Writing styles

Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to attend WIP last week, as I went to the Lyric Hammersmith to watch Lovesong (Which, I thought was awful!). But that’s the past and this week I was back at WIP, to experience a taster playwriting session, led by expert playwright Brian Mullin and ICT’s literary advisor, Guy Jones, who will also be leading Friday playwriting sessions called Speakeasy.

So to start off one of the first things Brian said was that we will be doing lots of writing to do. Wasn’t getting too excited about that, as you may (or may not know), I’m not the biggest fan of writing (or English lessons!) but at least he was straight with us. But as usual we played some games to get all the tension out of our bodies and then began to start doing some writing exercises. First, Brian gave us a sentence but left a blank for us to fill with anything (e.g. the future holds…). I was thinking this was fun but really simple, maybe it was like a writing warm-up your fingers.(Maybe?) Anyway, we then had to do automatic writing (which we have done before, so I guess I'm  an expert at it) which I enjoyed because I didn't have to think about details or logic; it was just my imagination floating about. (I sound a bit crazy don't I!)

By now I was getting into the writing because it was chilled and we were writing good stuff not just rubbish!

Daniel and Guy then put pictures of building structures around the room and then we had pretend we were in an art gallery and pick which was our favourites. I chose a picture which looked like the Olympic stadium half-built because I was thinking of a play where like children are using the structure as a hang-out as they felt they need to reclaim it for the taxpayers. (It would be pretty cool! Imagine...) Anyway we had to write  all the words which we asscociate with the structure.

This is where we start making plays, (which is pretty cool!)   We each wrote our own first scenes which took place anywhere we liked (I chose the estate I live on). This was probably my favourite part because I could just do my own thing and it wasn’t being so heavily scrutinised. Sharing it, I wasn’t sure about (My characters names were inspired by biscuit brands!) but I did as Brian and Guy wanted to see some of them acted out. It was very weird seeing someone take something I wrote and interpret it differently than myself. I enjoyed watching my own and the other scenes as well.

Getting back to the writing, we then had to do more automatic writing, but this time it was more personal. We had to automatically write, but firstly in the voice of an elderly person, personally important to each of us, talking to us then do the same but a response to the previous writing. Finally, we had to automatically write as if the elderly person was our age (16-19) and imagine what they would say back then. I thought of my Grandma and it was quite funny and endearing to write about her subconsciously, especially when I read back and find some surprising quotes.

To finish, we each read out a phrase, about the elderly people we each found important, which we found interesting and some were weird, some were sad and some were funny. But, all in all I enjoyed the session, just a little bit less writing because for me writing can sometimes become a chore and I felt at one point it was a bit monotonous. But I really appreciated the session more than I thought I would have and may join Speakeasy. Anyway, goodbye, adios, au revoir, arrivederci and 再见 (zaijian)!