How Musicals are Made
How To Write a Musical
by John Kenrick
Copyright 2000-2004

• The Bad News
• Compelling Need
• What's It About?
• Things to Keep in Mind
• Eight Rules
• Why You Should NOT Write Musicals
• Why You SHOULD Write Musicals

So let’s settle this one right up front – no one can tell you how to write a musical. A seasoned pro can offer pointers, and people who have a wide knowledge of the genre can tell you what forms and approaches have worked up to now, but no one can tell you how to write a musical.

The creative process is intensely personal. Compare the approaches used by four great lyricist-librettists –

• William S. Gilbert wrote all his drafts in expensive leather-bound journals, saving every idea for possible use. These meticulous notebooks are still preserved, providing a goldmine for researchers. Gilbert always wrote a complete version of the book and lyrics for a new show before submitting anything to composer Arthur Sullivan -- as Sullivan composed, Gilbert might make minor revisions. Rehearsals led to more changes, and the material might be further revised based on the reactions of early audiences.
• When lyricist Larry Hart worked with composer Richard Rodgers, they would talk through a potential project with librettist Herb Fields, deciding where the songs would go and which characters would sing them. Then Hart waited for Rodgers  to compose the melodies first. Hart would listen to a new tune once or twice, then dash off the lyrics with amazing speed, scrawling on any available scrap of paper. The libretto was usually completed during the final weeks of rehearsal, and was subject to major revisions right up to its opening night on Broadway.
• Oscar Hammerstein II also worked with Rodgers, but in their collaborations the lyrics were usually written first. After the two men discussed the dramatic intention of a potential song, Hammerstein retreated to his Pennsylvania farm. He curled into a chair and labored over every lyric for days or weeks at a time, neatly organizing his ideas on legal pads. The scripts were finished long before the first rehearsal, but were subject to revision during pre-Broadway tryouts.
• Alan Jay Lerner's habit of flying halfway around the world to avoid writing commitments frequently left his collaborators in a frustrating state of limbo, sometimes for months on end. A nervous writer, Lerner wore white cotton gloves to avoid chewing his fingers raw while working on a new project. The books and lyrics for his musicals were usually completed during tryouts, adding tremendous tension to the process. (After creating My Fair Lady, Lerner had a recurring nightmare about a group of friends coming into a hotel room to ask what he had written after several days locked inside. Surrounded by mounds of crumpled pages, Lerner dreamt he would hold up a sheet and read, “Loverly, loverly, loverly, loverly” – whereupon his friends would cart him off to an asylum.)

Each of these men had their share of hits and flops. So it is impossible to define any method as right or wrong. Each writer, composer or collaborative team must figure out (usually by trial and error) what works best for them.

Compelling Need
If you are going to write a musical, you are setting out to offer an audience a story. What makes it compelling, commanding audience interest? The simple fact that your story has songs in it is not enough! You have to offer characters who need or want something so desperately that audiences cannot help but care about them. All successful book musicals involve characters who have something or someone they are willing to put everything on the line for. Some examples --

• Rent offers a small army of characters who are willing to face miserable poverty in pursuit of their creative dreams. 
• In Guys and Dolls, all the major characters are ultimately willing to radically redefine their lives to marry the people they love.
• Sweeney Todd will stop at nothing to wreak vengeance on those who sent him to prison on a trumped-up charge. Audiences are fascinated to see his need for revenge consume everything he once loved.
• Singin' In the Rain has movie star Don Lockwood simultaneously trying to save his career and win the girl he loves.
• In Wicked, Elphaba is willing to abandon her dreams of respectable success in order to stand up for what she believes to be right.

How do you know if your story is compelling? Well, how compelled are you to tell it? Do you care deeply about it, so deeply that you must tell this story or die? Believe it or not, that's a very good sign. If you are writing because you think its a hot topic others will go for, double check your motives. It is impossible to judge in advance what critics and audiences will applaud for -- all the greatest talents have miscalculated at one time or another. The trick is to go with material you care about and believe in. Moss Hart once told Alan Jay Lerner that nobody knows the secret to writing a hit show . . .but the secret to writing a flop is "to say yes when you mean no." Be sure every fiber of your being says "Yes!" to a potential project, and odds are others will care about it too.

What's It All About?
When Jerome Robbins agreed to direct the original Fiddler On The Roof, he asked the authors a crucial question: "What is your show about?" They answered that it was about a Russian Jewish milkman and his family, and Robbins told them to think again. He wanted to know what the emotional core of the show was, the internal force that would drive the action and touch audiences both intellectually and emotionally. (Many academics call this core the premise.) Eventually, the authors realized that the show was really about family and tradition, and about what happens when a way of life disappears. This not only gave them the idea for a magnificent opening number ("Tradition") -- it also gave what could have been a very parochial show irresistible universal appeal.

