Scratching the surface

Yesterday, I wrote dialogue. Actual dialogue. After a gap of one, maybe two weeks I was writing the text of my play. I can't tell you how absurdly, ridiculously grateful I felt to be telling my story again. And as I began writing, I felt like crying. My characters were arguing with each other, I felt their pain, I felt tears coming to my eyes.
I was in a cafe, at the time, which could have been embarrassing. I was on a tea break, across the road from my workplace, and such was my concentration that I was nearly late getting back.
The tears weren't because I thought my writing was so good but because I had lost my ego, temporarily. My characters had taken me over. That might sound creepy, but actually that's the reason I write : to try and lose myself. And I don't think I'm alone in that. John Braine ( I keep quoting him, but I find his How to write a novel more insightful all the time) says that a writer must try to lose himself.
I'm now in an odd position. I'm thinking of the first draft as finished, even though strictly speaking there are still a few lines to go. I've worked out the very last line of the play, which Jackie says to Sue as they exit the stage. (The line is : "Here, Mum : you and Dad can have omlettes tonight." It's not meant to be profound. Sue had bought a box of eggs with the idea of throwing them at Camilla Parker-Bowles. Jackie had found out about it, and crushed the eggs in order to stop her. The line is a joke, something to bring mother and daughter together again after a fierce argument, and hopefully to make the audience smile). But there's still a gap which needs to be filled before we get to that last line.
I'm itching to put this stage play away and get on with my next project. I promised the teacher of my writing class that I would bring it in on March 8th. And I've begun typing it up ( so far, I've been writing it longhand, in a notebook). The idea was, as I reached the last written line in my notebook and typed it up, I would think of a couple of lines to fill the gap between it and the omlettes line.
What I hadn't reckoned on was my characters coming deeper into focus. I'm beginning to understand them better, and I feel actually like I'm giving them short shrift. The physical stage business, the two women struggling with a box of eggs, might be over, but there is still a verbal argument to settle. Issues have come up which need to be properly examined. I have been moving Jackie and Sue about the stage like puppets, except they haven't stayed puppets. Like Pinnochio, they've become real. And I can't just have them leaving the stage with a glib joke. There's more work to be done.
There's a richer, deeper play here, if only I can be bothered to write it. Which is ironic because, when I embarked on this project, I told myself that I'd finish it quickly. It was only a one act stage play, a self-contained scene, it only had to last half an hour. It didn't need a plot. William Trevor - the finest short story writer I've ever come across - once said that a short story is closer to a poem than a novel ; and he went on to say : "A novel needs a plot. A short story needs a point." And I thought that this stage play would be the drama equivalent of a short story. Two characters come on, they argue, at least one of them is changed by the encounter, they exit.
Now I realize that I've only scratched the surface.I'm confronted with my own laziness. The character of Jackie, especially, is sketchy. She's been under Sue's thumb all her life. Now she needs to claim some independence. In fact the Camilla Parker-Bowles/eggs business might become less relevant, simply a device to get the two of them arguing.
The next project will simply have to wait.