Welcome to the Acting Blog

The Mechanics of Writing

For Scott

I know that my friend Scott reads my blog.  He often comments, although he doesn’t have an acting background.  I’ve been in some pretty tight (grappling) positions with Scott and respect him hugely.

A wee while ago, he asked me if I would talk something about writing, since he knows that I also write and I thought I would blog a little about writing, as it is a subject, along with directing that we will eventually teach here at the studio.  In Step 7.

I start out with a basic idea, usually something that’s happened to a friend, something real, something I read in a newspaper, never fantasy, something actual.  Then I expand it.

When I was writing Lovely Creature, I took ideas and banged them together, and it created the main conflict of the short play, a man and his wife are attempting to get over his infidelity, when there’s a knock at the door – that was one idea.  I bashed it into a girl losing a baby and making it a baby that the man had fathered.  These two ideas together set up enough dramatic conflict (not argument, the difference is very VERY important) and I continued from there.   The play is just one scene, but since I didn’t know any more than this, I started to ask myself the questions that matter.  I don’t start filling in character details because that’s what the books on writing say.  Flesh out the character with details.  There are no details to add, what care I where they had lunch earlier?  What matters is these three things, taken directly from Mamet:

• Who wants what from whom?
• What happens if they don’t get it?
• Why do they need to get it now?

This covers the driving desires of the character and who their target is.  The consequence, stakes or what they have to lose if they don’t get it.  And the final question gives it a deadline, which pushes the drama forward and increases the importance of getting what they want due to some kind of deadline.

If you work these out for each character and make them tangible, real things, then you’ll have the beginnings of the bones of a scene already.  Then you’re onto dialogue.  Dialogue you should write quickly.  Edit later.  If you have an ear for dialogue already, congratski, but many people don’t, go listen to how people talk, listen a lot, copy that for while, but cut out most of the shit that they say, until you’re left with the least you can get away with writing on the page.  But as I say, write the dialogue quickly.  This is my trick for not over-thinking it, you can go back and spend hours over it later.  Just make sure that you keep going back to those questions because they drive the scene.

This is my rule on exposition…

Don’t have your characters explain anything that the audience already knows, don’t have them explain anything that the audience doesn’t already know.

If you need them to know something, tell them in trickles.

So, well, that’s my thoughts on the mechanics of writing, put into a nutshell – I hope my regular readers don’t mind, I don’t write about writing very often on the acting blog, but those questions.. they’re for actors too (and only those actors with patience enough to get to this line of the blog will know that, the others.. well… we don’t need to worry about them, do we ?

Actually Scott, I kinda think you’d make a good actor too.  See you in class sometime.

To You, The Best!

Mark Westbrook
Senior Acting Coach
ACTING COACH SCOTLAND


Like What You Read? Want to Read More? Mark's eBook is available here
Looking for Acting Classes in Glasgow? Mark Westbrook is a Professional Acting Coach and runs Acting Coach Scotland, a private acting studio offering acting classes in Glasgow, masterclasses, workshops and audition coaching for actors at all levels. His acting studio is based in Glasgow, Scotland, although he teaches all across the United Kingdom. All Blog Posts © Mark Westbrook 2011

Tweet me

Tags: Writing