CAN I GET A NOTARY, PLEASE?

I'm one of those more plotty playwrights. A lot of playwrights tend to treat language as the most important element of their plays, while others focus on stage imagery. This is not to say that they neglect other aspects of dramaturgy, but rather that certain elements interest them more than others, and those elements make their way to the forefront.

For me it's plots. It wasn't always like that. I've always found it easy to write snazzy dialogue but had zero gift for structure, so all through college I was putting on plays with good lines of dialogue that were sort of in love with their own verbiage and ended up being very long and rambling. The boredom of New York City audiences slapped me in the face long about September 2000, and I finally got off my ass and turned my attention to plot structure.

And, well, they say there's no zealot like a convert. I completely fell in love with structuring my plays down to the ones and zeroes and tossing out anything that felt extraneous or unnecessary, even if it was good language. I wrote shorter plays for a couple of years, and when I got back into longer plays, I brought the same approach back with me. Universal Robots is the first play I've written in many years to pass the 2:10 mark (opening at 2:45), and while there are some trims in order, I can still honestly say most of that is due to the fact that the play actually has that much plot. Most of those minutes are justified.

Part of being a plot guy is that I love plot hooks. I love good strong head-perking-up plot hooks. "A guy gets a new job and finds out all of his co-workers worship the devil." That's how I come up with plays. Other folks tell me they draw their ideas from their personal lives, or imaged that occured to them, or the news, or something noteworthy from history. (What am I forgetting?) For me, at least for the past several years, it's hooks.

The problem with that is that multiple people think of the same hook at the same time. It's not strange, it makes perfect sense. The same sorts of ideas are in the air at any given time. One conversation can branch out in multiple directions and influence many other conversations, lots of people can read the same Wired or New Yorker article, whatever, and then suddenly there's two Truman Capote movies or something. But just 'cause it's understandable doesn't mean that your stomach doesn't drop when you hear someone else has something in the pipeline similar to something you're working on, especially if they're bigger than you.

For me that happened today when I saw this post on /Film about the movie Downloading Nancy. (Before you go, know that this is an unrated trailer for a gritty indie film starring Maria Bello, and is UNSAFE FOR WORK in every way you might imagine if you've seen other gritty indies starring Maria Bello.) I'm working on a play called Viral that has a similar initial plot hook, that of a suicidal woman seeking help over the internet to carry out her death wish.

Based on this trailer, my play and this film play out in completely different ways, which relieved me. Still, I wanted to take the opportunity to announce, in this time and in this place, that I was working on a play with a similar plot hook to this several months before I ever saw this trailer. Thank you for your time.

--SlowLearner

Comments

[James]

I think that's the pro and con of being very plot-based with writing: the odds of someone else writing/producing a similar story go up, but then again, the odds of them being identical are almost slim-to-nil (depending on the creativity of the writer).

I remember being so relieved when Qui Nguyen read "Colorful World" (my unstaged superhero play) and went, "Yeah, James. No one's going to mistake this for 'Men of Steel' [his staged superhero play]." I sure hope people who see both would agree.

[Andrew Bellware]

But your play will have a lot more nudity and a vastly darker ending.

[Zack Calhoon]

I think it would be great to do a production where "Colorful World" and "Men of Steel" ran in rep. That would be awesome.

[Troubador]

Mac, you might be interested in reading this article, a true story about a 14 year old boy who used the net to get someone to help in his murder. I've already seen a play here in Australia based on this story and I've read that there is a US feature film - I forget whose doing it but I think they're fairly high up the food chain - in the pipeline as well.

www.guardian.co.uk/crime/article/0,2763,1227362,00.html