Stage one: Alterations

 I hate this part the most, it doesn’t matter what I’ve written, but I dread it. It’s where my mum and I sit down to dissect my work. She brings up everything that doesn’t work or I’ve made to obscure (well you know what they say: show don’t tell). I started off this session with reminding her that anything she said I wasn’t going to write down, and it’s funny but (no offence mummy) everything she suggests or writes down in the notes, sticks out like a sour thumb when you read it. The voice really is in the writer’s head.

I recently learnt that when editors edit novels the majority of changes they make are structural and I think this is due to the latter.

Really reading through and scrutinizing the script has improved it dramatically, it’s a chore that must be done. It also clarified what I already knew: areas that worked really well and those that were just too confusing.

It’s a tense process, I’m not going to lie, as I counter everything she brings up, but this is a good balance. One of the main issues I found doing this is people, after listening to it, were saying ‘this area needs work’, but that was pretty much all the direction they gave. And without knowing what I needed to change I couldn’t change it, most frustrating.

When we’d reached a sticky point half way through where the things that needed changing just weren’t taking the changes that were needed, I got colourful with my felt tips:

Here I was working out each section in the play and what the point of that section was.

I met an amazing tutor who told me ‘everything you write needs to have a theme and structure’:

‘Do you notice my skeleton?’

‘No.’

‘Would you notice if it wasn’t there?’

And you see what I mean, so the structural element of White Flies is the secret and big reveal at the end, the themes: people know what’s it like to have schizophrenia and working out Jane’s trigger.

Now everything I write revolves, links and has to be relevant to those themes. (Another example being in my, ‘in progress’, novel the theme is: love leads to self discovery) Knowing your theme makes a huge difference to your writing, it’s like the coat hanger to which you hang your creations. This may not make sense now, but when your writing and constantly thinking about your theme it makes everything so much clearer. And means you don’t write waffle, every word, character and idea has a purpose.

So my themes were in the middle (dark pink); section numbers around the edge (dark, dull green); relevance of those sections to the play (grass green) and what I needed to change or add to those sections below (pink). The big purple scribble up the side is the reveal and other notes just buzzing brain ideas I needed to get down.

By the end of the evening (midnight, when I really do write best) I had sorted my most confusing section, changed me reveal and re-written my ending.

This has taught me that you may think your first draft is fine and things do make sense because they do to you, but it’s called a first draft for a reason.

I’m just worried about how many drafts I’m going to have as I need to get the scripts to them for their line learning.

Great idea: if you’ve written a play then record it to your computer and plug it into your car: you have your very own radio play for when your stuck in traffic. Or just record yourself reading your kids favourite story!