Pip: WriteForTheStage — where a playwright writes a novel, records a pop single, and somehow still finds time to rescue everyone’s Act 2 from the swamp it’s been sitting in.
Mara: That’s the territory today, yes. Mike Heath has been busy across two very different fronts — a new novel launch with original music to match, and a fresh block of online playwriting courses opening up.
Pip: Let’s start with the creative projects, because a second novel and a debut single dropping on the same day is not a sentence you hear every week.
A Second Novel, a Single, and a Faded Rock Star
Mara: The question the launch post is answering is a simple one: who is Supertonic, and why does it come with a soundtrack?
Pip: The post sets the premise up cleanly — here’s how it describes the novel’s central character: “a faded 90s Madchester rock star who’s fallen on hard times and finds himself hurled back into the limelight.”
Mara: And the upshot is that his second shot at fame is the harder one. The book is a satire — not a thriller like the first novel, Autumn Leaf — and it draws directly on real experience in the Manchester songwriter scene of the nineties.
Pip: The single, One Confession, is an attempt to recreate a song the protagonist writes inside the story — which is a pleasingly recursive way to launch a book.
Mara: Right, and the music sits under the MusicByMachines project, which has already released two albums. None of it is AI-generated, the post is clear on that point, though there is a separate back-catalogue project called Earwarm that did use Suno to bring older songs to life.
Pip: So: novel out, single out, EP to follow in autumn. A busy release window by any measure.
Mara: And that’s the creative side. The courses are where the teaching work lives — let’s go there next.
Five Weeks to Fix Your Script
Pip: The frame for the courses post is practical urgency — if you’ve been telling yourself the script can wait, this is the post that pushes back on that.
Mara: The opening line makes no attempt to be subtle about it: “If you’ve been telling yourself you’ll ‘get back to that script soon’, consider this your friendly nudge.”
Pip: Which is either motivating or mildly alarming depending on how long your draft has been sitting there. The courses themselves are genuinely structured — five-week blocks, condensed from university-level material, designed around specific problems writers actually hit.
Mara: Three courses are running. The First 10 Pages targets the opening of a script — tone, rhythm, character, and the promise of the story. The post frames it directly: “Those first pages decide everything.” It’s aimed at writers submitting to theatres, competitions, or development schemes, and also at anyone preparing work for this year’s Greater Manchester Fringe.
Pip: Then there’s the Act 2 course, which tackles what the post calls the place where many perfectly good plays go to die. It covers escalation, subplots, scenes that turn rather than drift, and keeping an audience engaged through crisis, conflict, and resolution — rather than losing them to their phones.
Mara: And Act 3 handles endings — the ones that feel, as the post puts it, “inevitable and surprising” at the same time. Confrontation, revelation, final image, and the specific problem of a draft that just stops rather than lands.
Pip: That’s a complete arc, actually. Open strong, survive the middle, stick the ending. The courses map directly onto the shape of the problem.
Mara: There’s also a Summer School option in August — a full week of daily sessions for writers who want concentrated time with a group, either to start something new or push an existing draft across the finish line. All sessions are online.
Pip: So whether you’re in the swamp or just approaching it, there’s a course timed for where you are.
Mara: And the timing matters — the block starts next week, which means the window to join is short.
Pip: A novel, a single, and three courses designed to stop your script from dying in Act 2 — it’s a full creative ecosystem, not just a website.
Mara: The through-line is craft under pressure — finishing things, getting them out, and helping others do the same. More to come next episode. Here’s the single One Confession, the song to accompany Mike’s new novel, Supertonic.
Leave a Reply