And this isn’t simply a dry, technical point, or a matter of word-count. Novels are broadly a process of addition while plays are one of subtraction. The analogy isn’t perfect of course (and I spend just as much time cutting in novels as I do in plays), but it does feel just about right to me. An initial sketch is added to, coloured, scratched at, and textured until it resembles the thing that its meant to be. The novelist, on the other hand, builds up in layers. So, like a sculptor, the playwright constantly chisels away at their slab of raw material until what’s left is the most economical way possible of saying what they want to say. You can feel the audience squirm a little. You can feel it go clunk in the auditorium. Anyone who has ever been to the theatre will instinctively know when a line is overwritten – when it says too much. I think it was the writer Simon Stephens who likened playwrights to sculptors and novelists to painters. Writing For The Page vs Writing For The Stage But Jess isn’t alone in this fragile, in-between place … One night she sneaks out to explore the empty playground she’s longed to visit, where she discovers a beautiful impossibility: a magical garden wrought of ice. Her only friend is a boy in a coma, to whom she tells stories. She lives in a world of shadows and hospitals, peeking at the other children in the playground from behind curtains. Today Guy chats to us about writing for the page vs writing for the stage…. The Ice Garden was released on the 4th January 2018 published by the lovelies at Chicken House as will sweep you away into a gorgeous middle grade world. Today I can’t wait to share a brilliant guest post from the wonderful Guy Jones in celebration of his gorgeous debut The Ice Garden.
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