So, I've been writing this play. The concept is absolute brillance, it's intriuging, it's interesting, it's exciting, but I can't come up with a decent plot line.
The basic idea is that there's a skeptic (Harriet) who challenges a magician and Houdini buff to prove that Houdini believed in spiritualism and could (or did) send a message to his wife. I use magic tricks, mentalism, all that fun stuff, because the idea is that it should be unclear at the end whether belief is enough. Is it possible to just believe in something? I would say that whether or not Harriet believes at the end of the play or not should be up for debate amongst audience members.
Here's my problem. I don't know why it's happening. What would make a skeptic force a believer to prove it to them? What would make a believer agree to go along with it?
I do not want a love interest. Too much of a side problem, and not what I'm dealing with. Sometimes I think I should just make Harriet a guy and get it over with, but for some reason, she remains a chick.
I almost wonder if I have to raise the stakes and make them bigger people- they're both small time. If I were to make them bigger, then it could be a money thing (magicians did this all the time- Houdini, Joseph Dunningan). BUT, when I make them bigger and more knowledgable, I run into The DaVinci Code problem: because I was smarter than Dan Brown's projected audience, I ended up knowing everything twenty pages before the crack team of professionals.
I need a Watson, I need someone Holmes can explain the mystery to and at the same time the audience members. At the same time, I want it to be accessible to people who might know, I want them to be able to participate in the conversation too. Because generally, that's me in the audience, I go in to something knowing all about it, and then the writer lets me down by leaving out the good stuff in favour of the obvious.
I'm worried I might have to drag Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in further than I might want to go. ACD and Houdini were good friends, to a point. Doyle's wife was the medium who is most commonly known only as a random medium who gave the reading from Houdini's mother that was in English, angering Houdini because his mother only spoke Yiddish.
It's not got massive holes, it just needs direction, and I need someone who knows me and magic a little better to smack me in the face and tell me where to go from here. I don't have time to let the thing fester until one day I finish it. Prof. Gandalf says I'm looking for perfection when all I need is something that works, even if it's crap. Well, yeah, but the thing is that it's not going to work for me, until I find the perfection. I know me, I need factual, waterproof plots. What I have now is waterproof, it's factual, but it's not quite engaging, yet. That's what I'm looking for.
OK, well, now I have to go work with children. I'm not dreading that or anything.