longer sit and feel superior about being a well-practised ‘writing teacher’. Instead I felt I was in a room full of talent that in most cases outstripped my own. And while that made me feel somewhat insecure, it was also very inspiring,
Finally, quite apart from the pedagogical elements, the experience of the week was overhelmingly positive. To spend six days in the close company of charming, intelligent people all pursuing a common goal was genuinely heartwarming and , yes, fun. I said to Simon Stephens at the end of the week ‘ I won’t forget this week’ - and I won’t. He said the same, and given what a sincere man he is, I have to believe he wasn't just being kind. All in all, the week gave me a new impetus in my writing. Watch this space and see what emerges.
So Tim, after such a fruitfully enjoyable week in the realm of playwriting how dramatic might things rolling off the Lott Writing Line get?
Thanks for sharing a sense of the timeline and what were salient takeaways for you.
I know you have a history with contest addiction, (and I also know that screenwriting isn’t play writing) but …. Here is a fun, light-hearted low stakes screen writing contest you might find enjoyable. I’m participating in their short story contest right now. (And your readers might be interested too). Nycmidnight.com
https://www.nycmidnight.com/scc?fbclid=IwAR22SWqfwM5_2uW2OyR5oexVshVK8CrEoLu9lbAf_Yw2y6wQ_hSKoL95mmo