Pulling the Thread

This weekend I was pretty close to finishing another draft of Swimming the River. There was one comment I had gotten from CW, my playwriting instructor, that I didn't understand, so I emailed her. She clarified her comment, and I decided to try to incorporate it.

This was the writing equivalent of pulling on a loose thread.

In order to incorporate her comment, I need to strengthen the relationship between two of my characters. This led me to a great idea that will not only help with with CW's idea, but will also strengthen the story as a whole: the male protagonist will propose to his girlfriend on stage.

But in order for this to work, the proposal needs to come early in the play. But that means it will change the tone of the rest of the story. The problem is that the next twenty pages or so contain a series of events that are crucial to the rest of the play, but which are based on two premises that will no longer be true:

1. Nothing important has happened in the play, yet.
2. My protagonists' relationship is on the rocks.

Having pulled on the thread of their relationship, I need to figure how to keep the rest of the play from coming undone. I don't think working around #2 will be a problem, but #1 might be.

In order to keep the audience's interest, a playwright needs to place events in the story so that events become bigger with time. A marriage proposal is pretty big, and I'm concerned that the subsequent twenty pages will seem unimportant by comparision.

At the moment, I'm letting the play sit in the back of my head. I've got three rehearsals this week, plus I had gay volleyball last night and dinner with my parents on Friday. So it will be the weekend at least before I get a chance to work on this agian.