Do Your Characters Have Something to Say to Each Other?

I'm writing a stage play for two characters, each with equal and opposite goals. Neither can stand the other. So I put them in a room together. And I'm trying to determine what keeps them each in that room. I have two possible answers; either will work. But my real question is:

Do they have something to say to each other?

My follow-up question:

Is it enough to sustain the storyline and keep the audience intrigued for ten or so minutes?

And finally:

Is it compelling and dramatic?

I'm writing specifically for a production next spring. It's a subject I've flown to Maryland to investigate. After an intriguing interview with a fellow who has worked in Baffin Bay along the Arctic Circle (as well as numerous other cool places around the globe) this is the story that most sticks with me. It's probably not the story he'd first tell you if you asked him about his adventures in Nunavut. But I find it intriguing. And disturbing. And even quite dramatic. Well, it's dramatic when I twist the basic story into a fictionalized "based loosely on real life" tale.

Still, if I choose this as my story for a short play that will be stage read at the Audi in Concord, NH, and later produced in Boston (part of my Granite Playwrights, Ink writing group's workshop-to-production series this spring and summer) then I have to care about my characters enough to spend several months with them. And enough to make you, the audience, care about them.

So while I strive to answer my own questions, I invite you to explore your characters. It's not enough to find their individual voices, you've got to compel us to want to stay and listen to them. Good luck!

How important is writing everyday?

Very.

And that's what I've been up to. Which is why my blog posts have fallen off considerably. A tip a week. What's so difficult about that? Apparently everything.

And so I'm back. After meeting an important deadline yesterday. And with no time to dive into the rewrite of my one-act play "Hills Like White Baby Shoes" (title still subject to change), I decided it's high time to return to the tips.

But you didn't surf here to read about my difficulties in keeping up my blog. You have your own procrastination issues to resolve. After all, here you are: reading me, when you should probably be writing.

Am I right? You know I am.

How do you face the blank page each day? Or the next chapter, the next act, the next scene? When the page is blank--when I'm beginning a new project or starting over an old one from scratch--I like to begin with a warm-up write. Sometimes it's a 60-second or two-minute free write exercise: a vomit of words from brain to fingers to page. From the insignificant stuff like, "I don't know what to write...what can I possibly write about next?...which story do I really want to write next?" to the occasionally brilliant. (Notice how I have no examples of this illusive occasionally brilliant prose.)

When it's the next scene or act, it's "easy." I re-read what I wrote the day before, or even from the beginning of the screenplay or stage play, and I continue from there: writing as fast as I can to keep up with my characters' voices when I'm lucky enough to hear them, or placing them in situations that further the plot, seeing what their reactions are, and writing that, kind of like following rats around a maze and recording their actions and words. If rats could speak, that is.

So there it is: this week's tip. Write everyday. So what are you waiting for? Write on!