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":