Here’s a fun little screenplay sketch I wrote in honor of all the times I said, “I wish I was the English voice on the metro” while living in Nanjing, China.
Tag: playwriting
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I’m not discouraged, but I now realize I’m in a place where I need to stop seeking validation.
This is something I’ve been working through in my own life and somewhat in therapy, but I believe it’s time I put it fully to practice. For that reason, I’ve decided I’m going to stop submitting and pitching my writing for a while.
The reason for this is twofold: firstly, I developed a bad habit of obsessing over submissions throughout last winter, spring, and throughout the summer. I would look up any and all opportunities to submit/pitch my writing, without ever feeling confident in said writing itself. Then, I would receive rejections. Normally rejections don’t bother me too much, as it is part of being a writer who wants to share their work. I’ve even got some of the kindest rejections, where they say they enjoyed my work and ideas but couldn’t find a place for it (those are the best rejections to get, the almost ones). Lately, though, I’ve questioned why I am so eager to submit my writing to certain publications. Is it because I truly want to share it in that publication? Is it because it fits the publication’s theme or call for pitches? Or is it because I want the validation of a publication credit? Honestly, it could be all of the above. That said, I do know that I haven’t been writing as much since last winter/spring.
Last winter, I began rewriting a novel idea that’s been brewing for years, a novel idea I’ve been meaning to rework since I finished its draft when I was 18. Then, in February, I got stuck. But no matter, because I was working on adapting my stage play into a radio play, which was an incredibly awesome and rewarding experience. I love the director/sound designer and the cast; I’m also so grateful to the festivals we’ve presented at virtually.
(Here’s a selfish plug to go listen to Happy Pills the radio play adaptation at Atlanta Fringe Audio 2021 now, also available on Spotify and wherever else you get your podcasts! It will be up and available until June 2022.)
In spring 2021 I also wrote a novella for an online contest, which I won’t share here due to it being written under my pen name, but I enjoyed it immensely. It helped me come to terms with parts of my identity that I have not shared publicly and am not sure I will at this time or maybe ever. I have plans to lengthen it to be a longer novella or potentially novel-length because the cast of characters and the world is one I feel can be rich.
I have a plethora of other ideas sitting unfinished, waiting for me to tend to them as well. Novels, short stories, essays, and more. But they won’t get written if I don’t write them and I’m solely focused on publications. It may be time to leave some of the older works behind and focus on what is speaking to me presently, even if those older works never get published.
That’s okay. I need to learn to be okay with it. I am not the same writer I was at 14, 18, 21, and even at 24. I have changed as the world has changed, as my life has changed, and I need to reconcile that in my writing. It doesn’t mean abandoning every idea I’ve ever had, but it does mean spending time cultivating them. Planning them. Writing them.
V.E. Schwab just had an excellent story post on Instagram recently. She spoke about how she writes out a beat sheet for the scenes she drafts for novels. The way she spoke about beats in scenes resonated with everything I’ve learned and applied in my theatre studies and productions. In playwriting, there are beats. I make sure there are beats in my playwriting, whether it’s beats I put it or it’s places where actors can find beats later on. Why should it not be the same with prose writing? It is definitely the same in poetry. In essays and nonfiction too. I like this concept a lot, and I think I may put it into practice for more than just my playwriting. It is time to hone my prose writing and pay attention to the moments of a scene. It’s no coincidence that in 2021, V.E. Schwab is one of my new favorite authors, as I’ve finally read some of her works.
I always wanted to be one of those published authors who get published in their early or mid-20s, but I’m not. I’m 26, soon to turn 27 in February 2022, and given all of the major life changes that have happened in 2021–let alone 2020–I need to give myself and my writing practice some grace.
This is mostly a reflection for me, but if you found some value in it, then thank you for reading. I’d love to hear your thoughts on your own writing practice.
I may continue blog writing more often; I may not. My dear friend Chandler (who has excellent blog posts, do go read them) said it is refreshing for him, and I find it to be as well.
Here’s to what’s ahead, whatever that may be.
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I’m so excited that my full-length play Happy Pills is being adapted into an audio/radio play and is heading to Oregon Fringe Festival 2021 at the end of April. I’ll have more later, but I hope you will tune in to hear my post-apocalyptic dystopian sapphic play. The actors are blowing me away, and so is Sayde Hampton, my favorite director/sound designer to collaborate with.
Stay updated by following some scripts collective on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and of course the website. We’ll have some fun teasers and a cast reveal before the show airs on April 29th.
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Written in September 2016.
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In several writing classes I have taken thus far, the idea of ‘payoff’ has been discussed thoroughly and in many different ways. In my understanding of it, it has come to mean not necessarily giving an expected ending but not deviating from the story’s innate trajectory. I find different yet similar payoffs in “A Worn Path” by Eudora Welty and “Exodus” by James Baldwin that helped me realize what kind of payoffs I want to provide not only to the reader but also to myself in my writing.
