Feeding Lots of Birds with One Scone:* How I Launched New Novels, Learned about Another Genre, and Overcame a Childhood Humiliation
- elichvar
- 3 hours ago
- 5 min read
April 23, 2025
by Nancy McCabe, creative nonfiction and fiction faculty
Over the last year or so, I launched two books: in March 2024 my comic novel The Pamela Papers: A Mostly E-pistolary Story of Academic Pandemic Pandemonium, and then, earlier this month, my middle grade novel Fires Burning Underground. I wanted to have some kind of local celebration for each in the Pennsylvania town where I live, but I’ve noticed that with many audiences, conventional readings have declined in popularity. The undergraduates I teach tend to respond better to talks accompanied by visuals. Bookstores seem to prefer informal conversations between writers.
So I wanted to think of some other way to lure people to my release parties and inspire them to buy books. What, I thought, if I tried turning excerpts from the work into stage plays?
I’ve always had a fear of dramatic writing. For one thing, it seemed like the polar opposite of the kind of writing I’m used to. While scene is important in fiction and CNF, we also have tools like interiority and exposition and description in prose that doesn’t translate in the same way to scripts. I’m also used to working alone rather than embracing the kind of collaboration that really brings dramatic work alive.
I also had a lot of trepidation stemming from a failed playwriting experience when I was twelve. That December, I wrote a play called “The Boy Who Doubted Santa Claus.” Somehow sharing it with friends on the playground morphed into the idea to perform it for our class which then transformed into a plan to perform it for the whole school. I was excited, memorizing my lines, holding rehearsals, making a simple set, and putting together costumes.
It was March before we were finally ready. My friends and I peeked out from behind our set as the door to the gym opened and entire classes from kindergarten to sixth grade came pouring in. Bleachers squeaked as they found seats, and suddenly overcome by stage fright, my cast and I exchanged panicked looks.
I glanced over at the friend playing Santa. She was wearing a floppy red hat and a fake white beard. A horrible realization struck me.
Who performs a Christmas play in March?
I promptly forgot my lines. My hands shook violently as I instead read from my script. My equally terrified friends followed my lead, muttering, rushing their words.
I don’t remember how I survived the humiliation and ridicule that followed this debacle. Only that I decided I was not meant to be a playwright, actor, director, set designer, costume designer, or public speaker of any kind, ever.
So now it was nearly fifty years later, and obviously I’d had to get over my fear of public speaking. But it still felt audacious to try writing a play even to be performed for a relatively small audience.
I’ve learned from and been inspired by Spalding dramatic writing colleagues, and the more I thought about it, the more a script seemed like a natural way to present The Pamela Papers. The story unfolds through documents—e-mails, accreditation standards, a word cloud, a Zoom transcript, a piece of fiction written by a Spalding student for her packet, and bits and pieces from a musical-in-progress by protagonist Pamela, a professor who along with her colleagues is confronted by their college administration’s suddenly draconian policies.
It seemed to me that a variety of voices might be the best way to present this story, which was based on traumatic events my colleagues and I had undergone at the University of Pittsburgh-Bradford campus. My story had helped me process the experience and I hoped that it would do the same for my colleagues. Still, I was nervous as I recruited twelve colleagues to stage a table reading of The Pamela Papers for our campus-wide speaker series in lieu of a release party.
The first read-through was eye-opening. It was amazing to hear my words filtered through the personalities of my performers, faculty from psychology, writing, social work, math, philosophy, and economics. It was entertaining to watch humor land throughout the group, sometimes right away, sometimes not until the second read-through. If it didn’t ever land, I revised, deleted, or tightened speeches, taking into account suggestions from the cast. The collaboration ended up being part of the fun, gaining energy as we bonded over our mutual trauma and our relief that it was over.
Audience members later told me they were nervous that the presentation was going to be hard to watch after a difficult year in which a lot of people’s self-esteem had taken a huge hit. But after the performance, many told me that it had been cathartic.
I had more confidence a year later when it came time to plan the release party for Fires Burning Underground. This time, though, I had different reasons for considering presenting excerpts dramatically. Rather than giving a reading that channeled the voice of my twelve-year-old narrator, I thought the presentation might be more authentic if local young actors performed scenes from the book.
After turning a series of scenes into a play, I asked the local public library for help in locating kids with theater experience. Some of my college students involved in theater agreed to help mentor them, and Kevin, the director of our theater program, offered to drop by with some tips.
The first read-through of the treasure hunt scenes from Fires Burning Underground was awkward. I asked Kevin if he had any feedback. He asked my young cast members, “What do the girls want, and who’s in control of things?”
“They want to have an adventure,” Lorelai replied, and Erica said, “Anny wants Larissa to like her and go on being her friend.”
“Ella feels left out,” said Emily.
“Larissa’s the one in charge,” they all agreed.
“But who ends up having the adventure?” Kevin asked them.
“Anny,” they chorused.
Kevin’s questions made me see my own characters more clearly and reminded me that we look for the same basic things on the stage as we do on the page. And after that, the kids showed greater understanding of their characters. The interactions between them began to click. Along the way, my college students worked individually with them on pacing, physicality, projection, enunciation, and emphasis.
As the kids got more comfortable, they made some recommendations. “Anny says ‘we could deposit it in her locker’ but I don’t think she would say ‘deposited,’” Erica pointed out. “I think she’d just say stuck.”
Everyone agreed and we made the change.
I not only learned more about dramatic writing, I gained additional insight on writing for a younger audience. After the performance, the actors received rave reviews and many audience members commented on the uniqueness of my release party.
I doubt that dramatic presentations will be right for every future release party, but the process of planning both of these got me thinking about other ways to present new books to a campus or community audience. The process reinforced for me the value of interactions between genres, sharpening my dialogue and broadening my awareness of the different ways lines and characters might be interpreted. And whether or not I ever try dramatic writing beyond these excerpts, my twelve-year-old self is proud.
*I read somewhere that this was a more environmentally friendly alternative to killing two birds with one stone, and I like the image it creates.
Nancy McCabe’s most recent books are the middle grade novel Fires Burning Underground (Fitzroy/Regal House, 2025), the comic novel The Pamela Papers (Outpost 19, 2024), the young adult novel Vaulting through Time (CamCat, 2023), and the memoir Can This Marriage be Saved? (University of Missouri Press, 2020).