NOTES ON A STORY
A Study of Process: ‘& It’s Not Getting Better’
I think it’s interesting to analyze how a story got written, and to chronicle the steps. My play, ‘& It’s Not Getting Better’, is being produced by a student theatre group this winter, and I thought it would be a fun reflection to trace it’s process from idea to ending.
SPARK
The impetus from this play is a marine biology class I took in fall of 2022. I kept a list of concepts that could see as science fiction stories. The one that inspired ‘&INGB’ is about some species of marine invertebrates, I think. I cannot remember which ones, and I think this was simply a one-off comment that my professor made.
I wrote this note down at the end of my list of concepts, and then forgot about it.
That winter break, I was bored, and decided to go into my ideas and write a pitch for a play. I saw this note and freehand journalled about how it might impact different characters. I came up with Birdie first, then Joyce, then Lonnie. Alf & Sammy came later, which is funny because they’re so essential to the plot in its current version.
At this point I didn’t know what form this story would take. Was it prose? A collection of poems? I didn’t know. And so, I abandoned it…
CLASS
…Until I took a playwriting class in winter of 2023. I had written a lot of little things for this class, but when it came time to pitch a one-act play, this was the idea that I felt the most drawn to. It felt very one-act shaped.
So, I pitched it. Re-reading the pitch is really funny to me. The monologue-braids, a part of the play that I feel very proud of, were structurally inspired by a Harold, an improv form in which a triptych of different scenes combine
I drafted. I worked on it in in-class writing exercises and at the library. Over the course of the quarter, I got to listen to it read out-loud, draft new scenes, and eventually come up with a play that I liked.
EDITS
Along with the edits I made in class, I continued tinkering with the play over the summer and through the fall. After the first read, I also made some edits. However, most edits are additions, and the base of the script remains much the same.
INFLUENCES
Other than the original concept and the Harold format, I think the primary influences of this play are Caryl Churchill’s ‘Far Away’, which we read in that class, and my love of the dystopian genre. It’s a genre I’ve worked in before (and written about!), and the idea of a slow apocalypse is something I was very drawn to. The Covid-19 pandemic was also a huge part of my perspective in writing this play.
Other small things that I think influenced the work:
- being in a classroom with no windows
- a student-written play I was in at the time that centered retail workers
- working at a Spirit Halloween during fall 2020
- the play Marisol (Jose Rivera)
- getting slurpees on 7/11 every year as a kid
FINAL THOUGHTS
I think that this process was remarkable for me because it took so long from start to finish. Typically I consider a project finished after a month of completion, but thanks to the production, I got the opportunity to revisit it almost a year after I finished the first draft. That led my to polish it in a way that I don’t think I have before, but I do think that it contributed to my feeling satisfied about the piece. I am often a ‘make a lot of things and hope that one will be okay’ person, but this process pushed me to edit more deeply. And I’m really grateful for that! I hope to bring that into future projects.
