Confessions of a Former Anti-Outliner

I'm a playwright.

That  means some people will make assumptions about my work:

• I am "wordy."
• My work is heady.
• I don't care about structure in the way that TV or Film writers do.
• Outlining will impede my creative process.

Virtually, none of those things are true.  Maybe if they were, I'd be a more successful playwright.  Maybe…

I actually like what can be said without words.  I fell in love with scenes without words as a youngster. I think that's because I was a dancer.  I loved this idea of communicating without language.

My work tends not to be all of that heady, although I do write about subjects I'm deeply passionate about.  I tend towards the anti-intellectual in my writing.  I don't feel the need to show off how much I know or how much research I've done (although it usually is a lot).  I do like my plays to be informed.  And I think they're smart.  But never cold.  That's an immediate turn off in terms of plays I go see.  If a play leaves me cold, then I tend to not pay much attention.  

I actually love structure.  But I don't think that plays have to follow a certain structure.  Like the well-made play, for example.  I think plays should find the form that best suits the story the writer is telling.  I actually like structure a great deal because I think that it can help me articulate the themes of my story. Form follows function, that's an early lesson I learned as a young writer.  And to find different structures to build a play on is exciting. My TV and Film work is a bit more limited in terms of structure, but those can be fun structure exercises as well.

I don't really outline my plays.  Unless, I have a complicated structure where I am weaving stories and I need to balance them out.  I do like a laundry list.  I usually compile a list of things I think should happen or elements that I would like to include in the play.  Then I build from there.  I think TV and film work has to be outlined.  I don't know how people do it without outlining.  An an outline can just be a list of events as they happen.  It can be clearer in your head than it is on the page.  But I like to track story, so outlines are important.

I think outlines get stagnant when you don't allow your story time to breathe.  I like to write and then if I'm stuck, I go back to my outline.  I can change stories and events.  As long as it progresses things along.  I am not bound to an outline.  I like to jump off various points.   But the outline provides me with an objective for every scene.  So sometimes I will use story earlier than expected, then I need to figure out how to raise the stakes where I originally had planned to use that piece of story.  That's another reason I love an outline, because I it allows me to move the story quicker.  I might find a place earlier in the script for a piece of information, then I can look at what I have and figure out what to replace it with.  I think I did that about three or four times with the script I just wrote a draft of.

But I'm also the guy that loves to rearrange the index cards on his desk just so, with the right amount of space in between.  I love a certain amount of order, even when that order is fully by my own design.  But little bullshit things excite me.  Like Tabasco sauce being on sale for 69 cents each when you buy five.  There's a certain order in that.  

But these are the games I need to play with myself.  It's not an outline, it's a guideline.  So I can veer off of it, as long as I'm aware of where the path is.  It's security.  But I don't just hang onto it without discovering what's off the beaten path.  That's not a good philosophy for life, either.  You have to go off the beaten path.  But life without a direction is a meandering existence and you never feel like you go anywhere.  Same thing with a script.

And with life, I like to know some things.  I like to have a sense of where I'm going.  But I also want to be surprised and I want to discover things I didn't expect would be there.

I am grateful for Tabasco sauce (especially when it's on sale).

I am grateful for quiet mornings.

I am grateful for 5 1/2 hours of sleep when it's enough.

I am grateful for 10 hours of sleep when I need it.

I am grateful for boundless energy and enthusiasm.

I am grateful that I got the screenplay written last night.

I am grateful for a day to do other work.

I am grateful for elevens.

I am grateful for peace of mind.

I am grateful for supportive friends and colleagues.

I am grateful for my certainty that I am in the right direction.