Write What You Fear

Keeping your plays fresh, exciting, and dangerous.

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You’ve seen me say this before:

While others say “write what you know”, I say “write what you fear.”

Because fear doesn’t just build deep layered characters, it builds such strong visual worlds with juicy juicy plots. It warps your hands when you're typing. It makes you avoid being safe. It puts you in uncomfortable realities.

And that's the point!

For me, it’s a chance for me to imagine what one of the me’s in one of the parallel universes would do in this very situation, as he confronts his fears head on. And THAT is exciting.

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AFTERTASTE

In my play AFTERTASTE, the fear wasn’t love.
It was what love rots into when no one is looking. Disgust vs desire and how two things can be vastly different but very much alike. And what would people say if they knew.

Writing AFTERTASTE gave me goosebumps. Not just because it’s so sexually graphic but it was so real. It was lived truths.

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POLY

In POLY, specifically Polygon, the fear wasn’t cults.
It was being brainwashed and stuck in one and never being able to find a way out. The very maze that I so convincing created made one of the me’s enjoy being trapped in it. And that was scary.

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We Are Gathered Here Today In Loving Memory of John Paul Parker Smith

In John Paul Parker Smith, it wasn't about death/grief.
It was about losing yourself in the process of healing and never being able to pull yourself out of it. Ultimately, hurting the people around you while you hurt yourself.

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Why do I find fear so potent?

Fear gives you stakes.
It gives you fractures.
It makes your characters lie.
It makes your characters beg for life.
It makes your structure resist, twist, break, exactly when it should.
And then you keep pushing and pushing and pushing until it snaps.

When you write what you fear, you stop chasing "truth" like it’s something pure.
You start living in the very real cracks of what we feel, what we witness, and what we experience as people in this unforgiving world.

And that’s where the good shit is!

“We write because we’re not satisfied with reality.”
- Lauren Gunderson (American Playwright & Screenwriter)

So no, I don’t write what I know.
I write the things I’d rather not look at for too long. It’s my own process of exploring a fictional world in hopes that one day, when this fear comes to life, I will hopefully know how to navigate this. Confrontational. Poetic. Liberating.

Write what you fear.

Try it.

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Curious about AFTERTASTE?

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