Mercy! Mercy! That Dang Nabed PERCY!

Why you "Like" it.

Beyond “Liking” a piece of writing

Many of my students come back to me and say that a huge benefit of taking the “One Act Play” (OAP) was that it forever changed the way they read literature. No longer is it strictly for pleasure, but now it is with an inquisitive understanding of what it was that makes a play or a novel work or not work. If that was an unexpected spin off from the OAP it must be even more the case with the Exploratory Writing Workshop.

My students this semester are all in the range of competent “Tactical Writers.” This means that they can write a chapter sized work that moves effectively from start to finish. What they don’t have however, is a visceral understanding of the operational and strategic aspects of writing.

Operational: The stringing of chapters, Outlining, foreshadowing, symbolism, repetition, crisis building and a host of other requirements.

Strategic: Research, A Dramatic Premise…A life changing event, themes… a “Central” central character. (Someone with the amperage and opportunity to carry the story)

While tactical writing often flows naturally, Strategic and Operational writing needs to be consciously dealt with and “manually” poked into the outline. These levels of writing do not simply happen by accident as in a case where a writer cranks out, following their muse, a good essay or entertaining short story. Good tactical writing is possible without a whole lot of prior planning however the Operational and Strategic levels need some deliberate and conscious thought.

There is one more vignette to go and we will be then be plugging them into the structure of an outline. I have been surprised by the struggle many of the students are having with Crisis development.

A crisis is an event that puts the Central Character on the rack and requires him or her to make some agonizing choices….In the process the reader gets a great look at the character and sees where they’re at on the developmental curve.

Think about virtually any novel you have ever read and you will see a string of crisis that is introduced to achieve exactly this. I do hope the students are beginning to understand better the dynamics that are taking place at the operational and strategic levels of writing.