Getting A Clear Read

Picking a reader takes more than handing your manuscript off to the next person you see.  A reader can be instrumental in the success of your writing so choose carefully.

First, you need someone who is an avid recreational reader.  The higher the book count the better because he won't differentiate between your manuscript and the book he just bought today.  Someone who reads in multiple genres and mediums is good too, such as mainstream fiction, magazines and the daily newspaper.  This person knows what sits on the store shelves and can evaluate how your work will play within the current trends.

Second, an effective reader can explain the reasoning behind his opinions.  How many times have you handed a manuscript to someone and only to have the person say, “Oh I like it “ or “It’s not my favorite”?  That doesn’t help when you're trying to figure out if the ending gives the payoff promised or simply stops the story.   There must be some give and take with both sides questioning each other.  You have to feel comfortable with your reader to ask why does he think that and to play a game of "what if..."  with him. 

Third, honesty is the most important issue in the writer-reader relationship.  The risk of hurting your feelings may keep the people closest to you from giving you an honest critique.  Ask yourself, "I can trust him with my life, but can I trust him with my manuscript?"  On the flipside, struggling through life together can strip away all pretenses making your soulmate or your best friend the perfect reader.  He knows you and how you work and you know him.  Any inkling of sugar-coating would be spotted right away.  As your friend, he wouldn't betray the trust you placed in him when you turned over your manuscript.

Next you need to decide if a reader is necessary for you.  Look at your limitations.  I have a hard time seeing simple mistakes, not only in my work but in whatever I read.  My mind automatically corrects the mistake and I read through it.  Readers can spot basic errors and typos because they read with fresh eyes.  They can tell you what works, what to fix and what to cut out.  

I also have a habit of "writing short" for the sake of the word count, sometimes sacrificing clarity.  When you research a project, you learn far more than you'll ever put in your manuscript.  As a result, you may leave out information inadvertently because you know what you're talking about.  You know the backstory.  A reader can point out areas where your 1000 words don't add up to a picture for those outside your brain, and he can work with you to get your point across without busting the word count. 

It may be that you'll find a need for more than one reader.  Different people give different perspectives even when they're looking at the same manuscript.  Life experiences, interests and education all influence how a person looks at the written word.  Two people may like the same things but for different reasons.  They may pick out the same problem area, but offer differing solutions.  Of course, you could get critiques that make you wonder if you even gave them the same manuscript.  In any case, they'll both give you something to think about.

If you write in different mediums, it can be helpful to have different readers for each.  A reader who enjoys fiction might find nonfiction boring, while a nonfiction reader might not pick up on the nuances and subtleties of fiction.  Another way to split your reading needs is between grammar and content.  One can read for sentence structure, grammar errors and spelling, much like a copy editor, while the other handles the big picture of content and flow.  Then there's the availability issue.  If your deadline looms and your reader is on vacation, having a second reader available saves you that risk of submitting a flawed manuscript.

Deciding on the need for a reader is personal.  If you're already selling every word you write, you might not need a reader.  If your sales are sporadic or if you find yourself bogged down in revisions unable to let anything go, an effective reader can help.  So evaluate your career honestly, recognize recurring problems, then look for someone with the traits and skills to give your next manuscript a good read.

Thoughts on the Playwright’s Experience

The playwright, like the novelist, is a storyteller—but without the time or space a novel can offer to spin out the telling. Moreover, the playwright doesn’t have the option of using narration or description the way the novelist does. In a play, dialogue has to do most of the heavy lifting. Even stage directions can’t tell the meat of the story. The audience isn’t going to read stage directions; they’re going to hear the characters speak and watch them contend with their lives. So the playwright must be prepared to listen to voices as well as picture the world she enters.

There’s a saying I like that’s attributed to Lillian Hellman: “When the lights come up on stage, they come up on trouble. Otherwise, you don’t have a play.” That maxim has become a min-mantra for me because it keeps me focused on my characters and their story. I’m old-fashioned enough to still love the intimacy between stage and audience a theatre can create in telling a good story. For me, that challenge never loses its attraction.

Athold Fugard once told a group of my students that the real challenge of playwriting is to figure out what to tell and when to tell it. Sounds simple—until you try it. Characters often have their own ideas about timing and can take over the direction of the story. More than once I’ve had an absolutely brilliant structure all laid out until my characters started asserting themselves, elbowing their way downstage into the spotlight when I’d planned for them to wait a bit longer in the wings. But then, I never really get to know my characters until we’ve arm-wrestled through the script. They all seemed so malleable when I first met them in an image or a fragment of conversation.

August Wilson described an image that stuck in his head—a big man, muscular and strong, standing alone outside a house, holding a newborn baby in his powerful arms. Wilson kept wondering who that man was, what his story was. The man turned out to be Troy Maxon in Fences. But Wilson didn’t know it was Troy when the image first came to him. He discovered Troy and Rose and the others as he listened to them conversing in his head, telling him their story.

For the playwright who is interested in character and story, who invites audiences to mull over what they see and hear, the journey from finished script to professional production can be long and discouraging.

A fellow playwright once remarked to me, “There’s a reason they call it ‘breaking into’ the theatre world. It’s because you have to BREAK IN; the doors aren’t open very wide.” That observation, unfortunately, is easily born out by the number of professional theatres that announce on their website variations of what has become a cliché: “We accept scripts only from literary agents and theatre professionals with whom we have an existing professional relationship.” An equally challenging search, by the way, is to find an agent who represents playwrights. The ranks are very thin. 

But there is good news to be had.

While traditional book resources are still valuable, such as Dramatists Sourcebook, the Internet has made finding playwriting contests and amenable theaters so much easier for us playwrights. I suggest NYC Playwrights as a great site to start off with. You can subscribe to their mailing list for free, and the site includes other helpful tabs such as one for play formatting guidelines. Subscribe and they will fire lots of opportunities right to your mailbox. The URL is http://nycp.blogspot.com/ .

There are a number of other sites you can also check out, such as 

• Dramatists Guild  
• Emerging Playwright 
• En Avant Playwrights 
• Playwrighting Opportunities 
• The  Playwrights’ Center  
• The Burry Man Writers Center 

~~Nedra Pezold Roberts

SWA member Nedra Pezold Roberts' play The Vanishing Point is a winner of the American Association of Community Theatres 2013 NewPlayFest and will open at Sacramento's California Stage Company in March. The play also won the 2013 Southern Playwrights Competition and will open in June at Jacksonville State University's R. Carlton Ward Theatre in Jacksonville, Alabama.   Visit Nedra's website.