Finally getting around to posting the video of Sausalypso Houseboat Wars Murder Mystery, the play I wrote and directed earlier this spring. Watching it on the screen can’t match the energy of being there in person, but it’s still fun. Replete with a pretend pirate, a greedy developer with a maniacal laugh, his vengeful ex-wife and his hiccuping henchman, not to mention Sausalypso’s first ever woman police chief.
Here are some highlights — in case you don’t have time to watch the whole thing. 🙂
Scene 3 (The Greedy Developer and the Liberal Police Chief) 7:24
Scene 4 (The Vengeful Ex-Wife Confronts the Mistress) 12:28
Scene 6 (Eviction Raid) 24:20 (includes sword fight)
While directing my play, “Sausalypso Houseboat Wars Murder Mystery,” I was reading Save the Cat Writes a Novel, in which author Jessica Brody lays out the various “beats” in a novel, one of which is “All is Lost.”
Three days before Opening Night, when three cast and crew members got covid, that was how I felt. All is lost.
Every evening, I do pushups and back exercises, and on this particular evening, as I gritted my way through my routine, I sobbed quietly. How could we possibly open our show in three days with two cast members and our stage manager out? We couldn’t.
Oh, and all four shows were sold out. Which was great, except a full house without a full cast is not great.
We were going to have to cancel a show I’d been working on day and night for months, years if you count writing and rewriting the script.
I was, as I said in an email to the cast the next day, ready to impale myself on the Toys-R-Us sword from our play.
In Save the Cat, “All is Lost” is followed by “The Dark Night of the Soul,” but then, “Gathering the Team,” “Dig Down Deep,” and “Executing the Plan.”
After a brief, but necessary wallow in despair, I shifted into problem solving mode and after several calls that evening with Jeff, our technical director, and Camilla, the producer/events coordinator for the Tamalpais Community Services District, we came up with a plan to push Opening Night from March 3 to March 10, which would have been our closing weekend, and add two shows the following weekend. This created problems with the tickets, but there was no other option.
The next day, three more cast members notified me they had covid and on Saturday came our seventh. By then we had switched the show dates, canceled our in-person rehearsals, and were practicing on zoom. Crossing our fingers that enough of us would be healthy to mount the show on our new Opening Night.
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This story begins nine years ago, when I suggested to my wife that we attend the murder mystery dinner theater at our local community center in Tam Valley. In 2013, I got married and moved from Berkeley to Tam Valley, where my wife has lived for thirty years. She’d been to many events at the community center, but never the murder mystery.
We sat at one of ten round tables that seat ten and ate dinner before the show. During a break in the play, each table is asked to name a table captain and identify the suspect they believe committed the murder, and why. Later they get a chance to stand up and make their accusations.
We sat at a table with the wife of one of the actors and I talked about how I wrote and performed in a theater troupe back in the 1980s. She suggested I try out, and the rest, as they say, is history. Since then, I’ve acted in seven murder mysteries with the Tam Valley Players, and wrote and directed one six years ago.
When the pandemic began, we had just finished “Death of a Hot Sauce Salesman,” and I pitched my idea for a play set during the houseboat wars in Sausalito. I got the green light and started writing the play, not realizing how profoundly the pandemic would change our lives and how long it would be before live theater came back. The upside of the delay was that I rewrote the script many times, and kept tightening it, making it better.
The play features a greedy developer with the maniacal laugh, his vengeful ex-wife, defiant daughter, pregnant ex-mistress, and hiccupping henchman, not to mention a pretend pirate, peacemaking woman police chief, and hippie comedian. Of course, there’s a sword fight. Because, you know, pirates. Here are some photos from the rehearsals and the show. (And please note the fabulous set painting by Melodi Zaret, an artist I met playing pickleball.)
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Though the play is a farce, all made up, it is based on real events in the 1970s, when city leaders tried on multiple occasions to evict houseboaters, citing public health reasons. (You can see a compilation of news reports below — what happened in real life and what didn’t on the TCSD website.)
There were other challenges mounting the play, though they pale next to our covid crisis. When we started auditions, I feared we would not have enough people to fill the roles, but a bunch of people showed up at the last minute to try out. Once we cast the show, one actor had to drop out and I had to ask someone who had auditioned but not been cast if she would take the role.
When I got discouraged, I reminded myself, “I chose this.” No one forced this on me. Of course, I didn’t choose covid.
