Writing Challenge #20 - Reverse Order

Hi folks,

I’m inching ever closer to finally being in the same 24 hour period as the rest of you in processing your prolific output of material.  

Even with the second job yesterday and today, I expect to make more progress, so we’ll see how I do.  The handy thing about the Guthrie Box Office job is the repeated little stretches of down time between calls and in person customers.  The challenge is the perfect way for me to pass the time.

Again, don’t worry about slowing down so I can catch up.  That’s not the point of the challenge :)

You all just keep those pages coming.  I’ll get there :)

So let’s get you this prompt so I can get back to the inbox…


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Challenge #20 - Reverse Order

Due: Tuesday, November 21st, 12pm noon Central Time
(1pm Eastern Time, 11am Mountain Time, 10am Western Time for the US Time Zones)



Here’s another offering from our Literary Associate Kate Cosgrove:

“Write a scene in reverse chronological order.”

As a person who loves playing with structure in writing my own plays, I’m equally appreciative when I see other writers do it well, or come up with an idea that never occurred to me but is a lot of fun to watch in action.

One classic example, of course, is Harold Pinter’s “Betrayal,” which starts at the end and moves backwards to conclude by showing you how the whole thing started.

And as much as I loathe the musical “The Last Five Years,” even I have to grudgingly admit that the conceit of the show is pretty great.  A man and a woman tell the story of their relationship in song. The man tells the story in chronological order from the beginning.  The woman tells the story starting at the end and moving backwards.  We know from the start because of the woman’s perspective that the romance doesn’t end well.  But we also see from the beginning from the man’s side of things that they did start out genuinely in love with each other.  And there’s a point in the middle where the two plot lines meet and they’re both happy together at the same time.  Then the man’s singing about the downward slide from his perspective, while the woman is moving backward in time to the happiness of their first meeting.  It’s pretty brilliant structurally.  And a lot of the music is lovely, capturing both the beauty and heartache of love.

(Just personally, I hate it because the author - a man - clearly intends for us to side with the male character, who seems like a complete jerk, who cheats on his wife because she can’t give him the adoration he feels he deserves and is holding him back from his true greatness as an artist - aspirational autobiography much, dude?)

Personally, my brain doesn’t naturally work in a reverse story telling mode, so normally when I’m playing with time, I do the same thing I do when I’m writing two scenes of dialogue that I want to intercut between - I write the thing normally first.

If it’s a dialogue trick, I just write both conversations separately, and then I take the two conversations and poke around for interesting places to interweave them, and make adjustments to the dialogue as necessary to get the whole thing to knit together.

Same with a time gimmick - I write the thing in chronological order first and then play around with moving the different scenes into different configurations on the timeline.

Another useful thing to study, if you haven’t already tripped over this one, is David Ball’s book about play structure “Backwards and Forwards” - one of the things he does is take Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” and pick it apart in reverse order, to make his case that if you start at the last scene and move backward, one scene at a time, you realize that the way Shakespeare structured “Hamlet” there wasn’t any other way it could have turned out.  The decisions the characters make in each scene, starting from the beginning, lead to what happens in the scene that follows, and the scene after that, and the scene after that, until you’ve reached the end of the play and nearly every character is dead.  And if you look at it in reverse order, this only becomes clearer.  It’s a short book, a quick and fascinating read.  Very helpful to those of us trying to build plays of our own to break down the work of others.  Your play should always seem inevitable, even if the audience doesn’t fully see that until after the fact (and, of course, you don’t want the audience to get ahead of you and see where you’re going - tricky, that :)

Now, you’ve only got a day, so don’t feel like I’m asking you to do all that under the gun of a 24 hour deadline - just like the cycles and series prompt from years past, one day of writing is only enough to get you started.  A start is fine.  Play around with an idea, crank out a page or two as a placeholder, and you can come back to playing with it later (or, heck, if you want to, play with it for the rest of the month of November :)

You don’t have to write it in reverse order today.  Just toy around with an idea that you might ultimately want to flip into reverse.  Write that.

And, you know, you can always just write a random scene, and then take the last line of dialogue and move it to the front and reorder all the dialogue so they’re talking in reverse back to the very first line which is now at the end - just for fun.

You might discover something you hadn’t contemplated before about your scene or characters.  Playing with time and structure is a fun way to break out of old habits (unless, of course, you’re one of those writers who does that kind of thing all the time, in which case, you should probably try writing something in basic chronological order from beginning to end for a change of pace :)



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If you’re not interested in this prompt, you can try 2021’s challenge #20:

Your Favorite Story

Or try 2022’s challenge #20:

Regional Slang

Or, you know, just ignore the prompts altogether and write whatever you want - as long as you’re writing and turning it in by the deadline, that’s all that matters for the challenge :)


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Friendly Reminders - Answers To Common Questions:
(Follow the links to read me expounding on these items :)

Don’t Stress About Writing A Full Play

Don’t Stress About Format

Don’t Stress About Sticking To The Writing Prompt

No.  Really.  I Mean It.  Don’t Stress About Sticking To The Writing Prompt

Don’t Stress About Finishing An Idea (You Can Add Later)

