Two brothers sit side by side on a couch. We’re moments away from a knockdown drag-out fight, but you’d never know that by looking at these two. The tension should have us all leaning forward in our seats, but currently the scene is falling flat.
I love directing actors. Creating moments with a team of artists is one of the most fun jobs you can have, even when it’s not going as planned. When these two actors got on their feet and started swinging, it was electric. The minutes leading up to that, while they were on the couch, felt like dead air. I asked the younger brother to remove his hat.
Siblings have an innate ability to get on one another's nerves with the slightest effort. If you have a brother or sister, you know it in your bones. I asked the younger brother to do the scene again, but this time to open and close the snap-back of the hat while he sat on the couch. RRRRIIIPPP, SNAP, SNAP, SNAP. RRRRRIIIPPP, SNAP, SNAP, SNAP. By the fifth pull and snap, everyone in the theatre wanted to jerk that hat out of his hand. The next time we ran the scene, you could feel the fireworks before the first spark.
That’s the thing about directing a play. I’m responsible for everything, but there’s help. Actors, designers, dramaturgs, and stage managers each carry part of the story, and a room full of people is watching to see what’s working and what isn’t. Half the storytelling happens without a word of dialogue, and someone else handles it.
Writing a novel isn't like that.
On the page, you’re responsible for the dialogue and everything around it. Want it to rain? Cool, cool. You’re the lighting designer and the sound designer now, so how’s it going to look and feel? You’re also the costume designer. You’ll need to build a raincoat, then find somewhere to hang it when your character walks into the office dripping wet. That’s page twelve. Good luck remembering where you left that raincoat on page fifty-seven.
Some of the work I’m used to carried over. Blocking turned into creating scene geography on the page. I still need to know where everyone stands, even when the stage is the gravel shoulder of a highway in 1999 Oklahoma. Movement and stillness became thoughtful tools to use while writing. Entrances and exits carry more weight when you learn to use them to move the story's action. Reading finished chapters aloud allows you to find where the rhythm breaks, the same way a run-through on stage does.
What didn’t carry over, and what I miss most, is the audience. In rehearsal, feedback comes from every direction: the actors, the designers, a colleague who slips in to watch a run. Writing a novel, there’s none of it.
What if the writing is terrible?
There’s no one there to give you that look like they just got a whiff of trash that should have been taken out the day before. Who do I lean on to ask whether the idea I had in the shower is worth a Pulitzer, or should I take it to my grave to avoid the embarrassment of anyone else ever knowing I was stupid enough to have had the thought?
This is terrifying.
So, I’m going back to what I know. In January, I’m putting The Devil’s Road in a room, with a cast, live. We’ll do a staged reading from the book, add some music, drinks, and a whole lot of good times.
Turns out I needed to get back on stage to finish the book.
From the world of The Devil’s Road, coming in January 2027. More details to come!
As a writer, you can have a continuity editor as well as using a writer's group to critique your writing as you go. Or just someone reading your chapters periodically. My dad did this for my stepmother who has written 23 romance novels.