The cast was wonderful, not only because of their performances, but because of their positive attitude and good humor in the face of our challenges.
Over the course of the rehearsals, I wrote a lot of emails with acting notes and schedule reminders, but as we dealt with our covid issues, I started a text thread of fourteen people, and the actors had fun with it. I was concerned about how we might manage if we were not all healthy enough to perform, and because of my familiarity with the play, I was the logical understudy. Here’s one text exchange.
Our performances were not perfect, but the energy was high, there were a lot of laughs, and the audiences were loud and raucous. It was so much fun. And even more gratifying after overcoming our covid challenges.
Plus one wrinkle to our schedule change was that one of the twelve actors could not make it on the second weekend, so I had to play the part. And that was fun too.
Community theater is for the community, but it also builds community — not only the cast and crew, who are all volunteers, but the dozens of other volunteers who served dinner, painted sets, built props, and more.
Now for my next challenge — adapting the play into a novel, which is far harder than I anticipated. I started writing this novel, my fourth, after I finished the play, when the realization that it might be a long time before performing it would be possible. Progress has been slow — at one time, I had this delusion that the book would be finished and available by the time we performed the show. Not even close.
I’m not ready to jump back into writing and directing another play, but that doesn’t mean I’m not thinking about it. What if the murder mystery were set within a theater troupe, maybe during a performance? Hmmm.
As some of you know, I’m directing a murder mystery play this winter at my local community theater — Sausalypso Houseboat Wars Murder Mystery. We completed auditions and casting in November and last week, we had our first table read-through with the actors. (Which was thrilling.) As I prepared the script to be printed and collated in binders, I realized I needed a cover sheet for the binders, so I whipped one together that turned out better than I expected. Since I’m also writing a novel, I thought I ‘d see how the same idea might work for my book cover.
Here it is. I continue to vacillate over the book title, though I decided, after so many suggestions/criticisms that I couldn’t ignore them, to use “Sausalito,” the real name of the city, in the title, instead of my fictionalized “Sausalypso,” but I’m still brainstorming about the subtitle. I have many months of writing and rewriting ahead, but I feel like I’m leaning in the right direction with the cover image, which is like a triple exposure, a composite of two photos of houseboats and one of the sunrise over Richardson Bay.
I would love to hear what you think — about the image as well as the title.
Last month, I participated in apanel discussion on “Finding Your Voice” for the California Writers Club Marin Branch. I’m writing my fourth novel, another “page-turner with a conscience,” and I know that I have an author voice that is me, the writer, and it’s distinct from my characters’ voices. But it wasn’t until I was asked to take part in this panel that I deconstructed that author voice, and identified how it differs from my characters’ voices. (Spoiler alert: sometimes it doesn’t, when it should.)
(Here’s a video of my presentation if you prefer to watch instead of read. Only nine minutes.)
I’ve been in a wonderful writers’ group for five-plus years now, and one of the most useful, and common, critiques I’ve received, in regards to my dialogue, is: “That doesn’t sound like your character, that sounds like you.”
(I hate it when people are right like that.)
To deconstruct my author voice, I looked through my three novels, and compiled dozens of excerpts, but because I had a time limit, could only include a few in my talk.
Robert Rose lay on his back, his hands crossing his chest. Peaceful. Deep in sleep. Lamar used to be able to sleep like that — “You could probably nod off on a fire engine with sirens blaring,” Janis once said, not hiding her resentment. He couldn’t sleep like that now.
(This is a conversation between Lamar and his daughter, Sierra, who has just returned home to Albuquerque to work on a political campaign just as her parents are separating.)
“Tell me what’s new,” he said.
“You mean, other than the fact that my parents are splitting up and I’m coming home to land in the middle of it?”
As they neared downtown, the windows of the Plaza Tower and the Hyatt reflected the afternoon sun. “You’re upset and you’re not sure how you’re going to manage,” he said.
“There you go, doing that therapy thing on me.”
“No, that’s called listening, a highly underrated part of conversation. It’s where you say something, and I pay attention. You may want to try it sometime.”
“Dad, I am a good listener. That’s why I can hear you manipulating me.”
So when I looked at these and many more excerpts, I asked myself “what characterizes my author voice?” and I came up with these adjectives and attributes.
