Yep. It's official! I'm currently in the second-draft process of writing a—you guessed it—musical based on my all-time favorite book series, Percy Jackson and the Olympians.
Perhaps this is of zero interest to you, but maybe some of you want to know a little more. I'll try to keep this post as brief as possible, but I am admittedly extremely excited to share every detail about this project into which I have put so much time and effort.
First off, I'd like to mention that I am in no way associated with TheatreWorks or their Lightning Thief Musical that is opening in New York this summer. I began work on my musical months prior to its announcement, and mine is quite different in content. I am also in no way endorsed by Rick Riordan or his publisher or any of that (unfortunately). Okay, moving on.
In early 2016, about one year ago, I was assigned by my English teacher (hi, Mom) to write a scene from a book or movie in Shakespearian style. Of course, I chose a scene from a Percy Jackson book, and while writing it, I was suddenly struck with an idea—imagine Percy Jackson as a stage performance.
My first thought: That would be crazy. There are five books, ten if you count the second series. It would be, like, twelve hours long. My second: Eh, who cares. I'm gonna try.
So I gave it a shot—four, in fact. The first attempt was quite terrible. I decided to go with a musical drama—minimal song and dance, though, mostly dialogue. I tried to sum up the entirety of the first series in a single monologue and then dive right into the second. The plan was to show only the most important scenes from each of the five books, barely touching upon the characters themselves and focusing mainly on the plot. The idea was, in short, awful, and it was rightfully trashed after eight days and eleven pages.
Fast forward two months, and I've returned to the drawing board. I decided that this time I wouldn't take the story so seriously and attempted to make a humorous, AVPM-esque parody musical. It might've turned out well if I had put some effort into it, but the problem is I don't do silly very well. I can incorporate jokes and comic relief into my work, but writing straight-up comedy is not my forte. This one also lasted only about a week.
My next idea was to ditch the whole musical aspect entirely and just write a play. Then I narrowed it down even further to just the first book, The Lightning Thief. I spent two hot summer days simmering away in my attic bedroom, transcribing the book into a play format, and then gave up. At the time, I figured that was it. Maybe someday I'd return to this ridiculous project.
It wasn't until late September that I analyzed my thought processes for these failed ideas in an attempt to figure out what I was doing wrong, and I realized fairly quickly that I was focusing too much on plot.
To me, Riordan's characters have always been the most important and memorable aspects of his books. His characters are seriously like children to me—just ask my friends. I discovered then that I was putting way too much effort into making the plot of this stage adaptation exactly the same as that of the original stories, and that I was ignoring the best part, the part that means the most to me.
Here's something I've realized while writing this, my novel, and many other things—I am much better at creating and developing characters than plot. Therefore, for my next try at this Percy Jackson stage show, I decided to showcase my strengths instead of relying on my weaknesses.
It's not really a show for the average Percy Jackson fan. It's not a kids' show. It's something that is built on everything I love about the books, which themes I believe are the most meaningful. I played with each characters' strengths, weaknesses, relationships, and desires, and crafted a mainly character-driven plot that is a very simplified but still complex version of the original story. I decided to focus mainly on the first five-book series, but I tied in a few of my favorite aspects of the second one. Choosing what to include and what to skim over made for some seriously tough decisions, but I am extremely pleased with the outcome.
Despite everything I had to cut, the show's estimated running time is still close to two and a half hours. I have written over twenty original songs (just lyrics, vocals, and chords so far), and a completed rough draft of a one hundred and twelve-page script. Is it done? No. Is it almost done? Not even close. When will it be done? Who knows. I still have so much work to do and so many decisions to make. All I can tell you right now is that I really like it, and I hope you will, too.
There are no definite plans for the future of this project just yet. I would love to have an actual cast, set, costumes, orchestra, and performances before I go off to college, but that would involve quite a bit of time and money that I just don't have. It's still possible, though, and would be the most amazing dream come true.
For now, I'm just going to keep chugging along, refining and tweaking to bring this crazy project as close to perfection as I possibly can. I'll let its future be determined when it arrives.
So, what do you think? If you like Percy Jackson, or even if you just like musicals, and would be interested in getting involved, let me know. If I want this to really become anything at all, I'm going to need quite a lot of help. Also let me know if you would perhaps like to see a blog post going into more detail about the musical itself—I'd be happy to ramble on for hours.
