A Process for Playwriting

It's the cliché of all writing clichés: the author sitting at the typewriter, blank piece of paper in the typewriter, and the author sits before it, a universe of possibilities waiting, fingers poised on the keys, and ... nothing. The author is unsure where to begin. And so continue such images, from Rob Petrie in The Dick Van Dyke Show to Larry Donner in Throw Mamma From The Train. In the former, Mary Tyler Moore's Laura Petrie made it possible for Rob to spend a weekend in a secluded cabin in the woods to write his Great American Novel. He went to the cabin, and did just about everything possible (cleaning, rearranging furniture) ... except write the novel. In the latter example, Billy Crystal's character anguished for days to get the opening sentence, "The night was humid," only to have his student, Danny DeVito's character, use the exact same sentence. In both cases, and the countless other examples from stage and screen, the romantic visual is of the author alone with a blank piece of paper, awaiting the arrival of his muse. Some call it writer's block; I call it lack of planning.

So many people complain of writer's block that it is perceived to be an actual condition. But if planning has been done ahead of time, and outlining, and design, then if one does come to a stumbling block in one scene, one could change scenes and begin writing in a different area of the work. Just because it's performed in a linear order, it doesn't mean it has to be written that way. But only with good organization can one be able to move about the various sections freely without fear of significantly changing events or characters from earlier or later in the script.

Another pitfall from lack of focus is the jumping-right-in method, where one just sits and lets it all flow out, not really taking into account structure, plot, character, or any of a number of other good writing components. While Mozart may have been able to mentally concoct a symphony and then merely transcribe out a finished work, there are extremely rare Mozarts, and he didn't just spontaneously write it; it was a planned, structured, and finished work. He just had the ability to do it all in his head.

I'm sure you've read or heard the rambling story that didn't seem to have much

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