The 'Write a Play in a Day' Workshop at the Churchill went extremely well. I had set my expectations deliberately low (based on an utter lack of information), but even if I had gone into it with high hopes I'd have been pleasantly surprised at the outcome.
The mixture of quick-fire questions and hypothetical situations with little time to self-edit worked extremely well and although I cannot claim that I have an entire play I have an opening, fleshed characters, a skeleton plot & structure and a large springboard to push it into full draft.
I had an idea what direction I would write in when I stepped into the room (vague situational mock-ups and pithy one-liners in case of imagination failure); it wasn't until I was finishing the opening that I realised these had fallen completely by the wayside. It was nice to walk into the room with a blank notebook and leave some six/seven hours later with pages of new work, particularly as it flowed so easily.
My concerns for continuing it (because naturally I cannot but be plagued with doubt and uncertainty and curses at the permanency of ink) are threefold - my characters could easily fall to archetypes, the plot could quickly turn trite and formulaic and lastly - and unexpectedly - it has a streak of autobiographical leaning that alarms me.
Points the first and second are easily remediable (for a given definition of the word 'easily', but the last gives me pause for thought. It's not autobiographical in the situation and certainly not a self-insertion, but it has managed to stir up far too much in my head and I'm still trying to work out if I can work around that to complete it.
Intention currently is to finish up my notes for the day then set it aside for a few weeks and see how I feel then. Right now I am enthused about completing it, but I am somewhat loathe to actually do so.
Then again, Script Frenzy commences in April and - while the last thing I need is another writing challenge having barely recovered from November's NaNoWriMo - it would be nice to have some structure to work to again.
And by 'structure' I do apparently mean 'superlatively ridiculous deadlines to rush toward within a 30-day period before passing out’, if past performance is to be taken into account.
