Q&A …

… Playwright Tom Stoppard’s Surprisingly Relaxed Method - WSJ. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

If you work everything out in advance, you’re forcing the play to follow what you’ve worked out, and you will inevitably get to a point where you’re cheating on the psychology of the character. If you let the plot be determined by what you feel is in the character’s mind at that point, it may not turn out to be a very good play, but at least it will be a play where people are behaving in a kind of truthful way.