In my last post, I explained how I chose the Seven Deadly Sins and why I made the choices I made for their characters. Now, I will delve into how I wrote the main character, Naomi, and the rest of the speaking cast.
I mentioned in the last post that I knew Naomi’s character would need to somehow be tied in closely to Pride’s. Naomi went through a few different character rewrites while I tried to decide what type of prideful she would be. At first I wrote her to be prideful as someone “secure” in her faith; however that pride could too easily be mixed up with confidence. Besides that, it felt like it muddied the message. She couldn’t be both completely secure in her faith and also questioning it because she was jaded by the religious people around her. Yes, humans are multi-dimensional, but they also have consistency. She was just too erratic and her personality swings were too aggressive. The audience would have nothing to latch onto. I wanted her character arc to be clear and sharp as crystal.
So next came Naomi 2.0. This version was completely frontal in her struggle with faith and had already left any sense of morality behind. But this Naomi created two new problems. First, was that a key element of her character had to be the fight. We dropped in on Naomi after she had already hit her lowest point and the story was just an ongoing downhill spiral. It was missing the starting point that sets the tone of “things are bad, but not as bad as they could be” that would spur on her bad choices and lead to growth. There’s nothing wrong with a story that starts at the lowest point and that character arc can be compelling, but it wasn’t the right arc for this story. Which brings me to the second issue. It made it too gritty too fast. How much misery could I expect an audience to sit through? She’s unhappy, she gets unhappier, and it made no sense for there to be a learning moment by the end of the story, because this Naomi would have no interest in looking for better days. Again, a character struggling to care about life and living can also be very compelling, but I can’t write tragedies and unhappy endings, so this Naomi would not work.
Finally, I landed on Naomi 3.0 and honestly, I had to rediscover the character arc I had been imagining when I started the whole adventure. A crucial part of that arc had to be that Naomi starts in denial of how bad things are. She needed three things; a sense of morality based on retaliation to the injustice she faced, pride that kept her from accepting correction, and a certain vanity or entitlement to always being the victim. In a paradoxical way, she needed to desire to escape misery but also always be searching for misery so that she can always justify her way of being in the world. Kind of like how Phil Davis’s (Danny Kaye) war wound in White Christmas (no, I’m not old), always seems to act up whenever he needs his way. More serious than that, Naomi’s character needed to be based upon the unfortunate belief common in people who are struggling that if it doesn’t hurt enough, then no one else will believe the situation is that bad. Because yes, Naomi’s frustration is justified, but her arc centers around escaping the habit of manufacturing her own suffering just to be believed.
The next most difficult character to write was her boyfriend, Detective Newcomb. When I finished the first act, I realized that although there was dark humor here and there, there was no set comic relief. Although the sins were funny in the first act, their humor was also a plot device to temporarily minimize them, so the revelation of their cruelty had more bite. This meant I couldn’t rely on them heavily as true comic relief. I struggled with this for a few weeks as I worked through the rest of the second act, dark and dreary as it was, until finally I was watching Private Eyes (1980) with my family and I realized any murder mystery that calls itself a comedy, needed a bumbling detective. Or in this case, a loveable, green flag boyfriend who would never imagine his girlfriend is a murderer and therefore nearly sabotages his own investigation trying not to accuse her.
The hardest part was deciding how to introduce him and how he fit into the story. After all, as comic relief, he didn’t have a true character arc (although technically he has a minor tragic arc as he slowly discovers his girlfriend is his suspect). Furthermore, since so much of Naomi’s story happened in his absence, how did he fit in the world? Finally, I decided to make him the opener of the show, that introduced the audience to the murder before the murderer. This also created a fun red-herring of sorts because while the audience will initially think the story centers around this cocky young detective, then comes the revelation that it actually centers around the murderer and how she gets to the point of murder. Is it a little bit convoluted, yes, but in the ostentatious world of theater, I think that’s my right. Besides, it also leads to some fun, jazzy investigation musical numbers later on.
Next was Naomi’s friend, Paige. (I googled Y2k names and felt like I remembered knowing some Paiges). Anyway, for a minor character that only served the purpose of unintentionally stoking Naomi’s ire, she was surprisingly hard to write. Originally, she was going to be a completely obnoxious Southern-Baptist type Christian, but the character became almost too much like a parody of herself. Plus, that didn’t work with Naomi’s character, because her friend needed to be someone Naomi did love, but who Naomi felt just didn’t understand. The conflict between them needed to be something that accidentally slipped through the cracks, which I felt was more suited to the story.
So Paige 2.0 was religiously settled, had a good home life (that Naomi would be envious of), and was also very engaged with Naomi’s struggle, but couldn’t seem to crack the code on what Naomi wanted. This was important, because Naomi, not a side character, had to be the one that grew throughout the story. The conflict needed to come from Naomi being the one to refuse help, rather than her friend simply being oblivious and selfish. Again, because the tragedy needed to be simply that things slipped through the cracks, rather than Naomi having nothing but enemies.
Now, we address the minor speaking characters. Starting with James, Naomi’s father. This character, despite being the source of so many problems, actually has a very small speaking role. Everything he said and did needed to make his personality obscenely clear without being shallow and cartoonish. He actually was one of the last characters to be written, because I first needed to understand Naomi’s arc to understand him. To add dimension to a character that only has a short time on stage, he needed to be the most realistic of all, or he needed to be presented in a way that everyone has experienced. This led to his dialogue consisting of heavy amounts of gaslighting and minimizing that many people are familiar with either from media or personal experience.
The next minor character that had to make a world of difference was Pastor Bob. Like James, his stage time needed to be spent showing exactly why Naomi reached her breaking point. Pastor Bob used twisted Bible verses, un-Biblical and male-centric “feel-good” narratives, and emotional manipulation to make Naomi seem unreasonable in her anger. This behavior plus the implication of years of experiencing it, is part of what makes Naomi a sympathetic, albeit flawed character.
That about sums up what went into writing the characters for A Church in New York. Now imagine this taking almost two years to finally work through. And I summed it up for you in a twenty-minute post. Anyway, if you’re interested in keeping up with the journey to compete and produce A Church in New York, follow me @em.thelogline on instagram and stay tuned for the next post.
Thanks for reading!
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