31 Plays in 31 Days, #2 - "Everything I Do"

One thing I am using 31P31D 2015 for is finishing Base Instruments, as I'm in the home stretch and I need something to make me push through. I was going gangbusters through the easy to write scenes for weeks, finishing at least a scene piece a day, but then I hit the handful of scenes I'd put off because I wasn't sure how to express them. And that slowed me down like whoa.

On that note, JESUS CHRIST, this scene piece was hard to write. It's super short, and yet it took me over a week of hammering. I knew what it had to do. It's a very early part, which is supposed to sort of reintroduce Mrs. Hawking and Mary to the audience, specifically what they do and what their relationship is, without being too redundant or expository. It's also supposed to subtly set up the personal struggle for them in this play without drawing too much explicit attention to it.

Without spoiling it too hard, Mrs. Hawking becomes preoccupied with worries that she doesn't want to actually talk about. So she tries to guide Mary into a position to be what she thinks she needs to assuage her fears. Mary notices something going on but not exactly what. Mrs. Hawking needs to express a confidence in her that makes her very happy, so happy in fact that she misses that it's not just confidence, but also desperation-- she believes in Mary partially because she's afraid of what would happen if she doesn't. So it's supposed to hint at what comes ahead, while cloaking it in a little bit of pleasant misdirection.

That's hard. I ROUGHLY, CLUMSILY achieved the bones of that. But this will need a lot of polishing to be what I want. But for at least draft one, I'm shooting primarily for COMPLETENESS and FUNCTIONALITY. Elegance, art, and cohesion will have to come later.

( Day #2 )

#RejectedIronGM

So this weekend, natbudin, laura47, and Peter wanted to do their own personal little version of Iron GM, where you write a 2-hour, 12-person larp in 24 hours based off of a genre, a theme, and an element that is given to you at the very start of the writing period. lightgamer and I brainstormed these for them and came up with ghost story, hunger, and nursery rhymes, which I think is a pretty interesting combination.

I joked how if Matt hadn't talked me out of it, I would have given them German expressionism, insecure masculinity, and lithopedions. But it inspired me with all these terrible possibilities for awful, awful secret ingredients for Iron GM. So, instead of sleeping or doing anything else particularly productive, I spent two and a half hours on Twitter last night brainstorming combinations of genres, themes, and elements that Nat, Laura, and Peter should be very grateful I did not give them.

( 55 #RejectedIronGM secret ingredients! )

Actually a few of those could be fun. I'd actually like to play what comes out of "Comedy of manners, sexually transmitted diseases, ornamental pastry." And I'll admit "Dating sim, gentlemen prefer skinny brunettes, Chris Evans" is me just having a bit of fun.

Maybe I should organize an Absurd Iron GM. A... Phlebotinum GM, perhaps. Where the teams sign on knowing the ingredients will be ridiculous, and they must make the best (humorous or otherwise) game possible out of them. That might be fun...