Still at the start of our playwriting unit, it easily shows how little I know about writing for the stage. Poetry and fiction I had experience reading and writing, so went into those units with some prior knowledge.

Playwriting, on the other hand, is a completely new experience. At the unit’s start, we began discussing dialogue. Even in fiction, I avoid dialogue. There’s no real reason for this, only that I’m not so comfortable with it as with other things. In more ways than one, I was (and still am, to a certain extent) out of my comfort zone.

Over the past  weeks of playwriting, I’ve learned more about playwriting (and dialogue) than I knew there was to learn. It’s been crazy to be taught an entirely new topic, especially after being so immersed in our past fiction unit.

I’ve also had to start thinking about the topic of my play. Technically speaking, it won’t be my first, as I attempted a play for my SOTA portfolio, but it will be my first with any real instruction. Looking back on that play, I now know I formatted it entirely wrong, and can see it lacks any sort of real plot. I’m here, though, so it must have been alright.

In trying to choose topics for various prompts, I found myself thinking of what makes something for the stage rather than the page, which we discussed in class. Should I throw myself into dialogue completely, and embrace my lack of knowing what to do? Should I think of past experiences in my life for inspiration before anything else? It’s difficult to think of ideas when you have to.

Perhaps it’s because of how extensively we spoke of plot during fiction, but I do think it’s getting easier for me to pull out story ideas when asked. Not to say it’s easy, however. I can confidently say that I’ve become more comfortable in my writing in my past seven months in CW. It’s because of this I’m not all that scared to be starting our playwriting unit. If I had been thrown into playwriting at the year’s start, I would have been lost and confused, but now I know I’ll be alright.

Being more confident in my own writing than I was at the beginning of the year is great, and I already know that this will help me through every english-based class I ever have, but perhaps more important than that is the friendships I’ve formed with other creative writers. From the beginning of the year, myself and the other CW freshmen have gotten along incredibly well. Without that sense of community, I don’t know how I possibly could have gotten through the first few months of school and even made it this far. Fortunately, I had their support, so now I’m here, and I’m very happy about it.

Zai Deriu, class of 2022