Ben Crowder

This afternoon I had a few spare minutes and so I stopped in the periodicals section of the library to skim through some issues of Leading Edge, the BYU science fiction and fantasy magazine. (I’m going to start submitting stories to them.)

In issue #52, from October 2006, I came across a short article by Brandon Sanderson entitled “Outlining.” And I read it. (Duh. :)) And you know what, it was exactly what I needed at this point in my fiction-writing development. In all of the fiction I’ve written in the past few years, I’ve gone the organic route, with very little planning. All I do is let the writing accrete bit by bit and see what shapes I get in the end.

But it isn’t working as well as I’d like. I feel like my fiction is lacking overall structure, like I’m just winging it. And in reading Sanderson’s article, I realized that outlining is the answer. Figuring out the story in advance — particularly the ending, which is something I’m not very good at — will help tremendously with crafting something really good. I’m excited.

Of course I’ll allow small tangents here and there, and sometimes even large ones, since I’m all about the serendipity that my subconscious bubbles up to me while I’m writing. But I do need more structure — especially with anything longer than a couple pages. :)

Each week I send out the ward announcements, and for the past two years or so, I’ve included a “Storytime” segment with, well, stories. :) They’re first drafts, completely off the cuff (usually written in the half-hour before I send out the announcements), but they’re fun to do. For a while I was working on the Francis stories, but lately I’ve been serializing a story called “The Widow and the Wizard”. It grew out of something I wrote for the meeting minutes in one of the committees I’m on at work (in trying to get out of my job as scribe :P), and I liked it enough that I’ve kept working on it.

Today I sent out the fifth installment, and it’s funny to see how the story’s grown — originally it was just going to be three segments, short and sweet. But then at the end of the third part I realized there was no way I could finish the story that quickly, and with this bit I’ve just written, I’m realizing that the boy still has to figure out how to save the older wizard and figure out what’s happened to everyone in the city. And I have no idea what’s next. Sometimes it’s a little nerve-wracking, not knowing what’s coming (or how long it’ll take to get there), but most of the time it’s deliciously fun. At this point all I know is that they’re going underground. I guess I’ll have to wait till next week see what happens next… :P

At the prodding of a friend, I’ve started writing some new music for the hymn “Does the Journey Seem Long?” The melody actually just sort of came to me when I was walking home from stake presidency meeting this morning, and I wrote it down, fleshed it out, revised it a bit, and started adding in the other parts (since I want it to be SATB). I’ve really missed writing music. :)

The fact that it just came to me, though, makes me wonder: am I actually composing something new, or is my subconscious just regurgitating some tune I’ve heard in my past? I really don’t know. And I don’t know how I’d find out other than finishing the piece and getting it out there and then waiting to see if anyone comes up to me and says, “Hey, you stole that from so-and-so!” ;)

Anyway, for the technically curious, I’ve been writing the music out by hand in a Moleskine music notebook, but since I don’t have a piano or keyboard at hand to use as a reference, I’ve been using GarageBand’s musical keyboard to figure out what notes I’ve got flying around in my head. I’ve also been using BarFly to notate — and it’s so fast. I was able to enter the melody for the whole song in around thirty seconds, and that included being rusty on my ABC notation. It’s awesome. (I mainly use it to make sure I’m notating the rhythm correctly; I usually get it right, but every once in a while my brain will short-circuit and I’ll write a whole note when I really want a dotted half, or something odd like that.)

What usually happens at this point is that I forget about the composition and leave it half-baked for who knows how long, languishing in the back of the pantry until it turns greenish white from the mold and fuzz. Hopefully that won’t happen this time. I really need to just finish this hymn and upload it. I would do it tonight, but bedtime’s already here. :)

This morning I came up with an idea for an exercise I’m going to do soon: write seven plays in seven days. Short plays, of course. :) The primary constraint will be that on the first day, that play will have only one character, the second play will have two, the third will have three, and so on, all the way up to seven. I may add other constraints as well, to cook up some more creativity; we’ll see.

