Jan 25 2009
The Process Of Script Writing
The script writing process was interupted by Christmas which didn’t help. It meant that there was a break in writing for two weeks. Although I carried on writing I had no feedback so I didn’t know if what I was doing was right or wrong.
When working with a group of people you need them to all give feedback otherwise you might write something that a person doesn’t agree with and find out that you have to change it. If you have to change things when writing it can mess up the whole structure of the play. You might have to change a whole page of the script or possibly more. It is the same when people leave your group it leaves you having to make decisions such as whether to cut a character from the play or not. It also meant that I couldn’t develop the characters the way I wanted because I never knew if a character was going to stay in the play or not.
I had to change the script a lot which was a learning experience that made me see how important it is to have people that are dedicated to the play and are not going to let the script writer down.When I first started to write the script there were 3 more characters that were going to play a part in the end I had to cut those 3 characters out. When my tutor allowed people from the other group to take part in the play it did help, but I knew I couldn’t have asked them to play some of the main characters.
I had to decide on the essential ingredients for the play and get rid of those that were probably not essential. I think the fine tuning process was good for the script and made the main characters grow and develop. When we went back to college after Christmas another bomb shell was dropped on our group. Our technical theatre tutor was leaving the college which meant that as far as sound, lighting and special effects were concerned we had to give all hopes up of having any. That didn’t change the play drastically, but it did mean that the play wouldn’t have the elements I wanted in it.
The decrepid building that I had to now only talk about and imagine was originally going to projected on the stage using a coloured gel and Fresnel.
Originally we were going to have proper judges and build character’s out of them, but with the departure of several people from our group we had to cut them out of the play. Originally there was a reason why I called the group Two Timer’s, but that also had to be cut out. I’ve heard of the saying that it is better to show rather than tell, but you still need to have a certain amount of speech in the script. So I guess what I am saying is that script writing is a lot more difficult than I ever imagined.
As long as you are committed and have people that are committed working alongside you then you should get something half decent. Fortunately my friend Elaine came to the rescue and came up with some great ideas that she said I had inspired her to write. If it hadn’t of been for Elaine I don’t think the final product would have been quite as good. Of course there was Tom and Anthony but, they didn’t really put much into the writing of the script. They fit well into their character’s though and pulled off an impressive performance.
