Playwright's Process Podcast

Today I talk about staying consistent in our writing practice even when life gets busy. I've been feeling motivated and inspired, but despite my best intentions, life has been intruding on my writing time. This has made for some rushed and unsatisfying writing sessions this month.

So today I'm sharing what has been helpful creative process wise when it comes to writing when life gets in the way. Because I hope that my artistic self can still feel welcome in all seasons of life, even if the conditions are less than ideal. 

I cover:
- Physical, mental and emotional exhaustion. 
- When to rest and when to persevere.
- Asking 'Do I know what the next step is?' Followed by, 'Do I have everything I need to take the next step.'
- Writing in less than favourable conditions. 
- Why taking smaller steps more often is more supportive than finding days for enormous progress.
- Finding smaller pockets of time to create in.
- Journaling on life's big themes when they're present in our life. 
- The inhale and exhale of a writing life.
- Sarah Ruhl’s wonderful words on why writing is more about life than it is about writing, and so life by definition is not an intrusion.
- And finding what you can drop and where you can lower your standards, because there is magic in C-grade work.

References 
'100 Essays I Don't Have Time to Write' by Sarah Ruhl 
Episode 10: Creative Pace, Timing and Patience

To learn more about my work, visit my website or connect with me on Instagram @emilysheehan__. 

If you’re interested in working with me as your dramaturg then send me an email at [email protected].

As playwrights, it’s useful to understand the audience-facing aspects of the genre we’re working in, so we can make interesting decisions as we write. In this episode I share how I'm letting genre inform many of the dramaturgical choices I’m making in this draft.

I speak about:

- Leaning into the natural momentum of a genre you’re writing in and letting it draw things out of you.

- Managing and playing with audience expectations and the kind of story they might expect to see.

- How genre can influence: the world of the play, the emotional and stylistic palette, the controlling ideas, the themes and the wants and needs of our characters.

- Knowing which genre conventions you’re aligning with and which you’re choosing to twist and subvert.

- How different genres have slightly different ways they work to evoke emotions, frame central questions, and show specific changes across the arc of a story.

- The fear of predictability when working with well-known story conventions.

References:
Prima Facie by Suzie Miller

To learn more about my work, visit my website or connect with me on Instagram @emilysheehan__. If you’re interested in working with me as your dramaturg then send me an email at [email protected].

Creating characters that are both interesting and integral to the plot of your play can take several rounds of revisions. I’m currently in a second draft and working on enmeshing my characters with the themes and story more.

In this episode, I share some of the writing exercises and prompts that have helped me develop my characters in meaningful ways.

These include:

- Identifying when a character doesn't feel fully developed on the page.

- Basic story work to uncover a character's wants, flaws, wounds, and needs.

- Journaling to explore a character's relationship to the themes.

- Making a list of the decisions each character makes within the timeline of the play that moves the story forward.

- Mapping out the character constellations in each scene.

- Experimenting with point of view in key moments.

- Rewriting scenes to centre a different character's perspective.

References

16 Personalities test

Thank you for listening! If you've found this episode helpful, leaving a rating or review is a really friendly way to show your support.

To learn more about my work, visit my website or connect with me on Instagram @emilysheehan__.

So you finished the first draft, now what? Today I share some thoughts about where to begin for Draft 2. Because if we jump in and start editing out the weird bits before we sit with what is so uncomfortable about them, and why are we so desperate to tidy them up, we’re going to lose that deeper insight. We won’t discover the gift of understanding the more shadowy depths of this play that could be explored through a second draft process.

I speak about: 
- The difference between a genuine artistic impulse and our inner editor.
- Setting aside the impulse to jump in and start ‘fixing’ things.
- Consider what the messy parts of your draft might reveal about the ideas underneath your idea.
- Discovering the shadowy parts of your draft that are hiding in the corner or under the bed.
- Letting the strangeness feel welcome in your story, even if you’re not totally comfortable with it being there.
- How scary it can feel when more and more of our idea becomes known to us, and we discover parts of it that make us squirm. 
- If your first draft isn’t messy, then perhaps you’re hiding your mess from yourself?

