Notes from "Cutting, Tweaking & Rehearsing" with Guillermo Verdecchia

QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER WHEN RE-WRITING YOUR PLAY

• Does every line do some work for you?


• Can it do more work?


• Does every line move forward?


• Are you telling too much?
  
• Are you telling us enough?


• Does the character need to say this or does your audience need to know it?


• Are you walking us through the thoughts or allowing us to join the dots, make leaps of intellection?


• Would a transition be better replaced by a pause or silence?


• Are you showing SIGNIFICANT ACTION?


• Is your inarticulate dialogue eloquent or simply inarticulate?


• Is your spare dialogue rich or empty?


• Is there a payoff?


• Does the payoff work?


• Do these words belong to this speaker?


• Do these words belong in this play?


• Has the play outgrown this idea, image, line, metaphor, scene?


• Do actors thrive, grow, struggle productively with this text or do they wilt under it?