The Selfie of Dorian Gray

[James]

So, as mentioned in Inklings, here's what I have so far attached. There's probably a few grammar mistakes because some of it hasn't been edited, unlike the first scene that was.

As always, I welcome any feedback.

Attachments:

The Selfie of Dorian Gray 2.pdf (25.48 KB)

[Sensar]

Alright, here we go. Take what's useful, discard what isn't.

- Having read this a few times, I find myself enjoying it more and more with each read. I'm definitely looking forward to seeing where the full product takes you.

- Don't stress too much about formatting for right now. Write it in whatever style is easiest to write in, then you can edit it later. The screen-play sort of style is definitely more popular with younger writers nowadays, probably mostly because of programs like the one you're using. But most published plays tend to have formats like this:

SCENE 1

Stage direction? Character 1 and Character 2 enter. Stage direction?

CHARACTER 1: (Laugh/Beat/Sarcastically/Whatever/Thisisn'talwayshereyougetthepointit'sdemonstrative) Line. Line. Line. Line?
CHARACTER 2: Line. Line. Line!
1: Line.
2: Line. Line.

Exit/Blackout/Curtain/Whatever

It's common to write a small summary for each character for scripts. Audiences get to find this out as they watch, but for readers, actors, and directors, we often need the help. It doesn't have to be too detailed. At least give us an age range and relationships to each other. Something like: "Dorian, early-to-mid twenties. Good friend of Bryant's. Lanky, petulant, beautiful. Has a tendency to be melodramatic." Stuff like that. Just, you know, what you actually envision.

- Harriet is also becoming more and more clear to me. I think the initial reaction to her character being "out-of-time" comes not from her attitude, but a few key lines and the way she is introduced to the audience. I would look over and maybe rethink the first few lines of dialogue. It's a great place to start--in media res and full of energy, it gets the play jump-started. But the simile Harry uses in her first line just feels ... I don't know, awkward. It's those first few moments that color our perception of her for the rest of the scene. I find that she settles into an excellent balance between Wilde's style and a modern woman when she begins talking about Facebook. It's finding a smoother way to that, I think, that needs to happen. It might just be the tweaking of a word here or there.

- Leave Bryant onstage while he's waiting for Dorian. Have Harry tell him to buzz Dorian in or something. It gives us something more interesting and room for growth. No need to have 'Scene 2.' I mentioned this during the meeting, but this is just 'Scene 1, Act 2.'

- The aftermath of the selfie feels a little strange right now. The audience can imagine what they like for the painting, but you call for us to witness the taking of the picture. It feels like it would put a lot of pressure on the actor playing Dorian to make some sort of super special face, or something. You might want to consider punctuating the importance of this moment in another way. But my instinct is to actually cut short this realization Dorian has by having Harry come over and take the phone immediately after the selfie is taken. If Chekhov taught us anything, it's that quite often the most human of moments in a play is what isn't written in explicitly. Dorian can have his 'wow' moment while Harry makes fun of Bryant. This gives the moment when he takes back the phone a lot more power.

- A specific moment where Harry tows that 'out-of-time' line for me. "Will you definitely not come, Bryant? Abigail will be so disappointed." It would still read as clever but less archaic to me if it was "Are you sure you won't come, Bryant? Abigail will be disappointed." I dunno. This is -definitely- a piece of feedback that I would take with several grains of salt. This might be my own personal lingual biases coming into play here. Don't let me squash your voice.

- "Now, his father is a some type of hot shot lawyer who moonlights as a playwright." Oh, you.

- I'm a little conflicted with Harry giving away the game of her manipulating Dorian to the audience so early on. This is a context thing that requires more of the piece. It might make perfect narrative sense in the long run, but for now one subplot's secrets have already been spilled.

- I'm running into quite a few missing words, misspellings, and grammatical mistakes. Nothing major. You know about them, I'm sure.

- The entrance of Dorian and the rest of the party is a little hard to parse in the stage directions. Right now it reads that the actors improv until the boardgames are set up, and then the dialogue starts. This could work, but if I was directing it I'd probably deliberately misinterpret it for the actors beginning the dialogue the second they walk onstage, and have them set up the boardgames as they speak the lines. I'd suggest that instead.

- The moment where everyone pulls out their phone in synchronicity plays out oddly in my head. It's probably because I don't have a smart phone. You might want to indicate some more variety than that. Maybe only a few characters do, and they pass them around to others. Or have Harriet begin pulling it up early. It'd be a very awkward pause otherwise.

