Starting to write can often feel like staring at a blank canvas which can be intimidating. For playwrights, the challenge is amplified by the need to create both a compelling narrative and a dynamic stage experience. In this conversation with multi-award-winning playwright and lyricist Hilary Bell, we dive into the intricacies of playwriting. From tackling the blank page to turning ideas into fully realised characters, her insights provide guide for writers at every stage.
Hilary’s work has been produced around the country and internationally. She was the 2003-04 Tennessee Williams Fellow in Creative Writing at the University of the South, Tennessee, and the 2012 Patrick White Playwriting Fellow at the Sydney Theatre Company. Hilary is a graduate of the Juilliard Playwrights’ Studio, NIDA and AFTRS and a founding member of 7-ON Playwrights.
How do you approach a blank page when starting a new scene or play? Do you have any methods to get you started?
A scene is a microcosm of a play, with a beginning, middle and end. With a new scene, before starting it I make sure I have a sense of its function: what goal the characters are pursuing, what challenges they must overcome, and what the given circumstances are (where it takes place, what’s happened previously, etc). At the same time, you don’t want to know everything or you’re just colouring by numbers. It’s a balance of having a map and allowing for discovery. The playwright Stephen Jeffries, whose workshop I participated in some years ago, described it like jazz: once you know the chords you can improvise. And then I just plunge in and start, telling myself that anything dreadful can be cut or edited later – but there’s no play if at some point you don’t throw yourself in!
What’s one common misconception writers have when they first try playwriting?
Novices sometimes believe that plays are all about dialogue. In fact, dialogue is the tip of the iceberg. Underwater is the real work of playwriting: creating a world with its specific rules, language and atmosphere, along with structure, characters, conflict, stakes, tone, story, etc. Dialogue comes last—and is the expression of all this.
I’d say to approach playwriting with an open mind and a willingness to think in three dimensions. Playwriting is about creating action, not necessarily physical, but dramatic action, meaning how characters work on each other to achieve the outcome they want.
What’s a piece of advice you’d give someone who has a great idea but doesn’t know where to begin with writing a play?
My advice would be to start by interrogating that idea—fill a notebook with questions about how to best dramatise it. The answers may or may not come, but questions are the first steps. For instance: what characters are needed to tell this story? Is it more powerful if they’re old or young? Male or female? What’s at stake for them, and how far will they go to achieve what they want? Is it set now or in the 1830s? If it’s a one-act monologue or a three-act musical? All these questions will help funnel what can feel amorphous into something concrete and specific.
What you say to fiction or poetry writers who are curious about trying playwriting for the first time?
I’d say to approach playwriting with an open mind and a willingness to think in three dimensions. Playwriting is about creating action, not necessarily physical, but dramatic action, meaning how characters work on each other to achieve the outcome they want.
The clue to the difference between playwriting and other forms of literature lies in the spelling of ‘playwright’: like a wheelwright or a shipwright, we are bending and shaping our materials to create a solid structure.
Without giving too much away, what’s something you hope participants leave your course feeling or thinking about?
Most of all, I hope participants feel excited and inspired to continue with the plays they’ll start writing in the class. Like all art forms playwriting is a mix of craft and creativity. Everyone is creative, so it’s a matter of harnessing that and getting a few tools under your belt to give that creativity expression.
Join acclaimed playwright Hilary Bell for her two-day course Write a Play in Two Days across the weekend of the 21 and 22 June.