Don’t Stress About Thanksgiving

Don’t Stress About “Succeeding” or “Failing”

Don't Stress About What You're Turning In Each Day

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How to submit your work for Challenge #20

You have options.  They are:

Save your script as a PDF or Word Doc and send as an attachment to an email sent to ThresholdWritingChallenge@gmail.com

OR

Copy and paste your script in the body of an email and send it to ThresholdWritingChallenge@gmail.com

OR

Post your script online (as a Google doc, or in a blog post, on your own personal website, etc.) - email a link to this script to ThresholdWritingChallenge@gmail.com
(If you’re going to Google doc route, just make sure to have the document public, or give permissions to our email address to open it)

When emailing us, make the subject line of your email - Challenge #20
(That just helps us sort through the email more quickly)
(Or, you know, just reply to this email if you want :)

OR

Post the link for the online document option above in the comments section on this very blog post for this very challenge on the writing challenge blog below



Again, this is: Due: Tuesday, November 21st, 12pm noon Central Time
(1pm Eastern Time, 11am Mountain Time, 10am Western Time for the US Time Zones)



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And, just to reassure you, no, we are not going to be sticklers about you following these directions down to the minutest detail - the important thing is that you write, and then that you share it with us, so we can keep track of who’s writing every day.

Also, no, there is no penalty for finishing and submitting early - but it also isn’t a race, so give yourself all the time up til 12 noon Central Time on Tuesday to write if you need it.  When you’re done, you’re done.

Again, remember, it doesn’t need to be great, it doesn’t even need to be responding to this prompt (the prompt is just there so you’re not staring at a blank screen to start with no idea what to write about :)

Doesn't even need to be complete - you could have the beginning or the middle or the end of an idea, maybe two out of three but not all, that's still fine. This is all about getting things started, you can write more later. You have 10 more days to build on whatever you come up with today, if you want. Just get anything on the page, even if won't make sense to anyone else, as long as it make sense to you.

It just needs to be something.

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And that something can be:



The End

Lights down.

A character walks backward across the stage.

Lights up.

(yes, I know that doesn't make any sense :)




That’s always your escape hatch, every day.

That’s your base line.

Build on it.

Have fun.

Don’t stress.

Make an impulsive decision and run with it.

Breathe.

You’ve got the day.

Just write.

Matthew A. Everett
Literary Director
Threshold Theater
(he/him/his)

Now Playing:
The video trailer for Threshold Theater's first virtual play reading in the New Play Reading series (back in May/June 2021), our reading of “Spellbound” by Matthew A. Everett - Thanks to his mischievous friend Jeffrey, who’s begun dabbling in witchcraft, Micah has accidentally dosed his best friend Auggie with a love potion. Which might be fine, if Auggie wasn’t straight, and married, or if Auggie’s wife Sarah wasn’t pregnant, or a practicing witch. With the help of Duncan, who runs the local metaphysical supply store, the race is on to whip up the antidote before anyone does something they’ll regret.  Now on our YouTube channel

Coming Monday, November 20, 2023 at 7pm:
If you’re local in the Twin Cities in Minnesota, come and join us for Threshold Theater's seventh live play reading in the New Play Reading series. Like all good LGBTQ+ theater companies, we begin our new season of programming with "Mediocre Heterosexual Sex" - which is a play by Madison Wetzell.
Location: The Black Hart of Saint Paul - 1415 University Avenue West, St. Paul, MN - Doors at 6:30pm, Reading begins at 7pm, Audience discussion to follow the reading -
About the play: Four hours after her girlfriend dumps her, Erin switches her Tinder setting to dudes because she hates herself. She quickly meets Aaron, who is straight, conveniently nearby, and only too happy to indulge her masochistic fantasies. To translate this deeply ambivalent first hetero experience, Erin seeks the advice of the only straight people she knows, a couple in a Dominant/submissive relationship. A vexed exploration of gender, sex, power, and kink.

Coming Spring 2024:
“4Play with Threshold Theater”
Dates and venue still TBA
Featuring:
Amsterdam, by Collette Cullen
Bluetooth, by Liz Dooley
Hurry Up and Wail, by Anna Ralls
Just for Context, by Bethany Dickens Assaf
The Weird Ellen Prom Queen Trendsetters, by Elizabeth Shannon

Coming for Pride Month 2024
Monday, June 3, 2024
Monster Girls at Sunshine Donuts, by Dani Herd
A vampire, a werewolf, and a Frankenstein's monster walk into a doughnut shop... Meet Louise, Tally, and Elsie: the crew behind Sunshine Doughnuts! The ghouls have fallen into a pretty pleasant spooky routine for themselves; pouring coffee, baking doughnuts, arguing over Scooby-Doo cartoons, having crushes on their regulars. Along comes an unexpected late night visitor to throw everything into question. Sometimes it really sucks how much your past can come back to bite you!

 


"Write. Find a way to keep alive and write. There is nothing else to say."
- James Baldwin

"Writing is like driving a car at night. You can only see as far as the headlights, but you make the whole trip that way."
- E.L. Doctorow