Creative Collaboration ...
A school play! With students! What a fun project!
That's what I thought. But, I experienced even more. In fact, I was a mite torn when my part ended. That exalted 'ahh finished!' feeling, gave way too quickly to that 'it's over ... ' feeling.
My part of the creative collaboration, was over, although the play production was just barely beginning. This is how my part in the collaborative play writing began, and what I learned from it.
My sister, Hope, is an elementary school principal. She is one of those who truly puts the 'pal' in principal. She has a zillion puppets and just as many voices to call upon for all those school assemblies. Hope writes school theme songs, establishes garden programs, bolsters the school library, empowers kids to take leadership roles ... and she always has a writing club for students. Melts my plant-loving, bookish heart!
During the last couple of years Hope has worked with students to work toward development of a story and characters that could convey a message to the student community via a school play. Because Hope is a musician, she has always developed songs and worked with students to frame lyrics and produce a musical. The theme is always something important to the wellbeing of the students. Last year it was about friendship; this year it was to be about resilience.
Well. This year I was invited to 'shadow write' and format the school musical based on their collaboration.
I met with Hope after she had worked with the writing club over several weeks. She passed on to me sections of potential dialog, simple character sketches, several action scenes and stage directions, in-development songs, and a draft of a play. The theme this year was 'resilience' ... the battle the main character faced was with anxiety. Okay, so now my nurse/therapist heart was sold on this project, too.
Because this was a collaborative effort, my job was to reinforce the strength of the intriguing draft that had been given me, and to bring together the arc of the story to create a 'final' formatted draft that the collaborative team would then make their own. This required refining characters and introducing a few new ones, too! It also meant discovering the basic 'story journey' and driving question behind the main characters. But, how fun to uncover that journey and build up the story and scaffold a play! And how rewarding when the team affirmed my nuanced contributions.
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What did I learn from this project?
First, it was a lovely exercise at writing to 'show, not tell.' We all strive to do this in our writing: allow the reader to see and experience the experiences of the character via actions
rather than dictating the experience (literally) by telling the reader how they should feel or what they should be thinking. In play/screen writing, scenes are truly scenes. In a play, the audience will only pick up on what a character says (written in the script), how they say it, or what is used/seen in the setting, which is, of course, written by the screen writer as stage direction. If you haven't written a play in awhile, I highly recommend the exercise for building 'show don't tell' writing muscle!
Second. I have always been a 'pantser' when it comes to writing stories and now I'm a semi-reformed plotter. I guess that would make me a 'pant-plotter'. I've always know the importance of plot structure, but felt boxed in by what I saw as planning a story before allowing it birth itself. I love it when characters dialog and head off into directions that surprise me. I was terrified that by plotting a story, I would be killing my characters or
turning them into some kind of mutant hand puppets.
I have irrevocably altered my thinking on this, and although I remain a 'pantser' deep in my soul, I now see plotting in a different light. One that does not kill the spontaneous nature of 'pantsing' but provides a landmark on the horizon to move toward.
Over the holiday season, I watched a video course with the skilled writer and highly-acclaimed author Isabel Allende, who identified herself as a reformed 'pantser.' In this course series, Isabel indicated that she sees point plotting as simply a skeleton upon which ANY creature/story can take form and live. In working on the play, I experienced this view for the first time ever! I mean, who wouldn't believe Isabel Allende? Me, with a very entrenched 'pantser' mindset. I should never have doubted the great Isabel. But it was actually writing this play that pushed me through the looking glass.
So here I was working on the play. A typical play is made of of a three act structure, with rising and falling action, the second act roughly equivalent in action to the middle of a novel. That meant that the first and last act were equivalent to the hook and the call to journey, and the third act was roughly equivalent to the climax and resolution. Now what scenes that I had in front of me needed to go where? What scenes/dialog/character experiences were missing to get the main character from A to B to C in her journey of experiencing resilience?
I discovered that plotting by moving in toward landmarks does not eliminate the spontaneity of character dialog, movement and reaction. Instead, I found myself less anxious about spinning my wheels waiting for a plot turn to occur. I also realized that my inner writer's spidey sense of pacing a story was given affirmation by recognizing when a landmark was in sight or still a distance away. I have yet to try this new way of thinking about plot points as landmarks on either one of the YA and MG novels I'm working on, but I'll let you know when I do.
The third learning moment in this project was this wonderful thing itself called collaboration. There was this aligning of the planets that occurred that really jolted my psyche where it needed to be jolted. Kind of a creative 'cardioversion' where my writer's heart was rebooted.
I've struggled for a number of years with imposter syndrome. Although I've been published by traditional publishers for both my creative and academic writing, it has been decades since I finished a new YA or kidlit writing project. The traditional publishing world has undergone massive changes and I began to see a dinosaur mug when I looked in the mirror. The rejection letters I was receiving didn't help. I found myself rewriting my backlist instead of working on current projects. That dinosaur image grew and grew so much so that I avoided writing groups and speaking with 'real' authors (AKA currently published authors).
Writing this collaborative play shook loose my dinosaur dilemma.
A big part of losing that fossilized image of myself was because the project itself was a collaboration with kids. I found myself taking an active part, camera on (gasp!), in a 10-hour writing retreat with colleagues from CANSCAIP. How wonderful to discuss the play project and share with other writers.
What a powerful thing collaboration is! This group of young writers that Hope, my sister, their principal, has brought together is key to this moment of insights. I saw that kids grapple with the same stuff we all do: anxious moments, fears about the unknown, about letting go and starting out anew. The need for connection, to be seen and heard, to belong ... to experience resilience, purpose, and joy.
That is what stories have always explored. The journey of change, of discovering self and others, of testing the waters, testing each other, and ourselves. Of finding the hidden treasure of belonging, of joy, of love.
So, last week when I sent off my contribution to the school, it was sent in gratitude for allowing me to collaborate and for the lessons I had learned along the way.
This de-fossilizing, exfoliating dinosaur thanks you, Writing Club ... and I hope you enjoy your play and that you are well on your way to Finding Joy.
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