All posts by Kitty Felde

About Kitty Felde

Award-winning public radio journalist, writer, and TEDx speaker Kitty Felde hosts the Book Club for Kids podcast, named by The Times of London as one of the top 10 kidcasts in the world. The Los Angeles native created the Washington bureau for Southern California Public Radio and covered Capitol Hill for nearly a decade, explaining how government works to grownups. Now she explains it to kids in a series of mystery novels and podcasts called The Fina Mendoza Mysteries. Kitty was named LA Radio Journalist of the Year three times by the LA Press Club and the Society of Professional Journalists.

Act Two Hell, Part 2

Uncategorized, , , , , ,

I hate act two.

Act one is like planning a party, imagining the guests you’ll invite, the food, the decorations, your ensemble you’ll wear. Act two is picking up dirty napkins and loading the dishwasher. It’s no fun.

But I’ve promised my laundry list of tricks to survive act two hell.

1 – Step back. Ask yourself why the heck did you want to write this play in the first place? What did you want to say? Is that what you wrote in the first act? No? Then what did your act one actually say? Is that enough for you to finish? Or would you just as soon abandon it like the last three plays…

2 – Stop. Act two is the place all the seeds you planted in act one are supposed to pay off. The devil whispers that you’ve planted duds and you should pull them out and start over. Do not listen to this voice.

Go back and read act one. Note the gifts you’ve given yourself – the possibilities for payoff in act two, the unexplored qualities of character that sneak out in dialogue, all the clues you left behind for you to find.

3 – Next, ask yourself what you DO know about act two. Write those things down. It’s likely that you know one scene that needs to go in act two. Write that scene.

4 – Give yourself permission to write a really bad scene. The more lousy, the better. Of course, what happens is usually there’s something wonderful buried in that muck. And you can dig it out tomorrow and use it to start that new scene.

5 – Don’t throw anything out. Make a separate file for it. Or stick it at the end of your script. You’ll probably never need it or use it. But it’s nice to know it’s there. A writer’s security blanket.

And one last word of inspiration:

“The ability to simplify means to eliminate the
unnecessary so that the necessary may speak.”

Hans Hofmann (1880-1966)
Abstract expressionist painter

www.kittyfelde.com

Act Two Hell

Uncategorized, , , , ,

I am in act two hell.

You start out with such fire and confidence and vigor. Your characters come alive. They hold your hand and lead you through all the set up scenes, sprinkling potential conflicts like breadcrumbs along the way. The end of act one comes naturally. You feel so good about the piece, you want to schedule a reading, cast your actors, think about where you want it to premiere.

And then it’s time to finish the darned thing.

Act two inspiration is a bit slower. Somehow, the tension seems a little deflated. Like the audience had one glass of wine too many during the intermission. Wake up, playwright! You meander around, hoping for inspiration. And wake up in a cold sweat, convinced that Act one is totally boring, uninspired, stupid. You have the urge to completely tear it apart. Fix it. Tinker with everything.

This is the devil whispering in your ear.

Or, as my Skype writing buddy in Omaha puts it, “Why do plays need second acts anyway? Lazy audience. Why can’t they just work it out themselves?” And at this point in the writing process, you tell yourself, they’ll probably do a helluva lot better than you.

How to escape these many circles of hell? I’ll share my laundry list of tricks tomorrow.

www.kittyfelde.com