As a writer (of plays, mainly) the two questions I get asked most often are  ‘How do you come up with ideas?’ and ‘How do you start?’

Well, ideas are all around me. Or maybe a more accurate metaphor is a  queue. I always seems to have several stories jostling for space, trying to get my attention, but I’m pretty strict in my dealings with them. Get in line, please, and wait your turn!

They (the experts) say you should write about what you know. There is some wisdom in that, if you care about authenticity and credibility and navigating the ‘why me’ question on funding bids. But really, I usually start projects with what interests me, and sometimes I know very little about the topic – but a spark went off!  A funny statistic. Something I’ve seen on the news. A scientific breakthrough. That’s where research comes in.

I also have a notes folder and sometimes type the smallest fragments of an idea…it might have come from a word, or a sentence, or a memory…and I note it down in it’s raw form. A character name. A situation. A complex relationship.

Then to the writing. I usually start by knocking out some dialogue. More often than not, it’s a few rough lines. I sit with it, maybe coming back to it after a couple hours or even days, and write down any feelings that come up. What emotions are stirred in me? Who are these characters? Where are they from? What do they want? Who do they love? What might they do? I get curious about them and my brain starts to fill in the gaps. This helps to forment a basic idea into something more tangible. I sometimes write different versions of scenes knowing that some may be completely discarded, but letting the characters speak and breathe in private, like therapy, helps me decide along with them which elements of their story will become public.

At this point, I step back and consider the story that is emerging, what the plot might be. What key moments do I want to explore? Why are they interesting?  I ask a question that shapes much of my creative direction: what do I want the audience to have at the end of the play? How might they feel? I list words – shock, pain, joy, celebration – and ask myself which I can sit with. At this stage, I might draft a treatment, a kind of overview of the story with details of what happens in each scene, to help me stay on course and achieve my dramatic goals. Then I keep writing. It can feel relatively easy to write 40 pages when the vision is clear, but that doesn’t mean that they’re 40 good pages. I try not to fixate on quality…my aim is to finish the thing before I start wrestling with questions of whether I’ve done a decent job or not. Getting that first draft done is the goal, and then the work really begins!

Right now, I have a script I’m working on based on my mother’s early life. It’s a bit messy, with loads of structural issues and too many threads – I need to pick a path and stick with it! But that’s a longer story for another day.