Smart
Sharp
Snappy
Witty
Staccato
Tight
Irreverent
Dramatic, sometimes melodramatic
Over-the-top
Metaphorical
Visual
One-word sentences and sentence fragments
It was a valuable exercise for me, and I encourage other writers to try it. We all have a voice, but often, we are not conscious of it. Think of it like accents. Many of us don’t think of ourselves as having accents, but we do.
How to Distinguish Between Author Voice and Character Voice(s)
There’s a difference between author voice and character voice, but they can blur together. Many successful writers sometimes have many of their characters sound alike — one example is Aaron Sorkin, writer of the West Wing.
But ideally, they don’t. If you see a line of dialogue, or an internal monologue, it’s bestg if you can tell who is speaking without identification.
Think of the difference in how Barack Obama and Donald Trump speak. Obama is thoughtful and deliberate, sometimes painfully so, like he is formulating his entire sentence in his head before he says it. Trump is impulsive and improvisational. He has riffs he repeats, but you get the sense that he just opens his mouth and blurts, almost without thinking. He speaks in short guttural phrases, doesn’t finish his sentences.
What I aim to do with my characters is identify speech patterns like that.
Here’s a simple one. I’ve got a character in the novel I’m writing now named Mickey Macgillicuddy, who talks like this.
“Hey man, like I went to college. Well, Grateful Dead University. Hey, how can you tell when Deadheads have been staying at your pad? They’re still there, man.”
In this case, I run the risk of sounding like a cliche, but it may be worth it for the joke.
Here are a few ways to make your characters’ voices distinct.
Ask rhetorical questions or answer questions with questions. Are you accusing me of…? What do you mean by…?
Speak in long, grammatically correct complete sentences.
Speak in fragments, interrupting yourselves. Don’t finish sentences.
Use contractions, or do not use contractions.
Use words like “brilliant” or “groovy” or “awesome.”
Use verbal tics —
“you know”
“look”
“what I mean is”
“at the end of the day”
“actually”
Interrupt others. Finish their sentences.
Try to be funny, sarcastic, or self-deprecating.
Use big words, or never use big words.
Use certain sentence construction, like more-this-than-that. “Other friends didn’t disappear so much as recede.”
Tell stories or jokes. (In my presentation, I started with a joke, which comes from When I Killed My Father, where my protagonist Lamar, a therapist, tells stories and jokes and that’s as part of who he is. It’s part of his voice.
One critical way to make characters’ voices unique is what they notice, what they are concerned about, who they care about, and so on. Their inner thoughts and feelings. Their goals. Their regrets. Their yearnings. By showing their character, you also show their voice. You don’t want all your characters to sound alike, but if their journeys and their conflicts and what’s meaningful to them are unique, their voice will reflect that. Let’s look at Lamar’s voice. (This is him talking to his daughter, in the same scene as the excerpt above, about listening.)
“OK. My Story, by Lamar Rose. Chapter 1. I still care for your mother. I do. I take marriage seriously. I take my responsibility as a husband seriously. I believe in keeping my promises. But love is a verb, not something static. It’s how you act. In our case, it’s become acting—on my part. Your mother doesn’t even bother with the acting.
“There’s a difference between the unconditional love I have for you and what I feel for your mother, which is conditional love. I’m going to love you no matter what. I want you to love me too, but if you don’t, well, I’m never going to stop loving you or being your father. It’s not a choice I have to make.
“But I can’t make a marriage work by myself and I’m no longer willing to give up my own life because I made a promise. I can’t live a healthy life married to your mother. I can’t heal her—I’m not sure she wants to be healed—I can only heal myself. So I am. I apologize for not consulting you, not giving you a warning. This has nothing to do with you.”
“But why did you move?” she asked. “You love the house, the garden. Mom doesn’t care about any of that.”
“I brought that up, said we should figure out who lives where, to which she said something like, ‘after all you’ve done to me, I’ll be damned if you kick me out of my house too.’ Those were the exact words—they’re seared in my mind.”
Sierra flinched.
“Sorry,” he said. “I should have kept that to myself.”
“What did you do to her?”
That’s when I ended my presentation. My nine minutes were up. You can learn more about my author voice and character voice in my books.
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Our performances were not perfect, but the energy was high, there were a lot of laughs, and the audiences were loud and raucous. It was so much fun. And even more gratifying after overcoming our covid challenges. 
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