In Writing Your Story, “feel lucky rather than clever” – Tom Stoppard

Cover of The Weekend Novelist

I’m studying a book called “The Weekend Novelist” by Robert J. Ray. I find it engrossing, informative, enlightening. Books like this talk authoritatively about all things having to do with writing, so it seems a good place to look for some answers. I believe stories are stories regardless of the form they take. That is, a story in play form ought to conform to what has grown through the years to be truths of story telling. Right?

Take an example. Ray tackles the big question of what constitutes a story head on. A story can be as short as a scene, as long as a novel, and all lengths between the two. But, a key feature according to Ray is that stories all have a beginning, a middle and an end, and this feature is what makes them a story.  Which brings me to an earlier post I wrote entitled Reflections on Writing a Ten Minute Play.  In it I talk about whipping a ten minute play together under a short deadline for the Maine Playwrights Festival. With a day or two left before I had to submit my play, I had something but I wasn’t sure it was a story. [Allow me to digress for a second.  I submitted what I had, and it was not selected for the Festival. Woe is me.]

Ray defines the beginning of a story as the setup, which introduce the characters, their connections and their behavior. The middle of a story develops the conflict. Then he says” “The end of a scene (story) is where the characters make choices to resolve the conflict…”  Aha!  Clear enough.  This is exactly where I was when I couldn’t be sure I had a real story.  Where were you when I needed you Robert J. Ray? Had my characters made a choice to resolve the conflict? Yes, they had in a manner of speaking, even though their choices weren’t very compelling or provocative or even interesting.  So , where does that leave me?

Tom Stoppard on a reception in honour of the premiere of “The Coast of Utopia” in Russia (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I found a video that has critic John Lahr interviewing Tom Stoppard with the main focus Stoppard’s play “Arcadia”. The interview is punctuated with all manner of gems that you would expect to hear coming from Stoppard’s mouth, one of which is the “lucky” quotation in the title of this piece, but the brightest of them comes at the very end. Stoppard talks about his writing methodology.  He basically says he gets an idea in mind, gives it a push, and then just goes from one line to next and the next and the next.  And if the next line seems good he keeps it, if not, he tries another one. He actually describes the result as luck, good or bad. He’s being modest, of course. Luck to Stoppard is trusting his feel for his story. Luck is his way of saying that if the result of all your hard work “works”, that it seems true and right and good, then well… you have yourself a story.  Does this sound remotely like Ray’s definition?

This writing method in which you just forge ahead, trying to keep up the pace, trying to keep coming up with the next line that’s a good line to your way of thinking was the subject of a comment someone made to my “Reflections” post.  I sagely replied that I didn’t think keeping up the pace or coming up with a good next line was the object of writing. “We’re trying to make our efforts result in a story,” I said.  Dummy. What I should have said to my commenter is that you are following in the footsteps of Tom Stoppard.  As for the adjudicators of the Maine Play Festival,  they saw that my formulaic effort didn’t “work” for them.  Ultimately, it didn’t work for me either, but I worked on it a lot more, edited, polished and re-edited.  I’ve included it in my eBook Baghdad on the Wabash and other Plays and Stories.

How much of your writing is formulaic, step by step following some recipe?  How much is trusting your feel for your characters?

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• Tom Stoppard: “I wish I could remember how to write” (telegraph.co.uk)