Afterword

When I started to write this book, two thoughts zoomed to my mind:

1. There are lessons I've learned about playwriting over the years—truths, constants, tricks of the trade—that every writer, including me, should recall from time to time, lessons I think can be useful to other playwrights, lessons I'd like to share.

And

2. I'm a fraud; what could I possibly have to teach anyone?

Writing successful plays for the theater depends on a lot of factors. In this book I've emphasized how much it depends on study and craft. But more than anything else good dramatic writing depends on a writer's heart, soul, wit, imagination, sensibility, history, travails, luck and whatever gifts she's acquired since the day she was born. It's wrong to approach a form of writing that has so much to do with personal intangibles as if it were a technical exercise that could be imitated by learning five easy steps. I didn't want this book to be a cookie-cutter manual. I wanted this book to be a reminder of the qualities and techniques all good plays possess, qualities and techniques that come either by nature or through trial and error. Every play teaches its playwright something new about his work and skills. Sometimes it's a hard lesson, sometimes it's a joyful discovery. We go two steps forward and more steps back. But we do go on.

Sometimes the lessons have surprised me. In 1992 I wrote a four-character, one-set play called Scotland Road. Scotland Road was a mystery with a strange twist. It took place in a locked room and focused on a man obsessed by the Titanic. In this locked room he interrogates a woman who has been found floating on an iceberg in the North Atlantic. When she's rescued she says one word: “Titanic.” Apparently the woman claims to be a survivor of a disaster that took place eighty years before. The man's goal: crack her story and get her to confess she's an impostor. He has six days. In the end, the tables are turned. The woman proves she is who she says she is. The man is unmasked, and his surprising identity is revealed.

Before I wrote the play—based on my fascination with the sinking of the Titanic and prompted by a tabloid headline I glimpsed one day in a 7–11 store (“Titanic Survivor Found on Iceberg: She Thinks It's 1912, and Her Dress Is Still Wet!”)—I knew the Titanic had an emotional pull on a lot of people, but I never knew it had its grasp on so many imaginations. I never knew that the sinking of that ship held such resonance for so many—and on the same metaphorical level as it did for me. And it was a deep satisfaction to discover that my treatment of the subject and the ideas of identity and heroism and completion struck such a chord with so many audience members.

What, then, were the lessons I learned from Scotland Road? There were many:

• that there was an exciting tautness my writing took on when I wrote a play with one “locked room” setting and a “ticking clock” to keep the characters moving forward;

• that my play had a special kind of drive when the lead character's dramatic need was the strongest motivator in his life;

• that audiences love a classic mystery, but more important, they love a mystery with a difference, a special twist and perception—call it a “gimmick”;

• that there is a palpable sense of delight the audience feels when power shifts from one character to another;

• that there is an emotional and intellectual lift a play can benefit from when the audience roots for its characters, no matter how bizarre or otherworldly their goals;

• that a playwright shouldn't ignore the “big subject”; if something like the Titanic has stayed in the minds of people for almost one hundred years, there's a reason;

• that a playwright shouldn't ignore the fact that people want to believe in the unbelievable;

• that a playwright should never ignore his own deepest desires. I was afraid Scotland Road would be too quirky, too odd a fascination, too personal for audiences to identify with. But it turned out to be a shared obsession, and the play has been produced dozens of times. Writers can make mistakes by imagining that their own childhoods and experiences are more fascinating to the average audience member than they are, but finding the universality in something as specific as the Titanic makes these personal experiences a shared experience for the audience.

So what did I do for my next play? Look at more tabloids? Try to find another big disaster subject? The Lusitania? The Challenger explosion? Did I fix on every little obsession I'd ever had? No. Lightning tends not to strike twice. And many playwrights will tell you that going back to the same well more than once almost always means going back once too often. A playwright learns from success and from failure. But I think the wise playwright learns not from narrow specifics (Always write four-character plays set in locked rooms with a ticking clock) but rather from wide generalities (Find subjects an audience can care about in the same way you do; and if they don't, try to find a means of getting them to).

Here's what I'm doing. I'm keeping my eyes open. I'm listening to the universe. I'm preparing myself to come up with the next idea.

The best I can recommend for myself and other playwrights is this:

Work with actors, directors, dramaturgs and designers as much as you can—at whatever level. Get involved with groups or organizations that read plays and support the work of emerging playwrights, like The Playwrights' Center in Minneapolis, New Dramatists in New York, and the O'Neill Theater Center in Connecticut. Apply to every contest. Send your plays to every theater you can think of. Give yourself time. Write. And learn.

Learn from the plays that have come before you.

Learn from the writing you've already done.

Listen to the world around you.

Listen to yourself.

Compel us.