In another vein, a year ago I started writing War in Heaven, my novel about, well, the war in heaven. :) I got about three scenes in and then put it on the back burner since it wasn’t going where I wanted it to. And so it languished for the last I don’t know how many months. But today I felt it kicking around, begging for some attention. And so instead of revising Out of Time, I’m going to focus on War in Heaven instead. (Mainly because I still don’t know how I would revise Out of Time. :))

The existing three scenes/chapters were a good start, but they really took place halfway through the novel, and so I’m going to try returning to the beginning (where Lucifer’s still good) and starting from scratch. We’ll see how it goes.

Here I am writing plays, but do I actually read any? I realized today that if I don’t see what else is out there — and see it in script form, not just on stage — then I’m going to get into a rut where I’m effectively writing the same play over and over again. I can already sort of feel it happening, in fact. My four plays so far have widely different subject matter, but — to me, at least — they feel uncannily similar.

It’s not just playwriting, of course; in any creative area, you have to provide grist for the mill. Life gives you plenty of ideas for the content, but to study the craft, you really have to look at what else is out there. This morning I was reading Patrick Kavanaugh’s book Spiritual Lives of Great Composers and came across this quote about J.S. Bach:

Bach’s brother owned a set of compositions, which he forbade the younger Bach to use. Perhaps because it was placed off-limits, that musical manuscript grew irresistibly attractive to the young musician. And so for weeks, Bach stole the precious pages and hid them in his room, where he stayed up late night after night copying the musical scores by moonlight. When his brother discovered the copied pages, he angrily confiscated them. But Bach had already gleaned valuable lessons in composition, as well as discipline and devotion to music, from the clandestine exercise.

I bought a book of staff paper today and checked out some Beethoven and Mozart pieces so I can start copying scores. :) You see, it’s been so long since I’ve done any composition that I feel like I’ve almost completely lost touch with that world. I’ve been forgetting the language of music notation. And the structure and theory behind music? Merely a memory.

I’m not saying all that is necessary to write music. It’s not. But for me, without it I feel like I’m churning out the same thing over and over again, never growing or expanding, never deepening beyond the shallow waters in which I start. To get past that, I need to study the works of the great musicians. (That’s more important, in my opinion, than studying the theory. But I happen to be rather fond of music theory, too. :))

And I need to start reading plays. And poetry, if I ever want to break out of the mold I’ve been in for years. (I rarely read poetry, so it’s no surprise that my own poems sound like carbon copies. In fact, I think they’re almost all in one of two or three different meters. It’s sad.) Particularly poetry that isn’t like the poetry I write. And the more plays I read, the more my understanding of the guts of theatre will expand, and I’ll produce better work. It’s exciting. :)

(One of these days I do intend to start painting again, by the way…)

Earlier today Katherine posted “Toward a Mormon Renaissance” over at Mormon Renaissance (how fitting :)). It’s an essay by James Goldberg, one he read at the beginning of New Play Project’s “Thorns and Thistles” set of plays (which happened to be when my first play was performed, incidentally) (and I’m not just blogging about it because he mentions me in the essay, either :P). The essay — and the idea behind it — gives me goosebumps:

What I’m trying to say is that maybe it’s time for us to help change the world again. Look, I know it sounds arrogant to say that. I’m 24 years old, and the only times I can focus on theatre full-time are when I’ve saved up enough money to quit my day job for a few months. I mean, I don’t even have insurance — who am I to change the world? Who’s Katherine Gee or Ben Crowder? Who are any of the actors you’re going to see tonight? You know, most of them aren’t even trained actors. They’re just nice people who wanted to help us put on these plays. Who are we? Well, we’re Latter-day Saints. We’re people who have wrestled with some of life’s big and little issues and have been lucky enough to have help. We’re people who think and act a little differently than most of the country does. We’re people who know a little about God and a little about life. And we’re people who believe that’s enough to say something big. Are we going to make a difference? I hope so. And I take hope in history.

