Mercy! Mercy! That Dang Nabed PERCY!

Ski King

Ski King,

There was a song when I was growing up about a water-ski performer named Ski-King. It goes on about how ski-king had a wife who drove the boat and didn’t look back. Ski-King could do all the tricks and became ever bolder until he one day decided to try putting the handle to the tow rope around his neck. He hit some turbulence and fell and his wife dragged him around the lake. It was a gallows humor type song like” A Boy Named Sue.” I remember the line at the end and it went like this. “So the moral of the story, is keep your head out of the noose, and never ever, ever grab, onto something you can’t turn loose.”

As I watch my students struggling with the concept of a Dramatic Premise (DP) the words to this song come back to me. It raises the question, “What is the difference between a Dramatic Premise and a Moral.” No doubt some professor can tell me but when I look up moral in my references I can’t seem to find a good definition. I suspect that if they are not the same thing they are very close in meaning.

So I think I will add “Moral” into the definition of DP. Now stop here a moment and realize that some feel a writer should not consciously consider DPs, themes or underlying message during the writing process.” Somehow I can’t relate to this. While I see the benefit of doing exploratory sketches before starting a novel that might be uninhibited and searching, I can’t imagine actually writing one without a sense for what the story is about, how it begins, the crisis that build momentum, a climax and some sort of a tapering down or epilogue.

In the Playwright’s process Patrick Shanley explains,

“I have always been amazed at writers who start from theme. I don’t know how they do it. It’s a way that definitely happens and there are people who do this. They have a theme, an abstract idea that they feel passionately about and they write a play to the purpose of dramatizing that theme. “

He goes on to explain that he begins with character and emotion and says indirectly to his audience,

“I know something and I’m going to tell you about it. Brothers and Sisters I have brought you to this place because I am in terrible trouble and don’t know what to do. And this is the situation, and now I going to try and work it out right in front of you.”

To me this says some writers start with character and set them in the midst of a dilemma. This is opposed to starting with a story line and plugging in the characters. Here the writer starts with the characters and weaves the story line in around them. I have no problem with this approach and to use it to begin the Exploratory Writing Workshop, writing sketches or vignettes. These character vignettes beget a story rather than a story begetting the characters. (It is the old chicken or the egg thing.)

However, before starting to write a stage, screen play or novel the writer has to have a sense for a beginning, middle and end; maybe not to start with, but in phase two after the sketching, and before the final writing begins. Further that this novel has to be about something. Front door or back door the writer needs to know what the novel is about and what the message is trying to express. If it just grinds on as an unrelenting stream of conscious, how cool is that? While some novels are biographical most are not principally written in this vein, and if you like one and examine it closely you will see an overarching message and underlying themes that push the submerged central concept along.

Am I beating a dead horse?