Though I had improved my understanding of story structure, pacing, and the demands of other mediums, I still wanted to improve my core writing skills. My Intro to Creative Writing course, which I took part in during the second semester of my Junior year, helped me to experiment with form, language, and metaphor through prose and poetry.
Epilogos is a “closet drama”, which is essentially a theater script that is mean to be read rather than performed. The idea for this script came to me as a result of a writing exercise. I was amused by the idea of Zeus as a washed-up celebrity. I wanted to use this piece to explore the disintegration of his ego, and the idea that not even a god’s legacy lasts forever.
This closet drama was a challenging piece to write. To make it work, I had to research further into mythology than I had ever done. I then needed to integrate these elements naturally and flesh out the description of the setting. Despite this, I enjoyed the reference-laden dialogue I was able to write with the snarky asides thrown in. The true biggest challenge was the conflict and progression. Zeus couldn’t just rant for several pages. He needed to come to an understanding – a revelation. It took me a revision to get a clearer arc together.
I had honestly never heard of a closet drama before this assignment. Writing it taught me how much of the forms I had worked with tended to intersect. A piece of prose can have the same structure as a play, yet still carry unique benefits of being a form to be read rather than performed. The descriptions did not need to be bound to a stage. They could be longer, more indulgent. They needed to be if the reader were to gain as much appreciation from it than they would the stage. Much like my transition into film writing, this piece helped me to apply new guiding principles to familiar practices, and it is this piece that helped me prepare for the evocative work I would need to write for my podcast.