{"id":14520,"date":"2025-03-06T15:57:30","date_gmt":"2025-03-06T15:57:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/niemanstoryboard.org\/?p=14520"},"modified":"2025-03-06T15:57:31","modified_gmt":"2025-03-06T15:57:31","slug":"editor-learns-new-narrative-form-writing-musicals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/niemanstoryboard.org\/2025\/03\/06\/editor-learns-new-narrative-form-writing-musicals\/","title":{"rendered":"An editor learns a new narrative form: writing musicals"},"content":{"rendered":" \n
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Every story needs an opening number. In journalism, there\u2019s your lede; in musicals, it’s the explosive early minutes telling the audience about the world they’ve entered. My latest chapter began with a simple conversation over coffee and the shocking notion that I didn’t need permission to reinvent myself as a writer.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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I started my career at The Daily Beast during the Tina Brown era, when wild cover stories made news and billionaires threw around digital outlets like Slinkys. After the website\u2019s merger with veteran print publication Newsweek, I was editing culture stories and celebrity interviews.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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Being an editor, I learned, requires unnatural selflessness. After layoffs and Newsweek\u2019s first (but not last) burial, I threw myself into the solitary role of a freelance writer and editor, consulting on magazine gigs and writing about the potpourri an erratic generalist embraces: travel, running, almond milk. <\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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A couple years into this sequence, I got the itch to write in new venues. It started with a short film script. Then plays. I\u2019d always liked musical theater \u2014 not quite in the \u201clistened to ‘Rent’ <\/em>on repeat as a sad-eyed teenager\u201d way, but enough to appreciate it as an art form. However, I didn\u2019t read music, and the idea of writing a song was a laugh.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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And yet all it took was one coffee meeting with a new friend, a theater writer who cracked open the world: \u201cYou don\u2019t need to play an instrument,\u201d she said. \u201cYou can still learn how to write a musical.\u201d I could learn. What a concept. How often do we wait for permission to move forward?<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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From lyric lessons to the BMI Workshop<\/h2>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n
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I enrolled in a lyrics-writing class with Adam Gwon<\/a>, a crash course in perfect rhymes and AABA song form<\/a>, scrounging together enough lyrics to apply for the BMI Lehman Engel Musical Theatre Workshop<\/a>, a prestigious writing haven recently known as the launchpad for EGOT winner Robert Lopez (“Avenue Q,” “The Book of Mormon”) and Kristen Anderson-Lopez (“Frozen” and “Frozen 2”) and where Lynn Ahrens met Stephen Flaherty (\u201cRagtime,\u201d \u201cOnce on This Island\u201d). Hitting submit on that application sloughed off a chunk of my editor identity. Then I got in. Suddenly, I was surrounded by composers and lyricists who not only played “Rent” <\/em>on repeat, but wanted to debate the prodigious creative output of Stephen Sondheim versus Andrew Lloyd Webber deep into the night. They scared me and I adored them and we could learn how to write musicals together.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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I felt out of depth and at home \u2014 just like my early days in a newsroom. Both were incubators for ideas, safe spaces to try, fail, nerd out. The first year was full of difficult assignments, like turning a scene from “A Streetcar Named Desire” <\/em>into a song for Blanche DuBois. (Go ahead and try it. Blanche really <\/em>doesn\u2019t want to sing.) One week my writing partner and I turned a quaint New York Times profile of a retiring lighthouse keeper<\/a> into a moody ballad. In the workshop, a singer performs your song and your fellow writers give feedback. (This intimidating workshop environment was memorably put on film in “Tick, Tick\u2026Boom!”) Imagine your editor reading aloud their Google Doc comments and qualms about your story in an editorial meeting. Honest feedback is intoxicating and awful, a shot of adrenaline that somehow knocks you out cold.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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Adapting a story for the stage<\/h2>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n
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Yet you keep learning. Isn\u2019t the point to always keep learning? In the workshop\u2019s second year, members test their structure skills by adapting an existing property into a musical. My composer partner Ron Passaro and I turned the TV series “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” into a singing and dancing spectacle. One challenge was deciding if Midge, the comedienne heroine, would sing as fast as she talked. (Answer: Yes.) Another was deciding what story elements were important to keep, and which should stay on screen. The relationship between Midge and manager Susie Myerson remained the heart of the show, and in our song \u201cYou Got the Goods,\u201d Susie convinces Midge to give her new career a shot: \u201cEverybody lives \/ Everybody dies \/ Don\u2019t you wanna be \/ The kinda broad who tries?\u201d<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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A crash course in musical narrative structure<\/h2>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n
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Playbill for “Gypsy.”<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n<\/div> \n
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Musical structure can be intensely, almost annoyingly formulaic. With so much action onstage, an audience can easily lapse into confusion or, worse, boredom. So you need an opening number that reflects the tone and style of the entire show. You need the protagonist to sing their \u201cI want\u201d song in the first few scenes so the audience can begin tracking their journey. You need a big number before intermission, to ratchet tension and urge people to return to their seats after their bathroom visit. You need a penultimate \u201c11 o\u2019clock number\u201d to showcase the climax of the musical and lead character\u2019s a-ha moment. One classic example is \u201cRose\u2019s Turn\u201d<\/a> from “Gypsy,” in which beleaguered Rose, currently embodied by Audra McDonald in a Broadway revival, has a breakdown and breakthrough over five enthralling minutes. The show\u2019s themes, storytelling, and action coalesce. Audra earns her standing ovation. The audience is sated.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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