Stop building castles in the sand

People who have worked with me, know I'm often using the sandpile-metaphor in relation to the creative process or to the script or performance itself. Especially as a correction of perception when people get stuck, get anxious or get too eager to determine the outcome. This metaphor comes from the scientific experiment made by Per Bak in 1987, which was the first discovery of self-organizing criticality in a complex system. In my eyes this is one of the later years major breakthroughs in science, as it has far greater implications on our perception of reality than most are aware of. When I encountered this research in 2004 through two books, Per Bak's "How Nature Works" and the more popular scientific "Ubiquity" by Mark Buchanan, it radically changed my approach to my work in the dramatic arts. Or it gave me the solid foundation to implement, what I had already been toiling with the last four years. It delivered the framework of understanding, which confirmed many of my own notions about dramaturgy, drama and the creative process.

Ordinary physics and much of our modern way of thinking rely on a Newtonian understanding of the world. The cause and effect; the idea, that if we know enough about a system, we can control it. The sandpile experiment was an extremely simple experiment, which would undermine the Newtonian paradigm. Under the Newtonian world view, the world, and within it, the human beings, are all like a machine. Know enough about the machine, and you can master it. This realisation freed us from religion and superstition; allowed our culture to find belief in ourselves to shape our destiny, instead of a remote God. That was great and much needed, but the other truth, the part of the world, which doesn't operate like a machine, has been left to superstition and the irrational.

In dramaturgy the Newtonian outlook gradually helped us develop the many models for how a play or film script works. They are all linear, they all rely on a cause-and-effect-thinking. They're all driven by the idea of a perfect form. And they fitted perfectly with the Hollywood-movie-making-machine's control-freak-mind-set.
As I read the two books about our complex world, mentioned above, I had reached a point where I understood the models, but was beginning to doubt they could be anything but a superficial truth. I was looking for the DNA behind the outer forms, thinking that the dramaturgic models had to be like the drawings the early biology-researchers, who went out into the world and drew pictures of how an oak leaf looked, or should look, ignoring the fact, that all leafs look very different, even though there are basic similarities. Later with the discovery of DNA biology found the simple code, which gives rise the multitude of forms.

So back in 1987 Per Bak, Chao Tang and Kurt Wiesenfeld made the sandpile experiment, which is a computer simulation of the creation of a sandpile. One by one grains of sand fall from above to a flat surface. In the beginning everything that happens can be predicted (by laws of gravity etc), but eventually as a pile forms, and the slopes of the pile becomes so steep, that avalanches can occur, what was a predictable, newtonian system changes into an unpredictable, complex system. All the grains of sand in the pile are in essence connected. A new grain of sand landing on the slopes can send a multiplying chain reaction throughout the pile and trigger avalanches – but if, when, how many or how big is impossible to predict. A Newtonian mind might say; "Well, it's only a matter of knowing all the interactions in the pile", but it isn't – what Per Bak proved that day in '87, was that when a system becomes complex, it is also unpredictable and thereby uncontrollable.

It shouldn't really come as a surprise to anyone who lives in reality. We know inherently that life is unpredictable, we see the meteorologists get it wrong again and again, we see the stock markets crash, revolutions spring up when least expected, earth quakes happen – all events that not only seem unpredictable, but which Per Bak proved actually are so. And so is the human system in itself, and so is the creative process.

This is what I want you to take away from the lesson of the sandpile – you can't control it, so stop trying – you can't predict the outcome, so stop trying – instead what you can do, is to make sure the grains of sand land in a pile – where they'll pile up, and eventually avalanches will occur – which in this metaphor is the ideas or even the great idea. And if you stop worrying about predicting and controlling, you'll be much better able to catch that idea, when it breaks loose from the pile.

So stop building castles in the sand and just pile on instead.

Wanna surprise your audience? Surprise yourself!

Often we think of plot twists, when it comes to surprising an audience. And some writers will go far out of their way to create a twist, perhaps even so far, that they will inadvertently have left their good senses behind. Twisting the plot is just the most obvious, but not only way of keeping your audience on their toes. Surprising material exist at many levels, from the way a character phrase a question to the grand dramaturgy in your arrangement of scenes.

It all comes down to striking a balance between repetition and development. We want to repeat patterns, because it establishes recognition and awareness. Both comedy and tragedy relies on the repetition to establish a motif and then on a surprising development to exact the laugh or the tears.

Often I find that the balance is off in many dramatic productions. Either there's too little development. The pattern is being established, but in the most predictable way, and in the worst cases, so the pay-off is seen miles away. The other extreme is when the motif is not established properly, because the creator is simply afraid to repeat himself or afraid to bore the audience and jumps all over the place with new ideas. For me the key is not to be afraid of repetition, but instead have a bit of fun with it – by creating variations along the way. This also helps to keep the audience guessing and hopefully not see the pay-off before it arrives.

In my own work, I keep challenging myself to create small surprises in everything. It's not about being clever, but about opening your senses; feel if you are boring yourself a bit with the stuff you come up with. And if you do, surprise yourself by choosing a different path. No, they are not going to kiss, even though the moment is perfect. Instead he asks her, if she thinks, he is that easy to get. She has been wearing dresses in different colours – but suddenly she's in a grey, dirty coverall. You are your own audience – are you surprising yourself or just keeping ourself busy by putting words together, painting-by-numbers-style?

It's both far more difficult and far too easy to second-guess an audience, you'll most probably never even meet. Can you master the discipline of being your own audience, then you have the best test at hand, to see if you are being trite or surprising – just surprise yourself.

Don't answer that question

Writing dialogue many writers have a habit of making their characters answer every question another character may ask. You'll also often see this habit in improvisation with actors. It's not a very good habit in a dramatic context.

I'm not saying questions shouldn't be answered at all, but often – also in real life – it becomes interesting, when questions are not answered – for the very simple reason, that it generates a conflict. 

Character A wants to know, what Character B had for dinner, but B ignores the question and talks about the weather. Even in this very ordinary situation, as an audience I will begin to wonder if B is hiding something, how A feels about getting the question ignored, and what A will do to get the answer; I'm engaged in the conflict and it's outcome.

This little trick is also something which could save any of the unbelieveable many exposition-scenes, where only information is being narrated. Come on, dear writers, it's easy to add a conflict. Just have A make a question, and then B doesn't answer, but delivers a bunch of information.

What was your question again? Well, see you later.