One of my goals for having this blog is to keep record of the exercises I do in order to become a better writer. So this is an intro of what I’m calling, a Scene Stream. It’s basically writing a scene, that’s timed, out of thin air without thought or any preconceived notion of where the play/situation/characters will take me. Of course, for a real play, knowing me, I NEED to have an ending for me to plot out where I’m going and how I’m getting there.
This is an exercise that we learned in class 2 weeks ago. 2 characters are in a situation and I have to write a script based on their conversation. To begin, I’ll need character names which are RANDOMLY picked from my iTunes library and base the character’s names from the artists I select. After the character names are set, I’ll find a situation/event/dialogue snippet to place them taken RANDOMLY from the book, The Writer’s Book of Matches). After getting the names and the event, it’s fair game from there!
But there are objectives that I must try to achieve:
1) each character MUST have their own voice
2) there is dramatic action (drive towards one’s goal) constantly happening with EVERY character ALL the time
3) each scene and/or beat must:
– move the story forward
– reveal something about the character
– infer action
4) keep writing CONTINUOUSLY for the allotted amount of time.
5) after I’m done writing, give the piece a KICK-ASS unique title!
Oh, yeah… i’m not expecting these scenes to be any good at first! As I said, this is an exercise to get me writing. What sucks is that I don’t get into a groove with the story until the last couple of lines when I realize just where the hell is this story going? But in a way that’s the fun of all this!
