Writing for the Screen and Stage

Twenty years ago, I had no idea I might like to write for the stage and screen someday. In fact, I spent most of my childhood reading novels voraciously and railing against what I saw as the dangers of television. I'm embarassed to admit I once carried a math textbook with me to a performance of Phantom of the Opera.

But there were signs. Early on I was a fan of The Smurfs, Transformers, even, ah, Rainbow Brite. What kept me glued to these shows from week to week were what I now know are called “story arcs,” or plots that unfold over a long series of episodes. There was one arc in particular, in which the Smurfs went exploring the world on a great ship, that seized my imagination. Later I devotedly watched Star Trek—though I was disappointed in how predictable and self-contained most of the episodes were. I knew Picard could never develop a serious love interest, that what happened in one episode wouldn’t matter in the next.

In college, I didn’t have a television, but I was so impressed by Shakespeare that before long I wrote a faux Shakespearean play about my high school Academic Decathlon team. (Imitation is finest flattery, etc.) By my senior year, I was trying to write the lyrics for a musical set in England during the Industrial Revolution. I collaborated with a composer with whom I completed two songs; we both dreamed of writing the soundtracks for Disney movies. Later I contributed (albeit minimally) to the book for a student-authored opera on the voyage of Magellan. In a persuasive technology lab, I worked with an engineer to script the lines and personality for a prototype singing doll, Hap the Happy Bear, that would persuade children to eat more McDonald’s (I’m still uneasy about it.) Later, I created storyboards for new product ideas at CASIO. And not long ago, an Internet communications start-up, Yackpack, asked me to create monsters—in theory, as entertaining characters to converse with users of their service. (Shamefully, I never delivered them, even though I tried inventing them to the soundtrack of Avenue Q.)

In all these instances, I’ve treasured the opportunity to collaborate with others; I like to believe that my imagination, whatever its other shortcomings, has very low walls. All along I continued to think of myself as a writer of prose fiction at heart. I enrolled in short story workshops, and I enjoyed the experience very much. But my stories gradually grew more focused on exchanges of dialogue than on long passages of description and narrative. I just don’t visualize scenes that way, in strings of sentences. And once I was out of college, I began to consume—or, more aptly, gorge myself on—series that I found brilliant and entertaining: shows such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer (which I had, sadly, resisted in college because of its silly name), Angel, Six Feet Under, Firefly, and, more recently, The West Wing and 24. I am in awe of those producers and writers who successfully balance an evolving storyline and complex cast of characters with the need to draw in new viewers—to keep the story from descending into self-referential soap while also maintaining dramatic momentum from episode to episode.

In my final year at the Kennedy School of Government, I was blessed with an instructor who didn’t mind my taking a different approach than the traditional policy memo. Among other things, I wrote a new chapter to the bible, in which Moses was tried for war crimes, and a dialogue between Lao Tzu and Lincoln in which they contested the nature of good leadership. In writing them—and in watching the dialogue performed—I realized again how much I enjoyed entertaining others in slightly unconventional ways.

I still don’t know exactly in what form I’ll ultimately channel all this. But I've had the good fortune of a career thus far that, while motley at best, affords me the freedom to pursue old dreams in new guises. So, today, I leave to Chicago, in said pursuit. I'm not sure what I'll find there. I figure it's time to pack a coat and see what happens next.