Thank you for listening! This is an independently produced podcast, which means I do all of it myself. Rating and reviewing is a really friendly way to show your support.

If you’re interested in working with me as your dramaturg then send me an email at [email protected]. 

You can learn more about my work on my website or say hi and ask me a question via @emilysheehan__ on Instagram.

Today I’m speaking about the benefits of hearing your script read aloud in a group environment and some methods for getting useful feedback on your play. I recently finished a polished first draft of a new play, and organising a table read with actors was a key part of moving the draft into its next iteration. 

I speak about:

- The similarities between playwriting and music composition, and why we need to hear our words read aloud.

- Methods for giving and receiving feedback in a group environment.

- Knowing when you’re ready to discuss your ideas and unpack aspects of your play in a group environment. 

- The concept of ‘works in progress’ in your artistic pursuits as well as more broadly in your life.

- Types of table reads and how they’re used as a tool at different phases of the creative process. 

- Using table reads and development discussions to find those gemstone notes that will unlock that next iteration of your play.

- Tips for making table reads run smoothly.

- Prompts and questions to ask for areas of playwriting craft you might like to get feedback on.

I reference:

Episode 9 Dramaturgy, Feedback and Implementing Notes

‘The Critical Response Process’ by Liz Lerman and John Borstel

‘The Director’s Craft’ by Katie Mitchell

Thank you for listening! This is an independently produced podcast which means I do all of it, end-to-end, myself. Rating and reviewing is a really friendly way to show your support.

If you’re interested in working with me as your dramaturg then send me an email at [email protected]. You can learn more about my work on my website or say hi and ask me a question via @emilysheehan__ on Instagram. 

Special thanks today to Ashton Sly, Joshua Monaghan and Danny Carroll.

Today I share the habits that have helped me overcome procrastination and get back on track to finishing a polished first draft before the end of the year.

I speak about:
- The fatigue of continuous self-motivation.
- Creating manageable and meaningful goals worthy of pursuing regardless of the outcome.
- Deciding on a lighthouse to 'sail towards' for this draft only (knowing you can always change course in the following draft).
- Discovering what habit cues support a fulfilling writing session for you (everyone's different). And what cues in your environment distract or delay your writing sessions.
- How to switch between intrinsic and extrinsic rewards.
- Minimising multitasking on writing days - something Twyla Tharp goes into in her book 'The Creative Habit'.
- Building up our tolerance for solitude.
- Using meditation and mindfulness to better hear the voice of our work.

I reference:
Episode 24 Playwriting and Procrastination
The Creative Habit by Twyla Tharp
Dr Rebecca Ray 'Breakthrough' podcast on Audible

Thank you for listening! This is an independently produced podcast which means I do all of it, end-to-end, myself. Rating or reviewing is a really friendly way to show your support.

You can learn more about my work on my website or say hi and ask me a question via @emilysheehan__ on Instagram. If you’re interested in working with me as your dramaturg then send me an email at [email protected].

This month I look at procrastination as part of the writing process. I consider both the micro and macro ways it shows up in our specific projects, our creative process and our life as an artist.

I speak about:

Shame and the procrastination loop.

Worrying, avoiding and anxiety’s relationship to procrastination.

The desire to do something that we love beautifully.

Delaying moving from one phase of a creative process to the next.

Journaling as a tool to discover which part of yourself is procrastinating; the human, the artist or the project

Artistic detachment as a cause of procrastination.

Creative scar tissue from past projects.

Feeling behind - as a result of procrastinating as well as a cause of procrastination. As well as the loop of procrastinating, feeling behind, getting stressed, then procrastinating because facing that we’re ‘behind’ is too painful.