- I understand the purpose of having Dorian choose between Bryant and Harriet, but the fact that Dorian is going to see him feels like it comes out of the blue. I actually just went back, saw that this actually was set up. For whatever reason, that didn't register.


That looks like that's it for now. I have to say, James, I've had to work/read/watch quite a number of student/amateur playwrighting attempts (and perform in a few as well), and this is by far one of the strongest right out of the gate. Man, I feel like I keep sounding really fucking conceited about my theatre experience, but I mean it. It's certainly far better than anything that's stumbled out of my fingers when I've tried to write scenes. Keep going!

[James]

Holy fuck. Thank you so much, Sensar.

Feb 6, 2015 3:15:47 GMT -5 Sensar said:

- Don't stress too much about formatting for right now. Write it in whatever style is easiest to write in, then you can edit it later. The screen-play sort of style is definitely more popular with younger writers nowadays, probably mostly because of programs like the one you're using. But most published plays tend to have formats like this:

SCENE 1

Stage direction? Character 1 and Character 2 enter. Stage direction?

CHARACTER 1: (Laugh/Beat/Sarcastically/Whatever/Thisisn'talwayshereyougetthepointit'sdemonstrative) Line. Line. Line. Line?
CHARACTER 2: Line. Line. Line!
1: Line.
2: Line. Line.

Exit/Blackout/Curtain/Whatever

It's common to write a small summary for each character for scripts. Audiences get to find this out as they watch, but for readers, actors, and directors, we often need the help. It doesn't have to be too detailed. At least give us an age range and relationships to each other. Something like: "Dorian, early-to-mid twenties. Good friend of Bryant's. Lanky, petulant, beautiful. Has a tendency to be melodramatic." Stuff like that. Just, you know, what you actually envision.

Is this summary something you put in the script proper or in like another document just to hand out to the actors and director?

At the moment, I'm just sticking to writing how I am, but yeah, we need to talk formatting once I'm done.

- Harriet is also becoming more and more clear to me. I think the initial reaction to her character being "out-of-time" comes not from her attitude, but a few key lines and the way she is introduced to the audience. I would look over and maybe rethink the first few lines of dialogue. It's a great place to start--in media res and full of energy, it gets the play jump-started. But the simile Harry uses in her first line just feels ... I don't know, awkward. It's those first few moments that color our perception of her for the rest of the scene. I find that she settles into an excellent balance between Wilde's style and a modern woman when she begins talking about Facebook. It's finding a smoother way to that, I think, that needs to happen. It might just be the tweaking of a word here or there.

I think this might couple back to what Taed said about getting a modern reference in earlier. Maybe a simile more overtly modern and smoother might just make people instantly think of "fair trade coffee hipster" than "brandy drinking Victorian". It's great to know that she's reaching a better balance though as things progress.

- The aftermath of the selfie feels a little strange right now. The audience can imagine what they like for the painting, but you call for us to witness the taking of the picture. It feels like it would put a lot of pressure on the actor playing Dorian to make some sort of super special face, or something. You might want to consider punctuating the importance of this moment in another way. But my instinct is to actually cut short this realization Dorian has by having Harry come over and take the phone immediately after the selfie is taken. If Chekhov taught us anything, it's that quite often the most human of moments in a play is what isn't written in explicitly. Dorian can have his 'wow' moment while Harry makes fun of Bryant. This gives the moment when he takes back the phone a lot more power.

Really glad you brought this up. The selfie scene was messing with me massively. It's such an important moment and I'm not really happy with what I have.

I actually really like your suggestion for reworking the scene. So to have Dorian not express his amazement until after he takes the phone back? And to have him sort of stunned while Byrant and Harry engages in their little verbal joust, letting the audience know that something is definitely up but not having it spelt out straight away?

One of the things you may not be aware of (I've talked to Zovo about it), is I'm considering having the selfie projected onto the background for the audience to see as a sort of stage direction. Therefore they could see it change and grow more horrid, and play with ideas of what is moral and what isn't, and so on. I like the idea less and less the more I write and learn about theatre (not really my call, more of the director's), but I'd be interested in your thoughts.

- A specific moment where Harry tows that 'out-of-time' line for me. "Will you definitely not come, Bryant? Abigail will be so disappointed." It would still read as clever but less archaic to me if it was "Are you sure you won't come, Bryant? Abigail will be disappointed." I dunno. This is -definitely- a piece of feedback that I would take with several grains of salt. This might be my own personal lingual biases coming into play here. Don't let me squash your voice.

