Jessica Huang recently spoke to us about her writing process, the difference between writing dialogue vs. lyrics, and her Venturous play Mother of Exiles, which she will be workshopping at Playwrights’ Center next week.
Jessica is also teaching our online university course “Writing the Television Pilot” this summer. Learn more and apply.
Watch or read our full interview with Jessica below!
What can you tell us about your writing process?
My process is pretty much the same for every project. It is first a bunch of research and if it’s for a non-historical or a show that’s not an adaptation, I still like to do a bunch of research even if it’s just visual research. So getting – this is may be creepy – but taking pictures off the internet of people that I think the characters are and putting them all around me, or the setting or whatever. As much as I can do to find myself inside the world of the play.
And then when it comes to writing I have three documents for every project. I have what I call “unconscious” writing and then “conscious” writing and then the draft that I’m working on. The unconscious writing is basically a journal where if I get stuck I just start talking to myself in a journal. And then conscious writing is where I do any plotting, so that’s where outlines exist or beats or work on the play that is organizing my mind. And then the draft is the draft. When I write have all three of them open and I go between all three. And I find it really helpful. I think it’s what prevents me from getting writer’s block because there’s a lot of pressure to write in the draft really well, and I find that I can go really slow if I only am trying to figure out the next perfect thing to say.
But if I find myself going slow what I’ll do is I’ll switch, I’ll downshift to writing in the conscious writing document and I’ll start figuring out what happens next or figuring out the next four scenes or going back to the outline and making sure it’s what it is. And if that’s even too difficult, then I’ll pop over to my unconscious document, and journal and just say, “I don’t know what I’m doing, what’s going to happen next? I’m confused.” And eventually out of that stream of consciousness flow something happens.
How does your process differ when writing lyrics vs. dialogue?
I also work as a librettist which means that I write both musical book and also occasionally lyrics, which I really love to do. Lyrics are super fun to write. So different than writing dialogue. Harder in some ways and just requires a different part of my brain. I think of lyrics more like a puzzle and you have to really focus on economy and rhythm and rhyme.
And so my process is different for lyric writing and then dialogue writing, too. For writing dialogue I like to silently sit at my desk and crank it out, and lyric writing I find is a lot easier to do when I’m on a walk or in the shower or on the train. The train is so helpful for lyric writing. It’s funny how they tend to come when I am myself in a state of motion.
What can you tell us about Mother of Exiles?
Mother of Exiles, which is the play that I received the Venturous Fellowship for, is one family’s immigration story that takes place over 145 years, and also for us in the audience 90 minutes. It takes place in three movements. The first movement is in 1898, where the family matriarch Eddie Loi is being detained at Angel Island Immigration Station. The second movement is in 1998, in Miami where her grandson is a border cop. And then the third movement is in 2043, and it takes place on the ocean outside of what used to be Miami.
One of the things that I think is so exciting about the play is that each of these three movements is also its own genre. The first movement is magic realism, and the second is straight up farce, and the third is sort of a dystopic futurism. But the play as a whole really is a story about tenderness and connection and the truth that I believe in, that at some point everybody is going to need help from a stranger. So check it out.
What do you look for most in your collaborators?
What I look for most in collaborators is that really delicious balance of rigor and playfulness. I love working with people who push me and who invite me to reconsider what I think I know. Who are committed to creating the best possible version of what we’re doing. And also bring joy and laughter and a sort of buccaneer sense of discovery and play to the work that we’re doing. And I got to say, I love this field so much because collaboration is the best thing ever. I just adore it.
