A Quote by George Pierce Baker
In the best farce today we start with some absurd premise as to character or situation, but if the premises be once granted we move logically enough to the ending.
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The myriad-minded man, our, and all men's, Shakespeare, has in this piece presented us with a legitimate farce in exactest consonance with the philosophical principles and character of farce, as distinguished from comedy and from entertainments. A proper farce is mainly distinguished from comedy by the licence allowed, and even required, in the fable, in order to produce strange and laughable situations. The story need not be probable, it is enough that it is possible.
Typically, when you're with your friends, premises are coming up left and right. But when you're on stage, you must create the premise. So you have to create the premise, paint the picture and then deliver the punch line.
No, you don't have to start your play with a premise. You can start with a character or an incident, or even a simple thought. This thought or incident grows, and the story slowly unfolds itself. You have time to find your premise in the mass of your material later. The important thing is to find it.
I'm not a fast writer, and I find the process of writing a first draft to be painful and frustrating. Usually, I start with a character, a premise, and some image that gives me a particular feeling.
With any television series - and it's something that is taken for granted with movies because you have the whole arc within two hours - you establish who the character is and it's a two-dimensional version, or if you're lucky, a two and a half-dimensional character. Once you establish that, you can move forward and break all the rules. Once the audience has accepted who the person is, then you can do the exact opposite. What makes it funny and interesting is doing the opposite.
If the world had two gods, it would surely go to ruin-this is the first premise. Now it is known that it has not gone to ruin-this is the second premise. From these premises the conclusion must of necessity follow, that is, the denial of two gods.
I've always admired the tradition of storytellers who sat in the public market and told their stories to gathered crowds. They'd start with a single premise and talk for hours - the notion of one story, ever-changing but never-ending.
I was lucky enough to be able to do comedies, dramas, completely different parts. At the beginning, when you start you have a fantasy that you could be somebody else. Which is absurd. That's part of being an actor. It's your voice, it's the way you move, it's your body, even if you transform it, you play with it.
Once you start compromising, once you start trying to keep cost lower, this is not luxury. Luxury is wanting the best and using the best materials with which to do that.
So much is made about the beginnings of ballet careers, the rosebud, and then once the petals and leaves start falling off, is it beautiful anymore? Some people think it is; some people don't. The expectation is to focus on the very beautiful parts, not the ending.
Some authors, when starting a novel, imagine a place first. Others, a character starts taking shape in their head. I start with a hook, a situation, a 'what if.
Some authors, when starting a novel, imagine a place first. Others, a character starts taking shape in their head. I start with a hook, a situation, a 'what if.'
Trust is an absurd phenomenon, logically absurd. That's why logic always says love is blind, although love has its own eyes, far more deep-going...still, to logic it is blind.
That's the reason some schools of thinking don't rule out a destruction of the Chinese military potential before the situation grows worse than it is today. It's bad enough now.
I start with an image, then I go from the image toward exploring the situation. Then I write a scene, and from the scene I find the character, from the character I find the larger plot. It's like deductive reasoning - I start with the smaller stuff and work backward.
As Karl Marx once noted: 'Hegel remarks somewhere that all great, world-historical facts and personages occur, as it were, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second as farce.' William Jennings Bryan and the Scopes trial was a tragedy. The creationists and intelligent design theorists are a farce.
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