Wanna think outside the box? Stay inside it.

Obviously this metaphor holds a value, in the sense that you shouldn't allow yourself to be boxed in by conventional thinking. Viewed from my principled design-based approach to the creative process, it doesn't really make a lot of sense. Recently I was reminded about this by my old teacher, Ingolf Gabold, who is both a wise and gifted dramaturge.

One of the fundamental aspects of the principle of unity is that a piece of drama is one system, and a system is defined by a set of borders. So if you go outside those borders, you will undermine your system.

This happens quite often, when people write, direct and perform drama. We will always get ideas and notions, that are outside the box, the system of the drama, and perhaps include them. One or two might actually be working for you and for the system, because of the old adage – the exception that proves the rule. Or you might, if your are disciplined and experienced, come to realise, your system has a different set of borders. But often its not working, and just weakens the material, because it doesn't add to the complexity of meaning.

Working as a consultant for others, or working in groups with devising, I have often seen a pattern in behaviour, when people begin to get the un-useful outside-the-box-ideas. Very often it happens as a reaction to difficulty with the existing material, the system as it is, and there might be real problems, that needs fixing – but instead of confronting those problems inside the box, people tend to jump outside the box to find a quick fix, or even being drawn by the allure of the grass is always greener..

And this is not a very productive behaviour, you'll waste time, energy and only find new material, which at first looks great, all new and shining, but will also present difficult problems later on, as it needs to be developed and incorporated into the system – something which might not even be possible if it is foreign to the system – and again, there's also a time factor in our design process – we need to go over our material and refine it. If you bring in new material late in the process, it may end up never being properly developed.

Instead we need to stay inside the box and confront the problems we have, because often the answer is there, hiding in plain view. We need to dig deeper and ask the difficult questions and the very simple questions to our material – what is the conflict, who is this character, what are the needs, the intention? And we need to be truthful with ourselves in answering – why am I bored with this? what do I really want as a creator? And we need to be patient and wait for the right answer to arise from the questioning.

And this can difficult because it can challenge our faith in ourselves as creators, our faith in the material we have chosen to work with – and even in the worst cases our faith in ourselves as human beings.

And when you find yourself in such a crisis of creation, you can either run or stay inside the box, in the zone.

The African Ploughing Method

Way back when I went to the National Playwright Education of Denmark, we had for a short while a guest teacher, Erling Jepsen, one of Denmark's most productive playwrights, and in his later years also a successful novelist. Two of his books have been turned into successful feature films, "Terribly Happy" and "The Art of Crying", that's really worth your time, if you don't know them. Erling Jepsen is one-of-a-kind with a unique dark tone and good ear for dialogue and conflict. In person he can seem shy and is never boastful of his accomplishments.

Back in '94 Erling Jepsen taught us one very simple thing, which I've been applying to my work ever since. Many writers probably do it. He called it The African Plough Method and explained that in Africa, when the farmer wants to plough a field, it's a great challenge, because the soil has been baked into a hard shell by the merciless sun. The first day of ploughing the farmer can only manage to get through a small corner of the field. When he returns the second day, he will again plough the same small corner, but now, because the soil is softer, he can manage to go a bit further and extend his corner of the field – and so he continues day by day – always beginning by ploughing the soil, he has already softened, extending the ploughed area every day.

This is also a great way of doing your writing, especially when you are working your way through a full script. You begin every new day by reading and editing the pages, you've already have written. You correct small mistakes, you consider and vary language, you find opportunities you missed in the first write, you erase unnecessary lines of dialogue, you connect dots begging to be connected and you get into your fictional universe and warmed up for the moment when you reach the part, the fully unploughed field, you haven't written yet.

In context with my own principles, The African Plough Method is great, because it helps you to build the unity of your drama. Every day as I begin from the top, I keep most of my attention on the elements I have already put into play; are they 'talking' to other elements, can I enhance their exchange; the way they 'speak' to each other – create new connections. The standard technique in scriptwriting is about set-up and pay-off, which is the most obvious version of doing this. On every level of you drama, you should be setting-up and paying-off. And by meticulously ploughing through your script every day, from the top, you can manage to do that – make every detail count, and every detail relate to other details.

So get your horses out, get ploughing and always begin from the top. For your procrastination, here is a trailer for "Terribly Happy":

You're not a writer..

This is what I often tell novice students at courses, I do on scriptwriting. And it is not to belittle their talent or aspirations, but to adjust their understanding of what it is, we are actually doing, when we create drama.

We are not writers in the sense a writer of novels or poetry is a literary writer. For them the words on paper is the final work of art. The words, we put down on paper, are just a means to communicate to our collaborators, who will be making the film, tv-show or theater performance. What we make is more like  a blueprint for a building or the score for a piece of music. This is also why, at the top of this blog, it says "Principles and tricks for creating scripts.." and not writing.

The fundamental construction of a piece of drama is also much more important, than the actual lines of dialogue. It's great if you write brilliant dialogue, but don't despair if you don't, because it's not the main thing. Joss Whedon, the creator of Buffy The Vampire Slayer, was hailed for his great and witty dialogue on that show, and at some point this came to frustrate him, because was that really the only thing, he was good at, and the only thing that made the show great? He decided to challenge himself by making an episode with very little dialogue – "Hush" – which became one of the best episodes in all 7 seasons of the show.

Directors and actors will be able to improve on your dialogue quite easily, but it is much more difficult to fix the construction of a piece of drama, while in the midst of rehearsing or shooting it. Your main responsibility is to get the construction right. This is all about the premise, the structure of the acts and in staying on target with your main conflict. If you don't get this right, your clever dialogue will only serve as window dressing for a drama, which will collapse somewhere in 2nd or 3rd act, and leave audiences frustrated in a bad way.

Drama is more like music than like literature. The rhythm, the timing, the weaving of themes, motifs and the build of crescendo is so much more important for drama and music, than for literature. The simple fact, that our works of art are played out in real time, second for second, moment to moment makes it so. Our audiences experiences it in a flow of time, so each second counts, the rhythm matters, the timing matters. And you need to be very precise in your communication, because the audience can't re-read a line or a page, or turn back a page to see, what the character was named – no, it happens now, and it happens in a flow.

You're not a writer. Don't feel bad about it. Enjoy creating drama, be proud of it. Or stop and become an author of literature instead.