Alexander Hamilton

Every week I spend several hours driving back and forth to ballroom lessons. For the past month I’ve been using that time to listen to the Hamilton cast album from the hit Broadway show.

I’ve spent most of the time listening to Disc 1, which tells the story of Alexander Hamilton’s role in the fight for American independence. (I didn’t like Disc 2 as much because Hamilton went through some bad times after the Revolution.) The show is upbeat and exhilarating. (I had quite a shock when I found myself enjoying rap!).

Of course I’ve watched (twice) the PBS documentary about the making of Hamilton. I was particularly struck by some advice that Broadway legend Stephen Sondheim had for Lin-Manuel Miranda, the creator of Hamilton.

The amount of biographical detail that Miranda had to deal with was overwhelming – Hamilton led an extraordinary life packed with adventures. Sondheim’s advice was to look for events that lent themselves to musical treatment.

I have no idea how you would do that. But what intrigued me was that I wouldn’t have approached the creative process that way. I would have made a list of the important events in Hamilton’s life and turned each of them into a song.

Sondheim’s advice is (not surprisingly – he’s Broadway royalty!) much better. And there’s a lesson here that all writers can learn: Finding a focal point for a writing task should always be a priority.

That probably sounds obvious, but I don’t think it is. Many writers (including me!) think they’re finished when their content fills a piece of paper or a computer screen. That’s only the first step, folks. You have to decide what your purpose is and then shape your material to serve that purpose.

If you’re a lively and interesting person with lots of ideas and stories, your first draft is probably going to wander all over the place. (If your name is Jean Reynolds, you may have many drafts that behave the same way.)

No problem. In fact “the more, the merrier” is a great principle for writers. You want a rich storehouse of content to work from.

But at some point you have to find a focus – and be ruthless about it. You may have to cut, cut, cut. Perhaps you’ll have to turn your piece into two pieces. You’ll almost certainly need to do some reorganizing.

A good way to start the reshaping process is by asking yourself some questions. Do you want your piece to be brisk and informative? Tender and touching? Funny? Brilliant? Startling? Every sentence must match that purpose. Anything that starts to go off the rails has to be reshaped or removed.

Lin-Manuel Miranda’s purpose was to create a musical play about the life of Alexander Hamilton. That meant Miranda could never stray from the idea of music. Every incident in the play needed a musical setting. If an incident from Hamilton’s life didn’t lend itself to music, it had to go.

And what did Miranda end up with? One of the biggest hits that Broadway has ever seen. Let’s all make a resolution to be just as smart when we sit down to write!

 

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Instant Quiz ANSWER

The correct word is unusual. Don’t use unique, which means “one of a kind.” Unique is not a synonym for unusual. A thing is either unique or it’s not; there’s no “very.”

For example, my fingerprints are unique, but they’re not unusual. When you use both words to mean the same thing, you lose a useful distinction.

Our landscape designer came up with a very unusual design for our front yard.  CORRECT

What Your English Teacher Didn’t Tell You is available in paperback and Kindle formats from Amazon.com and other online booksellers.

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