Tonight's class, 10.16.07
I will post weekly updates about my playwrighting class with Ken Urban at Harvard Extension School to this blog. I missed the first few weeks. They will be reprinted in their entirety shortly. In the meantime, here goes...
Tonight's class was not a good one. I'm depressed. You know how you have to be broken down to be built up again? Well, I was broken down tonight. I hope the building up part comes soon..
We discussed internal conflict again. Apparently, each character needs to have two. For example: I want to buy a nice car. I want to be liked by people who do not care about material things. (I'm reaching here, but this is as I understand it.) Both characters need two internal conflicts and each character's internal conflicts are in conflict with each other character's conflicts.
To which, I say, HUH? (Do you all have internal conflicts within your plays? How did I write plays without understanding that it even existed? I thought it was all external conflict, brought about by one person wanting something and another person wanting something else and eventually someone won and someone lost or they both came together and hugged one another. Okay, just kidding about the last part.)
Anyway, we read each student's 10-minute play. Some were strong than others. (Some were pretty funny; some were pretty bad; one student wrote a paper on feminist constricts within a film construct. Don't ask me what that means. Another student's 16-year-old boy spoke as if he was 30. He needs dialogue assistance.And a third student's play was just...odd.)
And then there were three. (There are 15 students in the class. There were 16 to start, plus three on the wait list. Someone has already bowed out. It's tempting.) We now all knew we did not have internal conflict in our plays. (At this point, I also knew my play sucked.) But we had no choice. Our plays had to be read. And so they were. And my play read even worse than I had suspected. I was trying to be inventive with my language. Instead, it came across as stilted, plus the plot was simplistic and overt, and there WAS NO OVERRIDING INTERNAL CONFLICT. *sigh*
I'm so confused! I came up with the preliminary idea for my semester project (a 10-15 minute play). It's not a great idea; it's an okay one. I have 10 things I have to put into a 60-90 second monologue for next week that encapsulates EVERYTHING about the play; from characters to location to, you know it's coming...CONFLICT and how it will be resolved. I kid you not. A short monologue (to a particular audience, naturally) that wraps up the entire play? Why bother even writing the play?!
And I thought, back in my naive days (four weeks ago), Heck, I know how to write, I just need to get over my writer's block. And Ken said on the first night, Maybe this class will be too much of a beginning playwrights class for you. And now I wonder how I'll make it through the semester without beating myself to a pulp...
More as it develops.
Tonight's class was not a good one. I'm depressed. You know how you have to be broken down to be built up again? Well, I was broken down tonight. I hope the building up part comes soon..
We discussed internal conflict again. Apparently, each character needs to have two. For example: I want to buy a nice car. I want to be liked by people who do not care about material things. (I'm reaching here, but this is as I understand it.) Both characters need two internal conflicts and each character's internal conflicts are in conflict with each other character's conflicts.
To which, I say, HUH? (Do you all have internal conflicts within your plays? How did I write plays without understanding that it even existed? I thought it was all external conflict, brought about by one person wanting something and another person wanting something else and eventually someone won and someone lost or they both came together and hugged one another. Okay, just kidding about the last part.)
Anyway, we read each student's 10-minute play. Some were strong than others. (Some were pretty funny; some were pretty bad; one student wrote a paper on feminist constricts within a film construct. Don't ask me what that means. Another student's 16-year-old boy spoke as if he was 30. He needs dialogue assistance.And a third student's play was just...odd.)
And then there were three. (There are 15 students in the class. There were 16 to start, plus three on the wait list. Someone has already bowed out. It's tempting.) We now all knew we did not have internal conflict in our plays. (At this point, I also knew my play sucked.) But we had no choice. Our plays had to be read. And so they were. And my play read even worse than I had suspected. I was trying to be inventive with my language. Instead, it came across as stilted, plus the plot was simplistic and overt, and there WAS NO OVERRIDING INTERNAL CONFLICT. *sigh*
I'm so confused! I came up with the preliminary idea for my semester project (a 10-15 minute play). It's not a great idea; it's an okay one. I have 10 things I have to put into a 60-90 second monologue for next week that encapsulates EVERYTHING about the play; from characters to location to, you know it's coming...CONFLICT and how it will be resolved. I kid you not. A short monologue (to a particular audience, naturally) that wraps up the entire play? Why bother even writing the play?!
And I thought, back in my naive days (four weeks ago), Heck, I know how to write, I just need to get over my writer's block. And Ken said on the first night, Maybe this class will be too much of a beginning playwrights class for you. And now I wonder how I'll make it through the semester without beating myself to a pulp...
More as it develops.
posted by Sue B at 4:43 PM
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