My Internal Editor wants combat pay

I’ve been taking the Playwriting course at Foothill College. It’s a great class — if you’re in the area and have the slightest interest in playwriting, I highly suggest taking it. There are some damned talented people in that class; plus, you get actors reading your words, which is the best way possible to learn how to write plays.

At least, I’m hoping it is. Because at the moment, I’m almost completely baffled.

Early in the quarter I turned in a 10 page scene that I had thought wasn’t great, but it was okay. Until it was acted out, and I realized it was a)talky, b)annoying, c)boring. I am not harshing on myself — it was bad. And I’d had no idea of how bad until the actors read my words. I was so scarred from this experience I didn’t hand anything in until a couple of weeks later, and I got a much better reaction, with laughs and good feedback. I figured I should develop this scene a little bit. But while I was working on that, I brought in a scene I’d been working on and was at a loss for what to do with. It was almost straight political polemic, with characters basically stating their cases. While reading it over, I thought I knew what the problems were and maybe a few ways of correcting them, but I didn’t have time to scrap it and start over or even massage what I already had: I wanted to bring something in that night and at least get a reading of how bad it was.

Bad? It was hilarious.

In a good way.

The teacher said I can’t give props to the actors, because they can only work with what’s on the page in front of them, so clearly I had created whatever was there. But the scene played out not only funnier than I had imagined but funnier that I could have imagined. I had thought it was, I dunno, New Soviet Realism or something and instead it’s…well, not.

So here’s my problem: when I write fiction, I usually have a pretty good internal judge of whether it works or not, whether it’s well-written or not. (Whether it’s any good or not I’m still working on.) But I can tell whether a scene is funny, whether it’s doing its job.

With playwriting, I am at a complete loss. I have no idea how what I’ve written is going to translate to the stage. You’d think I would, given that whole Masters degree in Screenwriting thing and all, but in the past few weeks I’ve seen more of my stuff acted out than I did in 2 years at USC, and no, that’s not a compliment to USC.

I’m hoping I’m going to tackle this learning curve in a hurry. Because I feel completely upended when I go to class with a scene in hand.