Welty’s story opens with description of the main character, Phoenix, and the beginning of her journey to town yet ends with the image of Phoenix leaving the town. Despite this vague description, a lot happens in between in terms of plot, dialogue, and description in which Phoenix is slowly built in front of the reader’s eyes before we reach the point of no return. At first glance, I found the climactic reveal of Phoenix’s grandson being dead as a complete surprise, a jolt in the story, but when I looked at it again I realized this was the payoff the story was striving toward: without this moment, Phoenix’s arc is not complete, and our knowledge of Phoenix remains incomplete also: “Yes. Swallowed lye. when was it?—January—two-three years ago—” (Welty 287) creates a depth to Phoenix that changes the way we have seen every action and utterance from her. Our slow realization mirrors Phoenix’s in realizing why she came to town at all, yet she remains unseeing of the true circumstances around her visit. For the reader, this realization comes to a head when Phoenix opens up with a big monologue of sorts:
“My little grandson, he sit up there in the house all wrapped up, waiting by himself…We is the only two left in the world. He suffer and it don’t seem to put him back at all. He got a sweet look. He going to last…I not going to forget him again, no, the whole enduring time…” (Welty 288).
This moment is the slow descent into the reader understanding that Phoenix, even how brave she has been throughout the story and her journey, is still human, has her flaw where she does not acknowledge what is perhaps the truth that everyone else knows about her grandson. The payoff in this moment is bittersweet; it does not send the reader off into Phoenix’s happy ending, but it does help us relate to her on both a sympathetic and empathetic level. Without Welty including these two specific moments, this would be a completely different story with a different or perhaps no payoff moment.
James Baldwin’s payoff in his short story “Exodus” differs in its culminating circumstances yet provides that seem bittersweet yet satisfying feeling that Welty’s “A Worn Path” does. His story is split into two parts: first with Florence reflecting on her mother’s past and second with Florence’s actual act of leaving. For the reader, throughout the whole story we understand that Florence will be leaving home, yet the unspoken words between Florence, her mother, and her brother Gabriel are what keeps us rooted to the moment and invested in Florence’s journey from her initial, formal announcement to her mother—“Ma…I’m going. I’m a-going in the morning” (Baldwin 4)—to her mother “grant[ing] Florence the victory—with a promptness which had the effect of making Florence, however dimly and unwillingly, wonder if her victory was real” (Baldwin 6). What transpires in between though, the moment of payoff, is when Florence “look[s] away from her mother…catching her breath, looking outward through the small, cracked window” where “outside, beyond the slowly rising mist, and farther off than her eyes [can] see, her life await[s] her” (Baldwin 6). This moment astronomically alters how the reader approaches the story from then on because now we as the reader have a way to connect to Florence. Even if we do not agree with her actions, this moment defines why she is leaving her mother and her brother, what draws her to the outside world is perhaps to escape but mostly to live the life she wants to live, a very human cause that is not necessarily surprising but satisfies the reader all the same.
In thinking about the similarities between Welty and Baldwin’s payoffs, I cannot help but think the real reason humans desire payoff is not to have the easy ending but to have the simple ending, the ending that must transpire organically from the events of the story and the journeys of the character or characters. Payoff is not to sedate the reader or the audience in a work of fiction or a play but rather to revitalize them, to get them to think about their own humanity. We often forget, in light of our technological advances, that we are creatures too, who ultimately want the same, simple things: food, shelter, water, safety, and of course, love. Phoenix loves her grandson so much that she refuses to see him as anything but alive; Florence loves her family but understands to stay with them is to ignore her own basic needs and her own desire to go off, even if that means looking back on this moment and feeling something differently on her deathbed than when she first left. These payoffs remind us of our own individual humanity and how that fits in with the rest of our fellow humans.
In thinking about my own personal writing, I feel as though I have overlooked payoff and shrugged it off, thinking it meant something else. As I grow as a writer, I’m beginning to see that payoff means asking the difficult questions and still having the reader or the audience feel satisfied at the conclusion of the story, regardless if the story ends happily or tragically. I oftentimes go immediately for the kill—literally—with characters instead of seeing them develop to their own innate endings. More and more with my most recent writing, I feel as though I am finally allowing the story the payoff it is asking for, rather than forcing it.
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November 30, 2018
(or you would write it 30 November 2018)
Dear Mr. Wilde, or whoever is reading this,
First of all, I’m 24 and definitely old enough to understand and believe that there’s not necessarily an afterlife. However, it feels only fitting to address the person in the grave.
You were not a perfect person, Mr. Wilde. Yet still the world—now, or at least parts of it—idolizes you so. I finished a year of teaching in China, and China—unsurprisingly—does not teach the truth of you. Maybe even the U.S., where I’m from, did not teach the truth of you when I was younger and first exposed to your works. It was only in my work as a dramaturg on a production of Earnest did I come to learn more.
And what is your truth? Art as beauty, as passion, as style, as truth. An exaggeration, sure, but also a beautiful truth. You used comedy as a vehicle for others to look more critically at their society and themselves.
You were not honored in your lifetime, but you are legendary in your death. I wish you could know both your fame and, still, your infamy.
I hope you have achieved some peace in death that you did not have in life. But no, isn’t it maybe a bit true what you wrote of your sister? You “are not dead, but sleepeth”?
On behalf of us all: thank you for always being yourself. You’ve never shown fear in that, at least according to us.
Sleep well,
Alyssa Cokinis
P.S. I didn’t get you flowers—I apologize.
P.P.S. Two beautiful humans are reading anthologies of work at your grave in Pere Lachaise Cemetery—was it beautiful to succumb in Paris, by the way? Anyway, every time a French police officer comes over to tell them not to sit near your grave, they always return to reading once he passes. Lovely people.
Alyssa Cokinis 