This week's A.P.T. goes out to the prolific Nat Cassidy. If you have been in the indie theatre scene for any number of years, you will have no doubt seen his work in various festivals as a playwright, actor, and director. I have had the privelege of working with him many times and it's always been a great experience. Yesterday, Nat took the time to do some musing on the craft of writing and he added to his awesomeness. I've shared that piece below. For the writers amongst you reading this, there's some excellent stuff here. Enjoy and be sure to see anything that Nat is involved with. You will not be disappointed.
Excelsior!
This might be silly, but ...
I was watching Gideon Productions' SOVEREIGN last night, and a word popped into my head that kinda blew my mind. That word was SHARP, but it doesn't mean what you think it means.
Lemme back up.
I'm constantly jotting down notes. Story notes, character notes, music notes, lyric notes; you name it, chances are I've got a section in my phone's Notepad with at least a couple of hastily typed ideas about it. One of the sections I update most frequently is entitled "Rules." It's the list with which I annoy my girlfriend by updating when we're watching something like THE WIRE or GAME OF THRONES. It's where I try to articulate craft-related things I notice, or things I've heard said well by others, that, to me, make a story better. Things like, "Go in later, get out sooner," or, "The next scene should always be a 'therefore' or a 'but,' never an 'and' or 'also,'" or, "Being drunk makes stupid people think they can be calculating," et cetera.
And, so, I was watching SOVEREIGN last night (which, as your Facebook feed will tell you for the next couple of weeks, really is quite fucking excellent), and I was kinda shocked to realize that these observations had somehow formed into a handy little acronym in the area where sometimes my brain is. I started comparing what I was watching to what I was thinking and, sure enough, it was all matching up (which I mean as a high compliment, as you'll see).
But lemme back up a little further, too.
Recently, at the request of a handful of interested companies who are interested in much shorter versions and/or screenplay adaptations, I've had to revisit some of my old scripts (my first full-length, The Reckoning of Kit & Little Boots, dates all the way back to the year TWO-THOUSAND-AND-SEVEN, if you can imagine). As all writers do, I've been cringing like a motherfuck. I mean, these scripts still pretty much work ... but there are just. So. Many. Things. I want to fix and/or spice up. I feel like, after five-plus years and ten-plus scripts and six productions and COUNTLESS notes, my grasp on structure and content is so much stronger than it was then (God willing, I'll feel that way in another five years about the scripts I'm writing now).
One of the things that most impressed me about SOVEREIGN was the difference between the draft of the script I'd read sometime last year (parts of which I still had memorized from auditions in late April) and the play I saw staged. Mac's new edits are tight. They're relatively minor, all things considered, but still quite effective. Some lines are lifted from one scene and dropped into another, some nice ideas are totally gone, some new ones pop up unexpectedly. It was quite inspirational to see, actually. 'Cause the draft I'd read certainly worked ... but this one worked better.
And so this acronym, SHARP, popped into my head last night at a point when I'm about to refine the hell out of some old scripts and am also wading into a bunch of new ones. For me, it kinda functions as both an Aristotelian collation/description of what I've observed makes up successful modern dramaturgy, as well as a handy prescriptive checklist of the things I've been keeping in mind as I write/edit.
Of course, then I went ahead this morning and added four more letters to it, which made it a little less sexy and compact, but still: {fart}. I thought I'd write it down and then figured why the fuck not share it with some of my fellow writers/dramaturgs to see what it might spark for them.
Here's where I fully admit: I didn't go to school for this, and the only books I've read about writing tend to be about screenplay technique. There could very well already be an acronym like this that's much more effective or articulate. And I could also find that, after some time, this is woefully inadequate list and a laughable attempt to organize what is by nature a messy, cat-like corral of thoughts and instincts.
At the very least, let this serve as my little thank you to Mac for his excellent and inspiring work. You done real good, you dickface.
SHARPDIIS
Stands for:
Stakes
Humor
Animosity
Resistance
Plots
Decisions
Innocence
Interruptions
Stichomythea
Some of these might need some elaboration, so here goes:
STAKES
Duh. Although, it's amazing how often this is forgotten. Think they're high enough? Raise 'em. Is it the next scene? Raise 'em again.
HUMOR
Another duh. Although, it's amazing how often this is forgotten, too. But let it be said that, by humor, I don't mean jokes or bits or shticky shit. There's an honest self-awareness to the best scripts: realistically-drawn characters, if put in extraordinary situations, should have at least a moment during which they try to laugh at the insanity that's happening to them. The humor comes from the recognition that we would do the same thing in those circumstances. (See also Interruptions.)
ANIMOSITY
Someone, or some group, should dislike something so much that it compels them to action. There's a very specific reason I was drawn to this particular word; it's gotta be an activating, animating force.
RESISTANCE
Kinda like how the most effective way to play drunk is to try to act as sober as possible. (And remember one of Pixar's fantastic storytelling rules: we love a character more for trying than succeeding.)
PLOTS
Note that it's "plots," not "plot" (nor "plotz," bubbe). I don't mean this in a "Good scripts have a story" way. You already have a story, else why would you be writing? Rather, to activate the story, make sure your characters are plotting something. It doesn't have to be George R. R. Martin-level schemery, but it's not enough to say every character needs a "want"--they all should have a plan that they're actively following, too. The fun comes in watching these plans bounce off of each other in unexpected ways.
DECISIONS
Another duh. But good storys are propelled by people being confronted with the ol' fork in the road and having to actively make a choice, so I felt like it needed to be included.
INNOCENCE
You wanna break an audience's heart? Show them innocence and then work on corrupting it. (This is something I think Mac does particularly well - usually with whatever character is played by Jason Howard.) And note, then, that corruption doesn't have to mean that they become filthy or evil--just that their innocence, out of decisions and stakes and plots and animosity, takes on a new meaning, be it willful naivete, hope, hatred, etc. (This is an area wherein I think genre stories have an automatic leg-up--maybe because innocence is just so hard to justify in "the real world.")
INTERRUPTIONS
This is a big one, and it's a micro/macro kinda rule. First, macro: no scene should end the way it's supposed to. If you have an ending and it feels *right*, chances are the audience feels that way, too, so, if it ends that way, what was the point? Interrupt it with something (of the world), that forces the characters to make another decision, big or small (Yay, decisions!). It's straight out of the old Joss Whedon Bag o' Tricks and it works. Also, on the micro level, monologues in life are few and far between. One of the best acting observations I ever got (from Anne Bogart, no less) is one I've carried over into my writing: almost always, the person you're talking to knows what you're saying before you finish your sentence. Save your pauses and speeches for when you really, really need 'em (and even then, if you have a killer ending line to your monologue, it might be more interesting to interrupt it).
STICHOMYTHEA
This is more technical than any of the other points (and it might just echo the previous one), but I just think short lines play and read better. Granted, this is all relative to one's voice as an author--I've just been finding as I got through and make edits that I already see massive results in just breaking up the dialogue into smaller nuggets. Not necessarily even getting rid of things - although shorter lines help you see what's where and how it can be moved.
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