suehealy

Exciting times ahead! Jacqueline Bolton and I are excited to launch the inaugural Playwriting Intensive on July 4th & 5th, 2022, as part of the University of Lincoln’s Festival of Creativity. The event will feature 2-hour workshops from four top-flight playwrights: Carmen Nasr, Simon Stephens, April de Angelis and Anders Lustgarten.

Very pleased to see my article on the Finborough published in The Comparative Drama Special Edition on London’s Theatre: Places, Communities, Futures’ (56:1&2) available on the Comparative Drama journal site as well as on Project MUSE. Here are the links:

https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/compdr/

https://muse.jhu.edu/issue/47895

I’ve delivered my guide book on the Theatre Literary Manager to Routledge. It’ll be published in the autumn. I’m massively grateful to all the absolute legends who contributed via interviews, photos, information – I hope I’ve done you all proud. Theatre has the best people. 

Writing from truth, using a real event, can lend work real emotion, and emotion difficult to conjure otherwise. Tears in a writer will bring tears to a reader, so they say. And as an artist, it is your job to stand in naked truth before the world.

Writing from fact does have its downside, however. Firstly, a straight account is reportage, not fiction so you must add extra spice and colour to the mixture to make it fiction, and interesting.

It is important to get to the naked crux of what your story is ‘saying’ and make sure your narrative never loses sight of this point and – so, even if when you were all driving to the hospital, Brad told a joke so funny you’ve just got to mention it. No, don’t mention it. Stick to the point of the story – the story is the hospital, remember, not Brad’s unrelated joke.

You may also have to leave out years of backstory if it does not serve to drive your own story on in any way. You may have been brought up by the funniest, most eccentric, most loving or most dysfunctional family in the world, but if they have no role in the story at hand, don’t mention them.

Another issue with writing from real memory is that ironically, fact is often too weird and too unbelievable to work as fiction. Your readers will say, ‘oh, come on, that would never happen.’ And you can’t phone them all up and say, ‘actually, it did. I’m not making it up. I once knew this bloke…’ Instead, you’ve often got to tone down the story to make it more credible. Real-life coincidences can be particularly problematic here.

And remember if you stick too close to the truth, you may be setting yourself up for some legal headaches, especially if you are presenting another person in an unflattering light. It’s best to change names and/or genders, and settings. Once you make those factual changes, most people will fail to recognize themselves in fiction, simply because we don’t see ourselves as we are seen by others….

The most important of Irish Holidays is almost here! Tomorrow is Nollaig na mBan! Unlike last year, we might even get to celebrate with other women IRL, and not just Zoom ghosts.

Nollaig na mBan is the day when Irish women own (and complete) Christmas. In Ireland, on this day, women would traditionally gather to feast and drink -and the men would take over the housework, and serve them food and beverages (an extraordinary reversal back in the day…). In modern Ireland, it’s simply a great excuse to celebrate all the female friendships in your life and have proper girlie knees-up. I love this holiday and think we should export it like we did St. Patrick’s Day and Hallowe’en. It’s too good to keep to ourselves. Who is up for spreading some Nollaig na mBan joy tomorrow? (Pronounced NUH-lig n’MON)

More info here:

https://www.rte.ie/brainstorm/2020/0102/1103975-the-roots-and-traditions-of-nollaig-na-mban/

I’m a writer. I love words. However, the mis/over use of words, particularly adjectives and adverbs, is the most common fault you’ll find in the work of novice writers. Lack of confidence in writing skills will have new writers shoehorn as many descriptive words as they can get into a sentence – resulting in a lot of bling and little substance. The advanced writer will know how to communicate in a pared down manner.

It’s hard to ween yourself off adjectives and adverbs. Part of the problem is that there are so many descriptive words in the English language, a tongue with more word-families than any other language. This fact is rooted in the English language’s parentage:  French and German, and also the English language’s absorption of words from a multitude of other tongues.  Thus, there  are many English words that describe quite similarly (ie “loving” is from German and “amorous” is from French), so it is easy to get carried away and over do it, with such a lavish spread on offer. But in order to improve, you need to exercise restraint.

That is not to say you can’t enjoy words. Most of my favourite words are loan words and include: “pyjama” and “shampoo” which come from India (though I’m not sure of the specific languages), “Hacienda” and “siesta” which are Spanish. “Itsy-bitsy”, “paprika”, “coach”, “goulash”, “hussar” and “biro” which are Hungarian. “Smithereen”, “galore”, “banshee”, “slew”, “brogue”, “kibosh”, “hobo”, “gansey” and “shanty” which come from Irish. I enjoy writing them, I love saying them – I’ve just got to be careful about stuffing my prose with too many descriptive and exotic words. Less is usually more. I like to use the painter’s palette analogy – if you add blue to yellow, you get green. If you add blue, yellow, red, green, gray, you get mud. Too many descriptive words, as lovely as they are on their own, will muddy the picture you are trying to create.

Words are fun, go ahead and celebrate words – but do so in moderation and you’ll make a stronger impression.