interview with writer – alysha herrmann What was the process involved in developing your character?
Alysha wrote the monologue, Ben Thomas, I Love You How did you come up with your idea for your monologue? We were all given the theme of death and dying and I toyed around with the theme from a lot of different perspectives before finding the final idea for Ben Thomas, I Love You. I brainstormed all the personal experiences and feelings I‟d had in relation to death to discover which of those I most wanted to explore. I became really fascinated with the idea of a character that was holding onto something physical; a memory, a trinket they didn‟t want to (or couldn‟t) let go of. Thinking about the theme we‟d been given of death and dying, I started thinking about the times I‟d been to funerals in my own life and other people had talked about the deceased person as though they were a wonderful paragon of virtue – to the point I often didn‟t recognize the person they were talking about anymore. Which is where this monologue started to take shape – what if someone you loved died and shortly before they died or directly after they died you discover they‟d done something terrible; something so terrible that it matched none of your ideas of that person; something so terrible that it would make you hate them and call into question your whole life with them? How would you reconcile that? How would you talk and think about them? What would his or her funeral be like – someone that you‟d loved your entire life but now you hated? It was from those questions that the idea for Ben Thomas came.
In my early drafts I focused a lot more on Ben‟s character and telling his story and it was only through redrafting that Alison became clearer. Having said that, those early drafts were really important in clarifying who Ben was, to be able to find who Alison was and why this relationship mattered to her. It was really important to me that Alison didn‟t become a robotic character and I wanted her to have this sense of losing control and perhaps having actions that didn‟t quite make sense. I think sometimes when people write characters there‟s this really strict idea that the character has to be „consistent‟ which of course they do, but I think it‟s also really important to remember that real people aren‟t always consistent, sometimes we don‟t make sense and our actions aren‟t easy to explain. Real life and real people are complex and we never get the full story, which is something I really wanted people to feel with Alison. What was the most challenging part of the process of scriptwriting? The most challenging part of writing Ben Thomas, I Love You was grappling with my own self-doubt and finding ways to overcome my inner censor. During the writing process I found myself deciding that the monologue was going to be bad and poorly written before I‟d ever put pen to paper and that was really crippling for me. Once I overcame that, the whole process was a lot easier and a lot faster! What advice would you give to aspiring scriptwriters? Tell the story only you can tell. Reach out to your peers and the wider arts industry, for connection and for development. Engage with life from the core of who you are – that‟s how you‟ll find great material and tell stories that are meaningful and relevant to others.