Ask yourself…. how you doin’?
When you’re working on a play or any piece of writing there are some key questions you should ask yourself. Sometimes when we’re in the thick of writing it’s hard to think about why we started in the first place.
What do you want for your work?
By asking and answering some questions you can clarify and focus your goals for the piece. Knowing your goals can be extremely helpful during rewrites. I like to ask these questions after I have a first draft because then I can refer directly to the text and see if my answers are reflected in the text.
If I want my play to be fast paced and action packed, but my play has a lot of complicated scene changes, that’s an issue. Nothing slows down the pace faster than a lot of scene changes. If I want the audience to have an emotional connect to my main character, but my main character spends a lot of time talking in facts, statistics and dates, that’s an issue.
Answer the following questions about the piece you’re currently working on.
- What do you want the audience to experience during the performance?
- What do you want the audience to remember after the performance?
- What are you struggling with right now?
- What do you like best about your piece?
- What will your audience connect to most in your piece?
- Why are you writing this piece?
- What do you want to achieve with this piece?
