Wicker Husband - Writing Retreat - Last Days and Lessons Learned

I’m writing this two days hence since I didn’t have time to work on it prior to it. It’s about 9am in the morning on the Saturday. We are due to fly back to London this evening so have only one more day to squeeze as much as we can out of Stiles & Drewe’s brains before we go back. I intend to wring every last drop of wisdom out of them. They shall be dry as a bone when I am done. 

I’ve just made a little video thank you down by the river near my Gite. And rather than give you a blow by blow account of what I’ve done over the last couple of days, I thought I’d use this last blog to try and sum up the things that I’ve learned out here that might be of assistance to other writers in the future. Some of these were summed up (very usefully) by Ants and George as we ate dinner outside at a beautiful restaurant in the local town, so I’ll do my best and I hope you find them useful.

1. Be a true collaborator. Be not precious about thine own work. Collaboration doesn’t mean being in the same room with people. It means letting those people inside the deepest parts of your brain and soul. Cultivate an atmosphere of trust when you collaborate. You can’t expect people to give the best of themselves if they don’t feel safe enough to do so. Winners of next years award, trust me, you are in the safest of places with Ants and George so keep your minds and hearts wide open.
2. Your story can be told far more simply than you think it can. Sometimes instead of a page of dialogue a whole raft of emotions can be portrayed by an actor just looking across the stage at another actor. Don’t forget that you are not the only person who is going to make this show come to life.
3. Trust your instincts. I can’t tell you the number of times that Ants and George have pointed out that our initial instincts for the way to tell this story and certain song moments were spot on and just needed development and further work on structure. A song that I thought was not doing what I wanted has been utterly transformed by their feedback and I am now extremely excited about it.
4. Make your audience laugh. Even in serious dramatic work, it is one of the finest ways to let your audience know they are in safe hands. Do not make jokes at the expense of your characters. Let your audience laugh, safe within the confines of the world you have set up.
5. A single bad choice of word can pull your audience out of your story within an instant and you will have to spend the next five minutes pulling them back in. Time you can ill afford to lose in a two hour show. So be fastidious in your choice of words. Make sure they belong in the world you are writing. Don’t go for cheap gags. In the end they will be just that. Cheap. And an audience won’t get their money’s worth. That’s not to say, don’t write those in in your first draft, they may lead to something unexpected. Just be prepared to change them when you understand the story you are telling.
6. Take the time to understand the story you are telling. If someone asks you what your story is about you should be able to tell them in a single unpunctuated sentence of about 10 words. If you can’t do that it’s time to think about your story a lot more and ask yourself why you are bothering to tell it in the first place.
7. Story is not situation. Story is not character. Story is not a series of interesting events. Story is all of these things at the same time, all of which inform the other. That is why story is one of the hardest things to get right. But also one of the most invisible arts when it is done right.
8. If you declutter your story then you will allow time for the beautiful and exciting moments to breathe and really hammer home with your audience. But don’t be indulgent. Let the moment exist, pause for a second and then move on.
9. Let your songs breathe. Think about music without words. Music alone can take us to a whole new world that exists beyond song, look for those moments. If you are having trouble finding words for a particular moment, it may be that there are no words for that moment and you should let it exist musically.
10. Let your audience’s imaginations catch fire. Try not to tell them what to feel, or what to think. Bad storytelling is 4. Great story telling is 2+2. In other words, don’t give them the answer. Give them the ingredients to come up with the answer in their hearts and minds. They will feel it more deeply. The human brain is a born problem solver. It’s the most powerful computer on the planet. It doesn’t need you to give it the answers. The more an audiences imagination is ignited, the more they will invest in your characters and story. 
11. Show, don’t tell. This is old hat. But I urge you to go back to your story and your songs, even with this sage advice in my mind for many years, I am still tempted to tell. It’s a poisoned chalice that can ruin your show. It’s called a “Show” for a reason.
12. Look for the climax of your scenes and build towards them musically and lyrically, this may seem obvious but again, in the process of writing a huge show, these moments can get lost. Several climaxes were pointed out to me that I had missed that vastly improved the structure of my songs.
13. One song I wrote this week is called “Heart of the Weave” it’s about how in every creative endeavour, no matter what our intentions are something unexpected will happen in the weaving. Something that is inexplicable. This is the magic of story. Write with intention, write with wit and verve and pathos. But don’t be afraid to accept the unexpected. And certainly don't try to deny it’s existence. That way peril lies.
14. Writing is about courage. Courage to give something of yourself to strangers. That courage needs to be there in the process, not just when it hits the stage.
15. If you have a yard,walk in it. If you have a ball, throw it about. If you have a pool, swim in it. 
16. You are not your work. But your work must have a part of you in it.

And finally. Just start writing. And keep writing. Write until it is done.

I’m sure there are many other things that I have learnt this week, but right now my brain appears to be full. So I will finish up there. It just remains to say thank you to Ants and George for having us this week, for their incredible hospitality, their humour, for all the laughs and the wisdom, for utterly transforming our show and for being such a lovely pair of top blokes who invited us into their home and made us feel like it was ours.

Thank you to MMD who administered the award in the first place and also to Lettie Graham who administered our flights and all of the practical aspects.

Onward to the next stage of the award!!

Hoorah.