Dramatist Q&A with Craig Carnelia

Q: Once you have an idea, how do you proceed? Do you take notes? Do you outline? Do you plunge right in?

A: When I have an idea for a show (as with Is There Life After High School?, Cowboys & Lawyers and my current project, Poster Boy), or when I have agreed to join someone else in their idea (as with Working, Three Postcards, Sweet Smell of Success, Imaginary Friends), I like to have a good amount of time with the material before starting to actually write music and/or lyrics. This may take the form of living with a draft of a script, or a piece of source material, or (if the piece is an original), inventing the characters and the story with the bookwriter. There may also be extensive research involved in devising the story or in simply becoming accustomed to the world of the play. I will make frequent notes while doing any or all of the above. The notes may be as literal as: "this character should sing here and this is why," or as impressionistic as: "I think the music for this show should sound like..."   

Q: Do you have a routine? A regular time when you write?

A: I don't have a specific time of day when I write, but generally the daylight hours tend to work best for me. When I'm in the thick of writing on any given song, it's harder to put it aside, so the hours tend to be longer, and even the time away from the song will be filled with thoughts of the music and lyrics that are taking shape. When I was younger, I sometimes felt that this was a problem or a nuisance. I now find it to be one of the great pleasures of the profession. If I like what I'm writing, I'm excited to be walking around with a half-made song in my head. If I don't like what I'm writing, I stop writing it.   

Q: When you begin a first draft, do you write straight through? Do you write in order? What's your process?

A: I've written scores "in order" and I've jumped around from spot to spot, based on enthusiasm, whim, anticipated degree of difficulty, or at times, because of some link (musical or thematic) between one song and another. To answer the "which comes first" question, invariably the "reason to sing" will come first. Then, a few lines of lyric or perhaps a full page of ideas and phrases that may or may not even end up being in the song. Most often, the few lines or the page of sundries will start to suggest music. It has become important in my process to not go to the piano until I've done this. For me, the music ends up being more visceral and more interesting if I stay away from the piano until I hear something in my head. Once I've done that, I feel I can be trusted to work at the piano, but not before. The lyric will then get written after the music has started taking shape. Often, I will know what's going to happen in the song, what sort of movement the character will go through. Sometimes, I don't know this or the character surprises me. This combination of planning and "not knowing" seems to work best for me in lyric writing. I think good lyricists are list makers who are also willing to jump off a cliff. Then, there are endless applications of craft in the work; the weight of the syllables on the music, rhyme, clarity to the ear, freshness in the language, fidelity to the character's frame of reference, level of education and intellect. Sometimes, all of this just flows. But most often, the lyric writing is a slower process than the composing.   

Q: Do you have any particular principles or practices about composing for character?

A: In most cases, the characters have never said what they are saying before. Because of that, they are inventing the language of both the words and the music as they sing the song. The music, in turn, should be as expressive of who they are and how they feel as the words. This aspect of the music may happen naturally, meaning that a character may just tell you how he or she should sound. Or it may happen through conscious thought and much experimentation. Separate from my work as a writer, I've been an acting teacher in musical theater for more than twenty years, and I find that the link between acting and writing is at its most intense early in the writing process, when exploring how a song should sound and feel. In a sense, the actor will be trying to put himself in a reality where the song can feel as if it's being invented at the moment. Isn't this exactly where we are when we have the "reason to sing" but haven't yet found the words and music to give voice to it? At this moment, acting and writing are mirror-images of one another.   

Q: How extensively do you rewrite, and is that mostly before or during rehearsal?

A: I do a lot of rewriting. As you learn more about the characters, or when the structure of the play shifts, rewriting becomes a major part of our job. In some songs, the music may stay the same while the lyric is overhauled. In others, whole sections of music and lyrics are added or subtracted. On my current project, I've written two different songs for each of three separate spots. In two of those cases, I just decided I could write a better song. In the third, the audience response at our first workshop showed me the necessity. Writing two songs for a spot is a common experience. I've done it on every show I've written. In Sweet Smell of Success, Marvin Hamlisch and I wrote four different songs for one particular spot, and I've heard similar stories from my composer friends about their own shows. Questions that come up in rehearsal tend to involve either singability or the forward motion of the story. The first of these issues usually causes minor changes. The second can lead to cutting, replacing or editing songs.   

Q: What do you do when you get stuck?

A: When I get stuck, I take time away from it. That could be ten minutes or it could be a day. Also when stuck, I consciously glance up at a quote I have framed over my desk. It's from Einstein and it says: "The intellect has little to do on the road to discovery. There comes a leap of consciousness, call it intuition or what you will, and the solution comes to you and you don't know how or why." I often find that just taking a breath and letting the solution occur to you is more useful than reducing this oddball profession to hard labor. I wrote a passage for Sydney Falco in Sweet Smell of Success that went: "It's time to step up and drink And not even think You don't have to think to be smart." I firmly believe that this is sometimes the best way to go about the business of making up songs.   

Q: What's the most important craft advice you can give?

A: The best advice I can give is to trust yourself. Choose shows that fascinate you, and when faced at any given moment with a bold choice or a safe one, choose bold.