 We are, how good, how good, can you hear your hair, Chef? Well, you did. Yeah. Oh, it's right, you gotta need to ask me questions about your work and your creative process, not mine. Um, and, um, it's a play, so that's the actual writing class, and if you have any questions to me. Tweet us, ad, watch me work, SLP, hashtag, new play. Tweet up, Chef. Until Jamie does this, she's making up the session begins. Thank you. Great. Great. So, uh, yeah, um, OS7, it's the, um, the action part of the play, now we're going to do the dialogue, if I can get my cover back on my iPad. Okay, now we're going to do the dialogue part of the play, which is, you know about your creative process and your work. So, um, your questions about your creative process and how it came, and why you're back in the house. So, does anybody have any, any questions, synopsis, synopsis, any tips on writing a synopsis? What's your name? Mike. Mike. So, Mike is writing a synopsis. How long do you want it to be? Yeah, fairly short. Yeah, yeah, it depends. Yeah, sometimes people say, write two pages or you want to write, but like this, so that people will read it, right? Um, that's what I, that's the person that can do my, you know what I mean? You want it to really capture the essence. You're not going to get everything, you know. You might want to go to, uh, Drama Books, you know where Drama Books is. It's for a play. Yes, you might want to go to, or even if it's a screenplay or a novel, it'll all work. We'll go to Drama Books, um, and check out the, uh, the dramatist play service or the Samuel French bits, or you can go online and read them. And read, especially the ones of the plays that you know. You know, Mike is an eight-factor old man who has a bunch of money under his matches, you know. Sylvia, an 89-year-old woman wants to marry him. Oh, whatever. You know, it's like that. It's always something like that, you know. So, you can read them and sort of get a feel for, um, you can even read, like, synopsis of, uh, King Lear. Those, like, enormous plays with lots of complicated story and beautiful language and to see how someone might boil it down effectively. So that's kind of it. It's sort of taking kids from that, but it should be, you know, it should grab. It should be relatively short, not so short. Um, but, but not, not too long. So I would like it given every movie. DPS or Samuel French online. I'm sure they have them online. Okay. So not like Spark, but it's our Cliff Notes, which are our whole pages. Okay. Listen. Are you from Chicago? Or you just, you're just wearing the costume? No, you're in the family. It's okay. And you're allowed to. I wear a team jacket. I don't know how to count her. Well, I kind of am, but anyway. Um, so Brandon wants to know how we develop, you said, verbiage, language, verbiage, language, dialogue, what they say, right? Um, there are lots of, there are lots of ways to go about it. The easiest way being here, I've said this many times before, and those of you who have heard it go like, oh my God, I'm falling asleep now. But, um, it's relatively quick. Uh, have you ever studied, uh, geometry? Yes. Oh, good. Wow. It's a piece of cake. Piece of cake. Okay. So in geometry there, you do those, um, proofs, right? This I'm grasping because I always forget how it goes. You do those proofs, and you have givens, right? Is that, am I right so far? Okay. So one of the givens are the truth, so the, you know, the things you can take for granted, two points make a line. Is that like a truth or a given? Two points make a line, right? So in playwriting or in writing, we can use that to write dialogue. Where your character is and where she wants to go. The line of dialogue. Okay. So, for example, if you have a character named, um, Sally, and she dreams of going to, uh, Greenland one day, and that's, so she, and she lives in, uh, Texas, West Texas, right? Where nothing is green. Okay. Not really, but let's pretend. And she dreams of going to Greenland. She is in West Texas. She dreams of going to Greenland. Two points make a line. So that will inform what she's talking about, right? The rhythm and all that flavor is, will develop. But that's the basic thing, right? That's what she's hoping for. Okay. That's sort of the core of her desire. Two points make a line of dialogue. Okay. So if you know where your character is at, and you know where he or she wants to go, then that can give you a lot of information about what they're saying. Okay. That's a way to start. And then sort of, you know, how you shape it, maybe how old they are, what they've been through, you know, their baggage, like flavor and color, what they say. But that's basically how you find out what they're talking about, what they're obsessing about, right? Okay. Are you going to come back? Okay. So keep coming back and we'll keep talking about it and see how you're doing. So John has, he's done some writing, and you're very inspired. And it's Monday and you're right in your inspire. And then Tuesday comes around and you go, oh my God, you know, I've lost the thread. Sorry. I had this idea. Have you ever heard of like the Minotaur? Anyway, it's a long, it's a bad tangent. Don't worry about it. You know, to get out of the labyrinth, he needed a thread. And I always think of like, you know, you don't want to lose the thread because you're lost in the labyrinth with the Minotaur. I mean, to get he, the guy, whatever his name was, forget it. The hero. The Minotaur was a monster. But anyway, you want to remember the thread. You want to pick up that thread, right? You could, if you feel like, you could go back and read like it through. If you, you could, but that's kind of dangerous because then you get to like, you could maybe write, right? So maybe don't do that. Maybe, maybe, maybe as you're finishing that day, that writing period for the