OK, I've missed a couple days but not as many as it appears from the non-blogging. I've been working on this around 10-11 at night every night, and I block my internet at that time, so it doesn't chime very easily with blogging about it. Here's another chunk.
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Andrew needs to explain a difficult problem to a student who is not yet ready for the material.
JACOB: Let's go through them again. Because your friends are exchanging favours with you. Because generosity makes you look strong. Because your friends are your relatives.
Now Andrew is the recalcitrant student.
Jacob takes the letter out.
JACOB: Clinetics Limited. Know them? (Andrew shakes his head.) They're a genetic testing company. A little low-end compared to your people.
ANDREW faintly: It's not an area of the market we have much contact with.
JACOB gets a cutlery knife from the drawer and cuts open the top of the envelope.
ANDREW: Son,
Jacob waits.
A very challenging student.
Long pause.ANDREW: have you ever seen a Hitchcock film?
JACOB: What?
ANDREW: Do you know Alfred Hitchcock, the film director?
JACOB: Yes, I know Alfred Hitchcock, the film director.
ANDREW: Do you know what a MacGuffin is?
JACOB shakes his head.
ANDREW: So in all of his films, there's some object that the characters are chasing. A briefcase, or a necklace, or a coffin. And they are all very interested in that object. The whole plot of the film revolves around it. So Hitchcock called it the MacGuffin.
Saul enters and stands unobserved.
But the point about the MacGuffin is, that there is no point. It can be anything. It itself doesn't actually matter. It's just a hook to hang the plot on.
You... want a lot of things. You want certainty and trust, and you want to understand everything, you have all these questions and you want to put them to rest. The answer is not in that letter. Don't open it.
Trust me.
JACOB: Why should I?
ANDREW: Because I'm your father.
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I've been reading Sarah Kane. I'm not sure I learn much from it, but she makes me feel appropriately inferior: her writing is dazzling.
3 comments:
Hmmmm....intriguing. I really want to read this play... sounds like it's a great story.
Turning off your internet while writing is one of the best things you could ever do.
Don't know Sarah Kane, but I love reading people who make me feel inferior as a writer. It's the masochist in me.
One of the best pieces of advice I got on my creative writing MA was to read first novels ... the theory being they were good enough to get published and you could (or at least the tutor said he could) take them apart fairly easily and figure out how they did what they did.
With that in mind, maybe look at some first plays from writers you like. Really enjoying what you've got up here.
I prefer a MacGuffin to a McMuffin.
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