References:

The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron

Playwright’s Process Podcast Episode 15 'The Artist's Way' Weeks 1-4

Thank you for listening. You can learn more about my work on my website www.emilysheehan.info or say hi and ask me a question via @emilysheehan__ on Instagram.

If you’re interested in working with me as your dramaturg then send me an email at [email protected].

In this episode I share how baking bread is a useful metaphor for writing a first draft. Both bread making and playwriting are an illusive combination of raw materials, method, mastery and luck. The final outcome depends on factors we can't even see. The writing process can be illusive. It can be hard to find language to articulate your experience. So when we grasp onto metaphors that mirror the creative process, it can give us new insights into our craft and help us speak about our writing.

I speak about:

- The ingredients - the humble raw materials we want to transform into a cohesive draft.

- Similar raw materials will behave differently depending on context.

- Activating the yeast - a live organism that gets things going. Yeasts ‘aliveness’ is key. What small piece of life are you delicately incorporating into this draft?

- Kneading the dough - working with the materials to shape them into a smooth, silky dough. This takes work. There’s a physicality and effort involved at this part of the process.

- The word ‘fiction’ and ‘dough’ share a root word that means to shape by hand.

- Let the dough rest - once you get the texture you're after you need to step away so it can rest. The dough won’t rise unless you leave it alone. This makes a key piece of the puzzle is time. Time to let things happen. Time to let the yeast come to life.

- The environment in which you rest your dough matters. The context affects the process. The skills of the bread maker is to be sensitive to this, and adapt and adjust to the environment.

- Kneading the dough again - intuiting the exact moment to begin working with it again.

- Letting the dough rest again - going back and forth between kneading and resting depending on what you’re making.

- Baking - not wanting to put your work into the world half baked, but there is a risk of leaving it in the oven so long that you over cook it and it gets burned. Timing is key.

Thank you for listening. You can learn more about my work on my website or say hi and ask me a question via @emilysheehan__ on Instagram.

If you’re interested in working with me as your dramaturg then send me an email at [email protected].

‘Draft Zeros’ ‘Discovery Drafts’ ‘Dirty Drafts’... In this episode I share how writing a draft zero has really helped me move my play into its next phase of development. I think the biggest distinction between a Draft 0 and a Draft 1 is that a first draft needs to be written to a standard where someone else can respond to it. Whereas a draft zero is a way to tell yourself the story during its very infant phase.

I speak about:
- The difference between a draft zero and first draft.
- The purpose of a draft zero.
- Realising I wasn’t meeting my own personal writing goals this year.
- Finding a deadline that’s both meaningful and manageable. 
- How I created a very loose structure for my play and very simple writing plan to follow.
- What to do with all the initial exploratory pages, scraps of scenes, process journal entries and story work I had already created.
- Using each writing session to write through the very strange, very bizarre rollercoaster of a draft zero without going back to fix, change, polish, or edit.

Draft zeros are kind of like therapy - you just need to get it all out and surprise yourself with what you begin to excavate. You don’t want to tidy up the mess before you get to what the heart of this thing is really about.

Things I reference: Miro online whiteboard, Mark Ravenhill’s 37 Plays Podcast and Episode 20 Writing the Next Thing. 

Thank you for listening. You can learn more about my work on my website or say hi at @emilysheehan__ on Instagram.

A chat about playwriting, dramaturgy and the ups and downs of pursuing the life of a writer with author Gillian Jakob Kieser on the Beautiful Possibility podcast.

Today’s episode is a replay of my recent interview on the Beautiful Possibility podcast. We speak about the process of coaxing a story into existence - the inspiration, the daily practice, and the many ways in which we create, interrogate, and refine our work.

We also speak about the very personal and non-linear process of discovering the stories and themes that want to be explored through you. And the personal thematics within your own life that find their way into your writing.

If you’re interested in working with me as your dramaturg then send me an email at [email protected]. 

Listen to all of Gillian’s episodes on the Beautiful Possibility podcast and be sure to read her book 10,000 Doors.