steve cuden Archives | MusicalWriters.com

10 Tips for Creating Successful Collaborations

Have someone in mind that you’d like a potential collaboration partnership with? Don’t enter that relationship lightly. Steve Cuden, co-creator of the musical Jekyll and Hyde and author of Beating Broadway shares tips on successful collaborations.

Steve Cuden on Story Arcs, Character Development, and Keeping the Audience Engaged

In our live Academy Mentor Session, Steve Cuden answered questions from Academy members on story arcs, song spotting, character development, and how to keep an audience engaged.

Summer Reading Books for Musical Writers in 2020

Catch up on relevant musical writing books this summer, including ideas for public domain material, how-to books, and books on “the making of a musical.”

Ways to Make Scenes and Moments Memorable

Just about every popular show offers enough “special moments” that many patrons will walk away with the perception that the entire work was both magical and memorable. So, what is that magic, and how can a writer achieve it?

Story Design: The 7 Plot Points

The 7 Plot Points are often used in creating narrative structure for novels, films and musicals. Use them to evaluate, refine and polish your script.

The Superobjective: Keeping Your Story on Track

It is the pursuit of a protagonist’s “grand goal” or superobjective that grabs us and keeps our attention. Stay on track and never lose focus of that goal!

Helping Characters Land Through Song

Audiences need to discover a unique protagonist to whom they can attach themselves and follow as he pursues a powerful goal. The goal is the hook. Pursuing it is what keeps the audience invested in the protagonist and his story.

Writing Lyrics: With a Song in Their Hearts

Steve Cuden offers his perspective on the kinds of storytelling suited to show tune lyrics. For anyone refining their lyric writing skills, or for those newly exploring how to write lyrics for musicals, Cuden brings up some important considerations.

EUREKA! YOU JUST HAD AN EPIPHANY!

In order to keep an audience on its toes, most writers will lead the protagonist (and the audience) toward certain assumptions and conclusions, only to turn the tables, revealing that those assumptions and conclusions are invalid or untrue or counter expectation. Such twists frequently lead to “Aha!” moments of understanding. Most of these can be thought of as epiphanies. This is no less true for musicals than for any other kind of storytelling.

Sweet Treatments

In this guest post, writer Steve Cuden sheds light on the early phases of writing a new musical, including writing a logline, premise, beat outline, and story treatment. When you complete these pieces of the writing puzzle, you’ll have something substantial to share with potential collaborators, as well as a good foundation for further work.