Beautiful. And let me just say again that I love New Play Project. It has the right feel to it (“right” being my own very subjective perspective, of course :)), and it’s just a really wonderful, beautiful, awesome thing. And it is changing the world. It’s not often that I find causes I really feel I can commit to and throw my lot in with full heart and soul, but New Play Project is one. I’m in it for the long haul. (Hopefully I’ll keep getting better as a playwright so that my plays keep getting accepted. ;) I’ve already got ideas for a couple more plays I’ll be submitting to the remaining festivals this year, actually, and tonight I started outlining one of them.)

I’ll wait a few more days before I give another update on rehearsals for Safe and Sound and Prodigal Son, by the way. (And purely for the historical record, with respect to that quote from James’ essay, Katherine Gee acted in my first play, and she and I are now directing Prodigal Son. Which James wrote. :) There’s connections all over the place, folks.)

Anyway, New Play Project has definitely found a warm spot in my heart, and I really feel that it’s a movement that is going to make a difference and change the world. And it’s unmistakably part of the Mormon renaissance.

Yesterday we held the first rehearsal for Prodigal Son (James Goldberg’s play that I’m assistant directing), and tonight’s the first Safe and Sound rehearsal. As a playwright, my role in rehearsals really is up to the director; some don’t care if I’m involved (with Snowstorm, for example, I didn’t go to a single rehearsal), others want close involvement. It is nice to be on hand to rewrite things if necessary, or to provide vision and explanation. (Though one would hope, of course, that all that would already be clear in the script. :))

Anyway, Prodigal Son is going to run about 45 minutes long — by far the longest play in the set — and so we’re rehearsing Monday through Friday for the next few weeks. It’s intense (not to mention that the actors need to be off-book by next Wednesday), and I still really have no idea what I’m doing as far as the directing goes, but I’m diving in headfirst and we’ll see how it turns out. :)

On days when I’m tired (like today), it seems like designing is a whole lot easier than writing. Drafting out the new stake leadership directory went smoothly, but even just the thought of writing was enough to make me want to take a nap. (Which is what I would do if I had time…) Not sure why that is.

Speaking of design, I just rediscovered f0nt.com, a site with Thai fonts. The SIPA collection is my favorite so far — not only do the fonts work in Photoshop and all, but they even have beautiful OpenType alternates. I’m in heaven. :)

Over the past few days I’ve been revising Safe and Sound, trying to gut out the flaws and replace them with new, living flesh. With every rewrite, though, it’s hard to tell if I’m actually making things any better. Sometimes I can tell that I am, but sometimes I have no idea, and I have to wait long enough for it to cool down so I can step back and look at it somewhat objectively. Or I get a third party to look at it. (Second party? I don’t know. :P)

Anyway, it’s been interesting to see how the play’s evolved so far. Originally it was about two guys, Dave and Martin. Dave’s dad had died. In the second draft, it was Martin’s dad who’d died. Then we had auditions, and not enough guys showed up, so we ended up casting a girl as Martin. That of course meant rewriting the script so it would work with a girl in that role. On Thursday we had a full company meeting and read through all the scripts, which was the first time I’d heard the new rewrite read aloud. I’d written the new draft pretty hastily, and the ending was fairly pathetic, so earlier today I rewrote the script once again, completely redoing the beginning and ending, and touching up the middle section as well. And now I’ve learned something new about Dave’s dad (I needed a reason Dave was close to Abbie’s dad — Abbie is Martin’s name now, though it was Gwendolyn in the last draft and it could very easily change in the next draft :)).

Writing really is a discovery process for me. I feel like I’m unearthing pre-existing characters and situations, not inventing them. It sounds weird, but that’s really how it is. And it’s awesome. :)

A couple weeks ago I designed some cards for stake conference:

I did it all in Photoshop, then got them printed double-sided at a normal business card size. A fun little project.