No, this is important. Some of my favourite literature (Sherlock Holmes, Dracula, etc) comes from this era. And I'm working with a copy of the book alongside me with notes and highlighting. So I can easily get sucked into writing this type of dialogue without seeing it as old fashioned. And pointing it out, I can definitely see that now. Good eye. Also, I think it's massively important to get the little things right to allow the bigger picture to have the freedom to encompass Wilde's ideas and wordplay.

- "Now, his father is a some type of hot shot lawyer who moonlights as a playwright." Oh, you.

I couldn't resist! Though, legal disclaimer: I'm not actually a hot shot lawyer. 

- I'm a little conflicted with Harry giving away the game of her manipulating Dorian to the audience so early on. This is a context thing that requires more of the piece. It might make perfect narrative sense in the long run, but for now one subplot's secrets have already been spilled.

I was torn about this too. Here's my thinking:

A: I'm worried, a little, people will see Harriet's contradictions as a lazy, inconsistent writer and not a theme. Zovo will tell me off about this now but I figured if I lay it out on the table, then people can start thinking about it as the play progresses.

B: Wilde does it too. I'm not trying to copy the book exactly, I'm enjoying the freedom to move away when needs be. But I figured if he could do, I probably could too.

C: The whole sex imagery and this provincial, working-class worker vibe I had going on, I found far funnier than I should have.

- I'm running into quite a few missing words, misspellings, and grammatical mistakes. Nothing major. You know about them, I'm sure.

Oh yeah. I spotted a few as I converted it to pdf, but I didn't really want to have to go back and then convert again.

- The entrance of Dorian and the rest of the party is a little hard to parse in the stage directions. Right now it reads that the actors improv until the boardgames are set up, and then the dialogue starts. This could work, but if I was directing it I'd probably deliberately misinterpret it for the actors beginning the dialogue the second they walk onstage, and have them set up the boardgames as they speak the lines. I'd suggest that instead.

Noted. Honestly, I was being lazy and just wanted not to have to write small talk before getting into the meat of the conversation.

- The moment where everyone pulls out their phone in synchronicity plays out oddly in my head. It's probably because I don't have a smart phone. You might want to indicate some more variety than that. Maybe only a few characters do, and they pass them around to others. Or have Harriet begin pulling it up early. It'd be a very awkward pause otherwise.

I actually like the idea of passing it around, that works better I think.

- I understand the purpose of having Dorian choose between Bryant and Harriet, but the fact that Dorian is going to see him feels like it comes out of the blue. I actually just went back, saw that this actually was set up. For whatever reason, that didn't register.

I might try and get it to register a little more. Maybe make Byrant a little more insistent in the first scene. This is where I plan on making the first selfie change - to have Dorian's smile become a little more of a sneer, really subtle but enough to alert the trio to it.

That looks like that's it for now. I have to say, James, I've had to work/read/watch quite a number of student/amateur playwrighting attempts (and perform in a few as well), and this is by far one of the strongest right out of the gate. Man, I feel like I keep sounding really fucking conceited about my theatre experience, but I mean it. It's certainly far better than anything that's stumbled out of my fingers when I've tried to write scenes. Keep going!

No, no! Your theatre experience is so fucking helpful I can hardly put it into words. Just thank you, you are being incredibly helpful and honest. I'm so glad you're back and around on AWR. Like Zovo said, your feedback has been incredible. Just thanks.

[Sensar]

Ah, fuck. I just typed up some responses and them got them deleted.

Anyway, the gist of it was (I'm too tired to format it again):

- It's part of the script. You usually find it a page or two before the first lines of the play in a published version. Like a foreword for a book. Really, the best way to learn play formatting is too read plays. Which is always a good idea anyway for people entering the theatre world.

- Let's chat about the selfie scene before or after the meeting tomorrow. This feels like it needs a conversation, not text.

- I get why you did what you did with Harriet. Keep moving forward and see where her arc takes her.

- Small talk is deadly for every person in the theatre. Theatre is a heightened reality--living truthfully in imaginary circumstances. The best theatre and acting I've seen is always about being truthful, not realistic. There's a distinct difference.

- I'm really happy that the feedback is useful. Giving feedback is always a dangerous feeling, because, well, I think Harriet actually does a great of explaining my fears, really. And, yeah, I'm glad to be back as a more fully formed human being.