Holly's Story

Last night I was invited to a Dads and Daughters event where we considered the inspiration we got from our parents.  It made me think of the inspiration that I had been given by my daughters.  We were quite a literary household and reading and writing was an important aspect of what we did.  We wrote stories and letters to each other.  We read aloud and shared each other's writing.  Reading and writing was fun.  Some of the lessons I learnt at that time were through story-telling.  I learnt the importance of repetition and having repeatable tropes throughout.  But I also learned how to listen  and to adapt  the narrative to the listener.  The greatest lesson was that of co-operative story telling.  You can soon exhaust all your own ideas and the best way forward is to use the imagination of the listener:  "What do you think is round that corner?"  "What's that noise you can hear?"  and so on.  The story grows between you. Here is a story that Holly and I collaborated on when she was about three.

Holly lived in a tree in the park.  All day long she would hide there and drop sharp, prickly leaves down the neck of anyone who stopped to rest on the bench under the tree.

“Horrid Holly” they would say.“Hurtful Holly” and they would look up very sharply cramming their hats on their heads.  But they could never quite catch a glimpse of her.

Holly hissed with laughter.  She hooted with laughter.  She whooped with laughter.  But noone quite caught sight of her.

Sometimes she would lie still till all the sparrows and starlings had come out to sunbathe on the branches then she would rustle the twigs, rattle the branches and rock the boughs until the birds were  hooched  out into the air their feathers  and pride all ruffled.

“Horrid Holly. Hateful Holly.” and Holly hollered with laughter.  She howled wih laughter.But Holly wasn’t really horrid or hateful or hurtful.  She was just high spirited and hearty and she was just waiting for everyone to go home.  Tonight was a time for hanky panky.

She knew where the roses stood stiffly in their beds.  She knew where all the crisp packets huddled under the bushes.  She knew where the hedgehogs lay hunched up under the dead leaves.  She knew all about the haughty spikes on the park railings.   And she knew would make some hocus pocus.

When the gates banged shut at eight o’clock and the sun had lumbered into bed under his red silk sheets Holly scrambled down the tree and scampered across the grass turning catherine wheels of delight.  It was her park now.  Now for a high old time.

The silvery moon shone a path across the grass.  Holly bounced into the rose beds and danced the roses harum scarum out into the mooonlight. “Humph” they said. Their fingers were stiff and rheumaticcy but Holly hauled them round and round till they remembered how to do the paul jones and the Tango.  Then she dived into the beds of dead leaves and hurled out the hedgehogs to dance the Valeta and the pasa doble.  She harrassed the broken bottles and the crisp packets into the bandstand with the railing spikes and a fine old harmony they made.

All night long went the dancing; the Westminster waltz and the mazurka and the park was filled with the whoops and hollers and huzzahs. What a hullabaloo until suddenly Holly said “Hush.  The moon’s going down.  It’s nearly dawn.”  And everything heaved a heartfelt sigh hopped back to its place.

And hot but happy Holly sat in the paddling pool and poured water over her head until her hair was plastered down flat.  She hopped back to her tree and fell asleep just as the park gates banged open again.  People sitting on the bench under her tree were surprised when no prickles fell down their necks.  They took off their hats to enjoy the heat of the sun.

And Holly hugged herself with happiness as she snored.

The Playwright's Craft- How long should a play be?

One of the things that comes into consideration when writing a play is "How long should it be?".  On the face of it that sounds an eminently daft question to which the answer should be "As long as it needs to be."  But there is a reason for the question which involves an audiences ability to concentrate and the playwright's ability to juggle all the elements needed to tell a story well.

When I started in the theatre back in the sixties, an evening of drama would be expected to last around two and a half hours with at least two intervals for drinks at the bar.  Bar takings were an important way of subsidising what went on on stage. I've known customers ask for their money back if a play ran under two hours.  And let's face it, Shakespearian audiences expected four hours with a Jig ( a shorter comedy thrown in for good measure). Of course, all of that was before TV came on the scene so audiences today are desperately consulting their watches to see if they can be home in time for the "I'm a Celebrity" catch up.  Two hours is now a maximum and I have seen pieces down to an hour and a half and even an hour.  I suppose Opera audiences are still able to concentrate for longer and there are some honourable exceptions in the theatre but these are actually flagged up with warnings about their length.  I saw a magnificent production of "The Wandering Jew" some years ago at the National which clocked in at four hours.

But for me, an ideal length is around two hours for the sort of story I want to tell.  There is usually a bit of a pattern I like to follow with a main turning point half way through and several smaller twists on the way there and back.  So that readily falls into two acts with two or three scenes in each act with the climax coming just at the interval.  The number of scenes varies but I don't like to have more than three per act or the steps become too complex and we lose audience focus.  Anything over a total of eight scenes becomes a television drama in which audiences have to rush in and out to the kitchen whilst watching and so can't be asked to watch for more than two minutes at a time.  The beauty of live theatre is that the drama unfolds before your eyes at an appropriate pace not driven by the next ad break.  Longer scenes give the characters space to breathe and demonstrate complexity and development.

So given, the format I like to work in, and given that I aim for around two hours running time I find that my best guide to length is word count. And I reckon that at somewhere between 15,000 to 20,000 words including stage directions.  (Usually stage directions last as long on the stage as they do to write).  Of course, this is a bare guide but it does give me an indicatiion that I've given the characters enough room to develop fully without become windy and verbose.

Don't try to Come here on Holiday

Somewhere between the North Sea and the Bristol Channel lies an island. Not over large but big enough to contain a couple of towns, a number of villages, hamlets and farms and all the other bits and pieces that go to make a place like that: crumbling cliffs, litter strewn beaches, deserted churches, closed down quarries used as landfill sites and a preserved railway run by solicitors in boiler suits. Along with the usual complement of dingy tea-shops, paint-peeled hotels and rain-sodden caravan sites. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not knocking the place. I love it. For a writer it provides enough material to last many lucrative volumes . And the views are spectacular. But I wouldn’t want publicity to spoil it. I don’t want you, dear readers, getting up charabanc trips to clog up our already sclerotic lanes trying to discover the true identitiy of Mrs. Vest’s Tea Rooms or whatever.
People I meet at receptions and literary luncheons have tried to ferret out just where this place is and have resorted to goading me with clumsy prompts over dinner to see if I could be made to let slip some clue. There have been those who have stated categorically that this island must be Romney Marsh or Chichester and Selsey Bill. Some have argued for the tip of Cornwall or Salcombe and Start Point or, even, The Isle of Wight. There’s even a University department in Wisconsin or Kyoto or somewhere which keeps e.mailing me with suggestions that the island might be a metaphor for post-colonial Britain, wherever that is, but I never rise to the bait - it might be none of the above. Or bits of all of them.
One thing I will admit, though, the people are all real. The characters in the stories are all people whose names I know and you’d find them all on The Island. These are folk I might bump into in Safeways or The Post Office. Of course, I’m not so stupid as to make them identifiable in any detail; I’ve taken the precaution of adapting occupations, circumstances and hair colour. So there’s not a chance you would be able to identify them and I hope to God there’s no chance of them recognising themselves. And there’s no point in trying to link characters with the place I live because that’s Dorset (England, Europe) and there are no islands here.