• Standard:
1.9 Revise text to highlight the individual voice, improve sentence variety and style, and enhance subtlety of meaning and tone in ways that are consistent with the purpose, audience, and genre.
2.1 Write fictional or (auto) biographical narratives.
• Assignment Name: Young California Writers Project
• Objective of Assignment: To write a play
• Reflective Prompt: What does this work mean to me?

I was in the Young California Writers Project (Magic Theatre) for eight weeks. During these eight weeks, I created an individual piece — a play, which met Standard 2.1 to write fictional narratives. I said each play was our individual piece, because each students had their own ideas. At the very beginning of the play writing period, I was struggling about what I was going to write about. I thought of several ideas for my play, and I even tried to start with one of my ideas, but then I felt that my idea didn’t fit in my mind. Therefore, I changed my mind and created another piece called Angel vs. Angel, which I chose to be my best English work. Since the goal was to write a play, I needed to express and describe everything in dialogue, in order to let my audience be clear about what I'm talking about. Hence, my whole play is a dialogue between characters. There were two times the actors came to have a little rehearsal with us, so that we could roughly see how our plays turned out on stage. I met Standard 1.9 to revise a text by revising my play. I always stayed on track with my play, whenever I felt like it should be changed; I revised it sentence by sentence.

This was my first time to write a "real" play. A real play, here, means a play that actually can be performed on stage. I had a great experience during this time period and it was unforgettable. I learned a lot within these eight weeks. I learned that the most important and useful strategy to write a play is to write down whatever you have on your mind first: Do not think too much. Just write it down, and then you will know what's next. Besides learning strategies for writing a play, I actually learned the relationship among writers, actors, and directors. It is so important and mysterious. My play, which was not that interesting when I read it, after it was directed by the director and acted by the actors, turned out totally different from what I wrote. For example, the last conversation between Nick and Ms. Carter:

Ms. Carter: Nick, you look different, but I can’t say the difference.

Nick: Oh, come on, you guys. Don’t pretend to be a stranger to make me laugh.

I didn’t expect that these two lines could be performed in a funny way. This is something that you never could expect.

See my best work in English

Click Angel vs. Angel