When writing a musical, you must eventually figure out your premise, what your show is really about. Then you must make sure that every element of your material fits in with and serves that premise. A good premise gives your show wide ranging (if not universal) appeal. This does not mean you should limit yourself to common characters facing common challenges -- far from it! For example, Sweeney Todd tells the story of a Victorian barber out to kill the vile men who stole his beloved wife and sent him off to rot in prison on false charges. But at its core, the show is really about the terrifying cost of revenge, how past resentment can cost us the present and even the future. This makes Sweeney's story the audience's story. 

Today, even a revue can have a premise. When Pig's Fly was a set of hilarious songs and skits built around one gay man's obsession with succeeding in the theatre -- despite a guidance counselor's warning that he would succeed only "when pig's fly." But the show's premise was that the more outrageous or "over the top" a dream is, the more it is worth pursuing. That theme resonated with gays and straights alike, and When Pig's Fly enjoyed a long and profitable off-Broadway run.

"The greatest question musical dramatists must answer is: does the story I am telling sing? Is the subject sufficiently off the ground to compel the heightened emotion of bursting into song? Will a song add a deeper understanding of character or situation?"
- Stuart Ostrow, A Producer's Broadway Journey (Praeger: Westport, CT. 1999), p. 96.

If all songwriters and librettists answered those questions diligently, audiences would be spared innumerable hours of boredom. Dissect the worst musical you have ever seen, and odds are you will find that the story does not really "sing." Beyond that basic issue, there are other pointers worth remembering. In the course of my production career on and off Broadway, I have worked with dozens of songwriters and librettists, from gifted unknowns to Tony and Academy Award winners. Based on that experience, there are several things I would recommend if you want to write musicals –

• See as many musicals as you can, on stage or screen.
• Study the musicals you like and figure out what makes them tick.
• Study the musicals you don't like and figure out what prevents them from ticking. You can sometimes learn far more from a flop than a flawless hit -- at the very least, make them lessons in what not to do!
• Since musicals are a collaborative art form, do your best to find collaborators you can work with comfortably.
• Find or invent a story idea that gets you so excited you can spend five or more years of your life working on it with no promise (or even a reasonable hope) of it earning you a penny.
• Structure your life in such a way that it leaves you daily time to write and/or compose.
• Be sure this life structure provides a way for you to keep the bills paid.
• Work only on projects you are passionate about – never take on a musical based solely on its commercial possibilities. This year's "hot" idea often proves to be next year's embarrassment.
• Make sure your work has a genuine sense of humor. Too many new writers and composers tend to concoct "serious" musicals that bore audiences.
• Don't waste time being afraid of messing up. Every talent in history has failed from time to time. Treat every project you work on as a learning experience, and you will find that failure can be a very creative place.  

The first four rules apply to good writing of any kind –

1. Show, Don't Tell - This is job one for all writers, now and forever. Don't tell us what your characters are -- let their actions show us! Drama is expressed in action, not description. No one has to tell us that Seymour in Little Shop of Horrors is a gullible nerd when his every action screams it out for him. And Peggy Sawyer never has to declare that she is a naive newcomer to 42nd Street's hard-edged world of show business -- her wide-eyed behavior makes that clear from her first scene onwards.

There is another aspect to "show, don't tell." Since theater and film are visual as well as literary mediums, musicals are not limited to words and music. Many a great musicals uses the power of visual images to communicate key information. (Ever notice that plays are called "shows"?) The waiters in Hello Dolly never have to say that they love the lady – their visible reaction to her presence shows it all. And no one in My Fair Lady has to announce when Liza Doolittle becomes a lady – her wordless, elegant descent down the stairs before leaving for the Embassy Ball shows that her transformation has succeeded.

2. Cut everything that is not essential - Some call this the "kill your darlings" rule. Every character, song, word and gesture has to serve a clear dramatic purpose. If not, the whole structure of your show can collapse, or its effectiveness can be ruined.  If something does not develop character, establish setting or advance the plot, cut it -- even if it is something that you love. The next time you see a musical that seems to be losing steam, odds are that the writers did not have the heart to cut. Don't show your audiences such a lack of respect – ruthlessly cut everything that does not serve a clear and vital purpose. 

3. Know the basics of good storytelling - Musicals are just another form of telling stories, an art humans have been practicing since the invention of speech. But surprisingly few aspiring writers get this. Do you know the difference between a story and a plot line? (Yes, there most certainly is a difference!) Can you tell me what your show's premise is, and define the dramatic purpose of each speaking character? Take some time to learn the art of storytelling. That does not necessarily mean getting a masters degree – reading a few good books with a critical eye can get you thinking in the right direction. For starters, try Bill Johnson's A Story is a Promise (Portland: Blue Heron Publishing, 2000). It will open your eyes to the unseen elements that make a great story absorbing, and a great story is still the best starting point for any book musical. And Making Musicals (NY: Limelight Editions, 1998) by Tom Jones is the only book on the subject written by a bona fide creator of musical hits (The Fantasticks, etc.).