day, maybe get some post-its and write things like, remember, Jeff is really excited about klezmer music. You know what I mean? And he's going to have, you know, blueberry pancakes tomorrow morning and you can't wait, you know, like that. So write little notes for yourself as if the characters are writing your notes or even pretend the characters can write you notes. Hey, remember when you pick me up tomorrow, remember that I'm doing such and such little post-its like that which will give you a handle on it without having to reread because we don't want to reread because you could like get into like self-loathing about it. This is like a version of On the Road. Yeah. I guess it's a play. See? It's like a road trip. It's a show. Everything's a play. Everything. All the world's a stage. We need two chairs. She does what I do. Yeah. It is a play. It is. Yes. Ah, you're back. Yeah, I'm back. Okay, so this is sort of, sort of has to do with inspirations. So I edited a concept. She's like a blogging film purchase and when I wrote the thing I thought it was like the most brilliant thing which was good. Then of course they announced all the winners in my new play. And then I thought, it's terrible. So I guess I was just wondering that when I went back to reading the thing I was like, no, it's not very good. So my opinion was completely changed by the response it got in the world to the rejection. So at least I'm going to say I think I'm really well in writing. Right, right. But that, when I get to scurn deeply and I don't sense that about very often in our episodes, I'm wondering, I don't know if you can talk about rejection or just kind of disconnect between when we're making something and then how we feel it's not received or how we want it to be approved. And those are extreme, that's an extreme situation. You know what I mean? You're written something, you love it, it's probably very good. And then you send it off to a contest and you're hoping to win and you don't get what you hope for and then you feel like poopoo. So that's very extreme. Usually most of us deal with the critics do either this or this or somewhere in between. It's not like we need a prize. We need a prize that's very extreme. Well, I think a prize is just great. Right, I remember. It seems extreme the way I'm describing it. No, no, no. It's like a lot of feeling wrapped up in that. So there's a lot of room for like elation or devastation. That's tricky. So you're in a difficult place. I think it's great that you wrote it. I think it's great that you sent it off. I think it's great that you're in a contest. And I think you felt naturally with anybody who feels dark, I didn't get what I wanted. I think all your feelings are right off the money. It's just how do you keep going after you've experienced something like that? And I would say have backup. Have a backup plan. Think of it like I don't know, dating or life. You're hoping it doesn't work out. You have a back, you have a bench like in baseball. They've got a whole bunch of people who play. And you have to just realize that you could and Tennessee Williams said something to the effect of praise and good reviews and bad reviews are both devastating. Equally devastating. Because a good review will swell you and you might never work again. So there's that too. Getting praise is not everything we think it is and you know that. I would just say recognize that it might set you back either way and keep going. Everyone asks me how do you keep going after you win a prize? How do you do the next day? What do I do the next day? Right. I keep going. I didn't think about it. Or you get a good review of the newspaper. I didn't think about it. Or you get a shitty review of the newspaper. I didn't think about it. Because that's not why I'm in the business. You know what I mean? Getting published is important. And you want your work to be recognized. I'm not minimizing that. But you also more than getting published, you want to keep writing. So producers in the theater or whatever send out to more than one more than one contest. More than one journal to publish. More than one publisher. More than one producer. Spread it around. You know? And it's good. Keep going. You know? It's like keep out me. Imagine there it is. You're not going to write. You know it's like excuse me. And she would cry. That's who are you again? Exactly. That person, that resistance that resistance needs to sit down. You know, you have your resistance. There it is. Whatever it looks like. You know, and even if you are from you know, get black. You know what I'm saying? This is what that's what that's a way And that's what you want to do. You want to keep going. You want to keep coming here. Yeah, well I mean, it's also weird because when I got upset, when I got the rejection, whatever I got to say, I always would make you realize there's a lot of demons in there that I don't normally know. I mean, if I get a rejection, it kind of like brings up the demons. You're probably there anyway. Do I just hear you anymore? I know what you mean. I know what you mean. The rejection, it brings up a lot of demons that you probably ignore. And you spend all your waking hours beating them back down, keeping them locked in the basement. And when one of those things, there it is, enormous. I know. And we all have them. And you just need to know. Can you work your neck? There you go. There you go. Excuse me. There you go. You just put that on. I thought you were Elizabeth. I'm sorry. I'm looking for Elizabeth. And they'll go somewhere else. And you will have beaten them back one more day. And that's all you need. Just to keep them back one more hour. They'll never go away. But if we could just buy another hour, another word, another paragraph, another day, another lie, another minute, you know, and confuse them just a little bit more.