Please Don’t Start Your Play Like This
Please Don’t Start Your Play Like This
October 27, 2024, 11:54 pm
Filed under: advice, art, Creative Process, theatre, writing | Tags: beginning, First Lines, plays, playwright, playwriting, theatre, writing
It had been a long time since I’d seen a play, so I was kind of excited when the lights went down. When they came up, one of the three women on stage said, “Where should we begin?” and my head just sank into my hand in disappointment. I instantly knew the play I was going to spend the next couple of hours with, would not be great.
I noticed this particular tendency for writers to start with this question while trying to listen to every show that had been nominated for an Audio Verse Award back in 2020. Show after show started with something like, “It begins with a ship” or “How shall I start?” or “In the beginning there was space” or “Should I start with the ending?” It got to the point where once I’d heard something start this way, I knew it wasn’t going to get better so I would just skip ahead to the next show.
I couldn’t skip ahead while sitting in a theatre at a performance in real time, so I was compelled to stick it out and watch the whole thing. And no, it did not get any better.
Why is this a give-away that what’s about to follow will not be great? Because self-consciously talking about the beginning, at the beginning, tells me the writer doesn’t have any faith in their story. Starting with “What’s the beginning?” is like showing your work in a math problem but less interesting. It’s perfectly fine, in your first draft, to wonder what the beginning is. We all wonder where to start when staring at a blank page but a writer with skill will not put an audience through that moment of their process. A writer with skill will throw the audience right into the action or experience.
Here are some extraordinary first lines:
Who’s there? ( Hamlet)
One of those no-neck monsters hit me with a hot buttered biscuit so I have t’ change! ( Cat on a Hot Tin Roof)
Why do you always wear black? ( The Seagull)
Watch me close watch me close now: ( Topdog/Underdog)
So, Mom took off for Alaska, huh? ( True West)
Hide the Christmas tree carefully, Helen. ( A Doll’s House)
So I said to Howard, “What do you expect me to do? Stay home and darn your socks?” ( The Women)
Again…Step, kick, kick, leap, kick, touch! ( A Chorus Line)
I’ve shat in better places that this. ( Blasted)
Even Our Town doesn’t ask where to begin. It just tells you “This play is called Our Town “ — which, while it seems like it could be dull, is actually exciting in that most plays don’t announce themselves as a play like that.
What you’ll notice about most of these first lines is that they inspire some sense of wondering, some hint of what’s to come, the tastiest morsel of what you’re about to see. This is why a beginning that announces that it is the beginning is just basically stalling. It doesn’t tell us anything except that the writer didn’t know what to write at first.
I mean, you don’t need to tell us this is the beginning. We’re in the room. We know it’s starting — and we want to know we’re in good hands for the journey.
If a pilot got on the plane’s PA system and said, “Let’s figure out how to get this thing off the ground, shall we?” You’d be pretty nervous for the flight you’re about to go on. A writer wondering how to start their story is like a pilot wondering how to fly the plane. We came here because we thought you’d know how to do it. We want to have faith that you can tell a story.
And hot tip: Starting in the middle will be a lot more exciting than the beginning. Write the beginning if you have to. Heck, write “It begins on the shore,” if you want or even “Where should we begin”. Write and write and write and then when you’ve arrived at the good part, go back and cut it until you can start somewhere with some oomph.
Do I have all the answers? No one does. But I do know that nothing will make me lose hope for my theatre-going experience more than someone wondering how to start. You can write what you want but if I can skip it, I will.
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Originally published at http://artiststruggle.wordpress.com on October 28, 2024.
