A&K Day 9&10 Recaps

Did I miss another day? Oops.

Yesterday was probably my favourite live-livewriting day yet. I started the session without an outline at all... my notes said "Arkady..." and that was it. So I asked where we should go today, and I got "the zoo", and things took off from there. I honestly had no idea where I was going to go with the chapter until the very end, and because people were watching me write, I couldn't craft something clever and pretend it was intentional all along. Thus, Arkady and the polar bears.

Today's will be a lot more restrained, and even treading into the realm of "serious", which brings me to the next big question about livewriting: can it be used for drama, as opposed to comedy? I think having the ability to make jokes about suggestions definitely helps make comedy possible, but at the same time, the sequence yesterday where Arkady and run away and was trapped and in danger... that was, I think, somewhat tense. I think if you had a good enough outline and a strong desire to not be jokey, you could turn livewriting into a really intense experience. Almost a suspense thriller, I think. If, as the writer, you saw the audience NOT wanting the character to do something, you could do it just to annoy them... or drag things out until they were on the verge of a nervous breakdown. When you write normally, you have to guess that those things... but livewriting lets you see it as it happens.