And if you've read this far, thank you. It's my love for writing and others' love for reading that inspires me to do crazy stuff like this.
Perhaps this is of zero interest to you, but maybe some of you want to know a little more. I'll try to keep this post as brief as possible, but I am admittedly extremely excited to share every detail about this project into which I have put so much time and effort.
First off, I'd like to mention that I am in no way associated with TheatreWorks or their Lightning Thief Musical that is opening in New York this summer. I began work on my musical months prior to its announcement, and mine is quite different in content. I am also in no way endorsed by Rick Riordan or his publisher or any of that (unfortunately). Okay, moving on.
In early 2016, about one year ago, I was assigned by my English teacher (hi, Mom) to write a scene from a book or movie in Shakespearian style. Of course, I chose a scene from a Percy Jackson book, and while writing it, I was suddenly struck with an idea—imagine Percy Jackson as a stage performance.
My first thought: That would be crazy. There are five books, ten if you count the second series. It would be, like, twelve hours long. My second: Eh, who cares. I'm gonna try.
So I gave it a shot—four, in fact. The first attempt was quite terrible. I decided to go with a musical drama—minimal song and dance, though, mostly dialogue. I tried to sum up the entirety of the first series in a single monologue and then dive right into the second. The plan was to show only the most important scenes from each of the five books, barely touching upon the characters themselves and focusing mainly on the plot. The idea was, in short, awful, and it was rightfully trashed after eight days and eleven pages.
Fast forward two months, and I've returned to the drawing board. I decided that this time I wouldn't take the story so seriously and attempted to make a humorous, AVPM-esque parody musical. It might've turned out well if I had put some effort into it, but the problem is I don't do silly very well. I can incorporate jokes and comic relief into my work, but writing straight-up comedy is not my forte. This one also lasted only about a week.
My next idea was to ditch the whole musical aspect entirely and just write a play. Then I narrowed it down even further to just the first book, The Lightning Thief. I spent two hot summer days simmering away in my attic bedroom, transcribing the book into a play format, and then gave up. At the time, I figured that was it. Maybe someday I'd return to this ridiculous project.
It wasn't until late September that I analyzed my thought processes for these failed ideas in an attempt to figure out what I was doing wrong, and I realized fairly quickly that I was focusing too much on plot.
To me, Riordan's characters have always been the most important and memorable aspects of his books. His characters are seriously like children to me—just ask my friends. I discovered then that I was putting way too much effort into making the plot of this stage adaptation exactly the same as that of the original stories, and that I was ignoring the best part, the part that means the most to me.
Here's something I've realized while writing this, my novel, and many other things—I am much better at creating and developing characters than plot. Therefore, for my next try at this Percy Jackson stage show, I decided to showcase my strengths instead of relying on my weaknesses.
It's not really a show for the average Percy Jackson fan. It's not a kids' show. It's something that is built on everything I love about the books, which themes I believe are the most meaningful. I played with each characters' strengths, weaknesses, relationships, and desires, and crafted a mainly character-driven plot that is a very simplified but still complex version of the original story. I decided to focus mainly on the first five-book series, but I tied in a few of my favorite aspects of the second one. Choosing what to include and what to skim over made for some seriously tough decisions, but I am extremely pleased with the outcome.
Despite everything I had to cut, the show's estimated running time is still close to two and a half hours. I have written over twenty original songs (just lyrics, vocals, and chords so far), and a completed rough draft of a one hundred and twelve-page script. Is it done? No. Is it almost done? Not even close. When will it be done? Who knows. I still have so much work to do and so many decisions to make. All I can tell you right now is that I really like it, and I hope you will, too.
There are no definite plans for the future of this project just yet. I would love to have an actual cast, set, costumes, orchestra, and performances before I go off to college, but that would involve quite a bit of time and money that I just don't have. It's still possible, though, and would be the most amazing dream come true.
For now, I'm just going to keep chugging along, refining and tweaking to bring this crazy project as close to perfection as I possibly can. I'll let its future be determined when it arrives.
So, what do you think? If you like Percy Jackson, or even if you just like musicals, and would be interested in getting involved, let me know. If I want this to really become anything at all, I'm going to need quite a lot of help. Also let me know if you would perhaps like to see a blog post going into more detail about the musical itself—I'd be happy to ramble on for hours.
And if you've read this far, thank you. It's my love for writing and others' love for reading that inspires me to do crazy stuff like this.