4. Your first duty in writing a musical is to tell a good story in a fresh, entertaining way -- not to teach or preach. If you make one or more intelligent points along the way, that's fantastic – but it won't matter much if your audience has lost interest, or simply stayed away. Dance a Little Closer condemned war and homophobia – and closed on its opening night. On the other hand, Hairspray skewers bigotry – and is set to run for years. Some dismiss The Sound of Music as fluff, but it has done more harm to Nazism than all the World War II documentaries ever made. Put the story and characters first, and you won't have to hit anyone over the head with a "message." And a well-told story remains in peoples memories long after they've forgotten ever lesson or sermon they ever sat through. If you want to preach, build yourself a pulpit, not a musical. When you are really lucky, you are the one who will learn something from your writing.

Now, some rules that apply specifically to the musical form –

5. Find the Song Posts - Song placement in a musical is not arbitrary! Irving Berlin said that he evaluated potential projects by looking for the "posts" – points in the story that demand a song. Characters must have some emotional justification for singing, otherwise the songs themselves would be empty exercises. Consider your favorite hit musical, whatever it may be. The songs all have something to say, expressing the important feelings or concerns of the characters singing them. Joy, confusion, heartbreak, love, rage – when these life-defining feelings break through, characters can sing.

6. Open With a Kick-Ass Song - Every now and then, a successful musical (My Fair Lady, The King and I) opens with a few pages of dialogue before the opening number, but these are the exceptions. Audiences usually prefer a musical that opens with music – duh! An effective song (or musical scene) sets the tone for the show to come and allows some swift plot exposition. By the end of the opening number, audiences should know where the story is set, what sort of people are in it, and what the basic atmosphere of the show will be. And the song itself ought to be one of the strongest in the score. A great opening number reassures audiences that there more good things to come. Oklahoma follows this rule with "Oh, What a Beautiful Morning," as do such diverse hits as Les Miserables ("At the End of the Day"), Urinetown ("Too Much Exposition"), and Hairspray ("Good Morning, Baltimore"). Unless you are certain your show is the next My Fair Lady, kick-off your first scene with a song.

7. Book, Score and Staging Must Speak as One - In contemporary musical theater, the score, libretto and staging (which includes the choreography) share the job of storytelling. This results in frequent passages of sung dialogue, as well as scenes where characters move effortlessly between spoken word, dance and song. Think of the hilarious "Keep It Gay" in The Producers, the achingly beautiful "If I Loved You" bench scene in Carousel, or the powerful dances ignited by the songs in Moving Out – the dialogue, lyrics and staging form a seamless fabric. And please, keep the content flowing smooth and varied. A hint – if your libretto goes on for pages and pages between musical isolated numbers, something is probably wrong.

8. Songs Are Not Enough - When you turn an existing story into a musical, you need a fresh vision. Just adding songs won't make for an effective musical. You have to tell the story with a fresh dose of energy, of re-inspiration. Annie took the characters from a classic comic strip, then added some new faces and placed them all in an entirely new story. Some of the best moments in My Fair Lady did not come from Pygmalion -- including the crux of the pivotal "Rain in Spain" scene. Don't just adapt -- re-ignite the material at hand!

Why You Should NOT Write Musicals
Yes, I mean you. Working in the professional theatre can be hellish. Can you stand the merciless judgment of producers, potential backers, fellow creators, critics and (gulp!) paying audiences? Can you handle years (and I mean years) of anonymous unpaid struggle? Are you ready to work your butt off eight hours or more at a demanding day job and then somehow find the energy to write? Can you handle the fact that most people will have no idea who you are or what you do even if you win a Tony or an Oscar? Finally, can you handle doing all this for no more than 2% of a show's profits? (That's the percentage the authors share under the present standard contract.) This is not a career for the uncertain.

"This is a tough business, a cruel business. The competition, especially in New York and especially in the musical theatre, is fierce. Not without reason is there the saying: "It is not enough that I succeed, my friends have also to fail." There is a tendency after you have been in the rat race for a while to open the Times and slowly relish the roasting given to some competitor, possibly even to some friend."
- Tom Jones, Making Musicals: An Informal Introduction to the World of Musical Theatre (New York: Limelight Editions, 1998), pp. 188.

"I'll give you a tip – it's risk. Once you're willing to risk everything, you can accomplish anything."
- Patricia Routledge, actress

In the early 21st Century, there are many ways to write a show. If you do decide to venture forth into this daunting field, my best wishes – and the best wishes of thousands of theatre lovers – go with you.

Next: How to Get Your Musical Produced