Second Draft

I love writing the first draft. The first draft is my favourite bit. It's where you get to make everything up, imagine a world and create characters and story. You use your heart and lungs and stomach for the first draft - it's pure guts (to steal a Steve Prefontaine running metaphor). I know that a lot of playwrights don't like the first draft but to me it's the best.

The second draft is something different. You've had the notes - probably lots of them - and now you have more paper than you know what to do with. You have to engage your brain now. You have to think. You can't just feel your way through the story, you have to be logical. 'This character has to do that because in scene two, he said he wouldn't and that reveals something in scene 7'. Even in the most abstract plays, there are patterns and while in the first draft you may have sketched it all out, in the second draft you have to start marking it out more properly.

I am currently at the second draft stage with two plays. One of them is an epic, massive piece with lots of characters and themes to coral; the second is a small, chamber piece about the end of the world. But it doesn't matter what the play is, the second draft is where I correct the mistakes I made in the first, clarify what I didn't say quite clearly enough, and cut the inappropriate joke that only I find funny. The second draft is the necessary draft.

I won't lie. I don't really like the second draft phase of writing a play. But it is also the moment when you see what you have and a thought (hopefully) occurs: Yes, I can see this working. Eventually.

Everything (on iPlayer)

I was so busy writing about the end of the world last week that I forgot to post that my play Everything would be repeated on Monday 5th November on BBC Radio 4. It was and now it's on iPlayer. Click here to listen to it. You have a week.