From Idea to Stage in 10 Weeks | Issue 1 | Taking on a New Challenge

Documenting the process of planning, writing, editing, and staging a short play in just 10 weeks

💡Starting Monday, I’ll have just over two months to plan, write, edit, and stage my first ever play, as part of the 2024 Writers’ Studio programme at the OSO Theatre in Barnes. Here’s why I’ve taken on this challenge…

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As a writer, I struggle with some of the most common – but most frustrating – weaknesses, which I'm sure some of you can relate to.

Firstly, perfectionism.

In terms of a mindset issue, perfectionism is one of the worst traits you can have as a writer, or any sort of artist, in my opinion.

In fact, it's just one of the worst traits you can have as a person, really, because of how absurd it is. Nothing can ever perfect, and all art is subjective, so holding your writing back from the world until it’s “perfect” is a ridiculous exercise.

Still, it’s a very real problem that many of us writers struggle with every day.

Secondly, from a technical perspective, over-writing, over-explaining, and telling more than showing are all mistakes I’m prone to, no matter how aware of them I am.

If you’re a writer who over-explains in your prose, you deprive your audience from one of the best parts of the reading experience, which is letting their imagination connect the dots and bring the story to life.

For me, personally, I think the main cause of these bad habits was that I started my fiction writing with novels rather than short stories.

A novel is such a vast project, so it’s not an ideal format to learn how to be subtle and economical with your writing. You feel like you have all the space and time in the world to tell your story when writing a novel, which is both good and bad in various ways.

For a first-time writer, that can make it difficult to stay concise, especially when you’re also learning the process of writing a well composed novel as you go.

Of course, novels are also very personal projects. When you approach your first novel, you want to pour your heart and soul into it, to make it as good as possible. That’s problematic for perfectionists.

It’s often better to develop your craft with smaller, less vulnerable projects, and build up your confidence (and resilience) with lower-stakes work first.

Finding the Best Ways to Sharpen Your Skills Requires an Open Mind

Anyway, I’m explaining these weaknesses in my writing because I think it’s important for all writers to reflect on their weaknesses. If you don’t, you may not improve.

But it’s not enough to be aware of your weaknesses if you want to get better. You have to be proactive in trying to fix them.

When I first realised my skills weren’t yet sharp enough to produce a great version of the novel I was trying to write, it was just over a year ago.

In an attempt to improve my writing and reach the point where I could tell that story competently, I decided to pause my novel to work on short stories.

Short stories are the perfect training ground for novelists.

And that’s not detracting or belittle the art of the short story in any way. Over the past couple of years, I’ve actually come to love short stories just as much as novels for their own unique qualities.

Still, the short story is tailor-made to help a writer like me improve in all the areas I need to:

Over-writing? Keep your story to 2,500 words.

Over-explaining? Ensure every word in your story adds value and counts for something important.

Over-complicating your stories? Write a story about just one single, focused idea or concept.

Struggling with perfectionism? Enter a short story competition so you have to submit something by a specific deadline, whether it’s “perfect” or not.

The other key thing to consider here is that if you’re working on a novel for a long time, like I was, it can become a bit stagnant after a while, causing you to lose momentum.

Writing short stories is the perfect way to regain that momentum (and passion, confidence, enjoyment, etc.), because you go through the experience of starting and finishing a whole writing project in a much shorter space of time than novels allow.

I’ve learned so much over the past year from this, and I can feel myself improving exponentially with each small project I complete.

If any of the issues I’ve mentioned resonate with you as a writer, I’d highly recommend trying something similar, even if it’s just for a few weeks at first.

Stepping Outside Your Comfort Zone is Often the Fastest Route to Growth

Another key benefit I’ve found from working on short stories — specifically entering competitions, like the amazing NYC Midnight Challenge – is it also forces you to step outside your comfort zone.

That’s a great thing for everyone to do as often as possible.

As a writer (or any kind of artist), the more you push yourself outside your comfort zone by experimenting with new mediums, genres, and styles, and taking on new challenges, the faster you’ll improve.

For example, if you only ever write in third-person, past-tense, it would be beneficial to try writing a story in first-person, present-tense.

Or if you only ever write serious literary fiction, try writing a comedy.

If you find it difficult sharing your work with people, you could join a writing group, or go read something you’ve written at an open mic night.

You’ll feel a bit uncomfortable at first, but soon you’ll begin to overcome a limitation in your writing ability, or mindset, or both. Then, you’ll add new depths to your skill-set.

And that brings us to my new writing project…

With all that in mind, I’ve decided to take part in this year’s Writers’ Studio programme at the OSO Theatre in Barnes.

For this programme, I’ll be collaborating with a small group of writers, actors, and a director, bringing a set of stories to life on stage.

Each writer has just 10 weeks to write a 10-minute play. At the end of the programme, all the plays will be performed in a showcase event at the theatre.

I’m pretty excited to get started, to say the least.

Why am I doing this?

1. Accountability from a set deadline helps forget about perfectionism

10 weeks is not a lot of time to take a raw idea and turn it into an actual play that will be acted out on stage, especially when you’ve never written a play before.

I’m excited to see what this tough deadline gets out of me (and all the other writers), as I feel sometimes you do your best work under pressure. There definitely won’t be any time for perfectionism.

2. Writing in an even shorter, more concise format will help sharpen key skills

Like short stories, writing a play will help me learn to “do more with less” in my writing, and sharpen my storytelling skills. It will be great to push myself to tell an effective story with minimal description, mostly dialogue, and clever use of subtext, in just 10 minutes.

3. Collaborating and sharing ideas with other writers is a great way to learn

By far the most valuable thing I got from my creative writing MA was a group of like-minded writers to share work and ideas, collaborate with, and learn from.

Critiquing other writers’ work is also a great way to improve your own writing.

I’m really looking forward to meeting a new group of writers on this programme and working with them in the weekly workshops.

4. Gaining new perspectives will help improve my storytelling overall

Gaining new perspectives from writers with a background in theatre will help me broaden my view of storytelling and develop new skills.

Even better, I think working with a director and stage actors will help provide a new lens to view writing through. For example, writing for the benefit of a live audience whose experience is completely different to someone reading a novel will be a fascinating challenge.

I’d love to know — What’s your favourite play, or favourite story originally written for the stage? Let me know…

Follow the Project Here

I can’t wait to get started on Monday, and I’m fascinated to see what comes of the project.

I’ll be documenting the writing process, and sharing lots of insights from the experience, right here in my weekly articles.

I’ll be doing that because:

1. Writing about it will help me process and explore what I learn each week, and should help me develop my ideas further.

2. Other writers who suffer from the same challenges as I do should be able to learn from the weekly articles.

3. Other fiction authors will hopefully be able to learn from the discoveries I make by exploring the similarities and differences between writing for the stage and writing novels.

If you’d like to follow along to improve your own writing and storytelling, or you’d like to keep up with my progress with the play, please do subscribe.

Wish me luck!

Or is “break a leg” more appropriate?!

This Week’s Sunset of the Week

As I’m writing this, looking out my living room window, there’s some of the heaviest rain I can remember seeing here in England for a long time.

It reminds me of a tropical storm my friends and I witnessed while stranded in a bar on an island in Thailand in 2019. Trust me — if it starts pouring with rain in Thailand, a bar is where you want to be waiting it out.

Here’s a photo from that same trip, a few days later, in much nicer weather. Koh Tao, July 2019:

This Week’s Song on Repeat

For anyone who read my latest article last week and was wondering… Yes, my friends and I did manage to get Oasis tickets.

This will be my third time seeing them live. I’ve got a funny feeling it will be the best by far.

Thank you for reading!