The Theatre Classroom — Revisiting a Legend of the West

April 27th, 2012

Advice on writing from successful author Dorothy M. Johnson

As you probably noticed, I have not written anything this year about being in a show. Your observation is correct. After my fall last February, I have been slowly recouping. You see, when you are as old as I am, it takes time!  Also, there were no shows featuring old ladies, so I have spent the time catching up on reading, dusting, and working with The Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at the University of Montana (MOLLI) as part of their School of Extended & Lifelong Learning, but that doesn’t mean I will not be performing.

One of Montana’s revered authors is Dorothy M. Johnson. She was a Montana journalist, manager of the Montana Press Association in the 1950s, and author of fiction-turned-film, including The Hanging Tree, A Man Called Horse, and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.

Our public library has a fundraiser each year celebrating “Writers We Cherish,” among them A. B. Guthrie.  This year it is Dorothy’s turn and I have the privilege of presenting a reading featuring her words on a myriad of subjects from firearms brought from Greece and hidden in her girdle to being asked to dance at a “stag” party (she reluctantly declined — she couldn’t dance!).  She was not only quite a character but a wonderful storyteller as well. I am honored to be presenting her words.  It should be a fun evening.

I know many of you not only teach drama but English, and I would like to share what she said about writing:

"Everyone has a story to tell. And some of them ask me for writing tips. I only have a few.

The important thing is that a story starts with an emotion in the writer. I don’t think about the plot first. I find an emotion. I see or hear something that strikes an emotional cord, usually pity or admiration. And that’s where I start. It’s harder that way. Maybe. Inefficient, perhaps. But that’s the way I do it. Sometimes the end comes to my mind before the beginning does. So I start with the ending and go backward from there.

A fiction writer translates his emotions and creates people. This may be peculiar these days, but I must respect the characters I invent. I won’t associate with anyone I can’t stand. If there isn’t something about them I respect, I won’t have them in my mind.

As writers we become these people, and this is sometimes a tormenting experience. I have been Indian warriors and cowboys and homesteaders’ wives and gold miners and captives of Indians. I have been bloody-handed outlaws and the grim men who strung them up, the victim and the victor, the pursued and pursuer. I have been defeated — but never 'beat.' Twice I have been killed. A writer who creates characters is every one of them. This is why we write. We get away from our own little world with its known dangers and into a boundless, great world where anything can happen. There is no escape so splendid as the escape of a writer dreaming over a sheet of paper."