The Art and Craft of Playwriting

by Jeffery Hatcher

  I had a play idea.

  It would work within a recognizable form—a cocktail party comedy. It would contain conflict—personal, social, even philosophical. It would be a play with a journey, with a character who changed before the eyes of his friends, and in turn changed their lives. It would be a social commentary, because it would deal with issues of money and class and privilege. And I would find ways to make it theatrical. Most important, I had found an idea for a play that connected with me:

  • I was twenty-eight years old. I had been writing plays for three years. I was afraid of failure. If I failed as a playwright, how would I survive in the world? Would I have to find other work? Physical work? Manual labor? Would nonintellectual work save me or destroy me?

  • I had never been handy. Not with tools, not with mechanical things. I couldn't fix a car. I couldn't even open a tin can. I felt I was not—as Chekhov has his pedant scholar Serebrekov protest in Uncle Vanya—“a practical man.” What would I do if I was forced to start functioning in the practical world?

  • I was fascinated by the subject of social class. It's not often discussed in the United States, but a class system exists. How did a person survive a descent from one class to another? How did one's friends react? What did one's friends do?

  • This was 1986. There was much talk about the failure of liberal “Great Society” programs and the futility of trying to change personal behavior by experimentation and engineering. The debate raged between the left and the right in journals, magazines, books and public forums.

  I jotted down on a piece of paper what the play would be about: class, failure, the salvation of work, social engineering, friendship and its limits. I titled the play Neddy.

  REMEMBERING THE SIX ELEMENTS

  Before I even began to outline the play, I started writing down its six Aristotelian elements in a notebook: character, action, ideas, language, music and spectacle. I started with one page per category. You may come up with dozens of important thematic ideas, reams of great dialogue, terrific scenes, stunning stage image after stunning stage image—all floating around in your notebook. But very quickly you're going to realize that nothing goes anywhere—not an idea, not a joke, not a scene—without focusing on character.

  So start with your character page. You actually may write lots of pages for this one. List the characters who might people your play. Who are they? What are their wants and needs? How do those wants and needs connect to the ideas and situations you're considering? You don't have to write extensive biographies for your characters, but you do have to know what they'll do in certain circumstances. You have to know what they'll do under normal circumstances, and you have to know what they'll do under extraordinary circumstances. A good play will combine both kinds but lean towards the extraordinary. That means that characters under pressure, pushed to extremes, may behave in surprising ways. Like the mother whose adrenalin gives her the power to lift a car off her child, a character in extremes may be capable of unsuspected heroics and unspeakable crimes under the right pressurized circumstances.

  When I was sure that the characters and situation would hold interest—for me and for an audience—I wrote down the play's story in brief descriptive form:

  A penniless prep school teacher goes to a party one night and announces to his friends that he has just been abandoned by his wealthy wife. Despondent, he asks for help from his close circle of friends. They loan him money for a while, but they fear they're simply supporting his depression and sloth. Then, one of them, Ned's best friend Allen, a sociology teacher, decides the best way to help is to give Ned odd jobs, so that he can earn his own money and feel good about himself. Ned takes on these jobs, with great misgivings and grumblings. In the course of raking leaves, cleaning gutters and painting bathrooms for his friends, he sees a different side of his colleagues, as they all try to negotiate this change in relationship. Then Ned has an epiphany. He realizes he can use his hands. He can fix things. He has talents he never knew he possessed. He becomes a dynamo, going into overdrive. Suddenly Ned is everywhere, doing everything. And he's bothering his friends, especially with his new assurance and his constant exhortations to better themselves in similar ways. In a key scene, Ned's practical advice is not listened to, and one of the characters is humiliated. Ned is made the fall guy for a school disaster. Allen and Ned confront each other, and a choice must be made. Stand by Ned, or let him fall. Allen doesn't have the courage and integrity to support his friend when his peers are telling him to cut Ned off. Allen rejects Ned. Ned leaves the school and starts his own handyman business. In the end, the other characters gather at Allen's Christmas party, a party Ned would normally be invited to. There is a rattle of steel. Allen goes outside and discovers Ned with his garbage can. Allen gives him a tip. Ned takes it. When Allen returns to the party and is asked who was outside, he says simply: “The garbage man.”

  This is a quick synopsis of the story. The final version of the plot was much more intricate. A lot happens in Neddy, involving all the characters. But this synopsis was the strong spine of the story. And it all came together rather quickly. A play idea that has drama, theater, and the playwright's personal concerns at its very core, falls into place faster than half-formed or ill-considered ones. So does the play's story and its plot.

  Although I focused on character for Neddy, I still kept notes on the other elements—images, dialogue, sounds I might use when I came to write the actual first draft. Remembering the “space/time/causality” theory, I considered Neddy's theatricality: There would be no single setting, but many settings defined by dialogue and small hand props. Some scenes would take place simultaneously on the same stage. There would be music—the sounds of students singing in chapel choirs, innocent voices in an environment that would begin to darken. There would be spectacle: a man in an empty house laying dinner for a wife who's left him; a man carving an assembly line of Halloween pumpkins onstage in front of the audience; a man giving a convocation speech at a chapel as the school's ancient light and sound system fail; and, last, a man alone carrying a garbage can across a stage as his friends celebrate Christmas inside.

  Once you have plenty of notes for all six categories, you are ready to outline your play. Many playwrights, including me, use what is called the “French scene” method for outlining. This method enables you to know very clearly which characters are onstage during which actions. A French scene refers to a new configuration of actors onstage. Whenever a character enters or exits the theatrical space, that's a new French scene. The name comes from French rehearsal practices. It's a way of knowing which actors to call for which blocks of rehearsal, and it's used by stage directors to this day. It includes the setting; all entrances and exits; who is onstage together at any given time; and what key actions take place in the scene.

  Here's what a breakdown in French scenes might look like:

  Act One, Scene One

  John and Mary's living room

  1. John/Mary

  John tells Mary he's leaving their marriage

  Mary pulls a gun on him

  2. Mary's father Joe enters

  John/Mary/Joe

  Joe tells Mary her lover Frank is at the door

  Mary gives Joe the gun

  Mary tells Joe to keep John in the room

  3. Mary exits

  John/Joe

  Joe gives John the gun

  My French scene outline of Neddy took a few weeks. Yours might not take as long, but spend as much time as you need. Even if the work seems tedious, it's time well spent, because you're giving your play its foundation and spine. You'll make mistakes in your outline. I know I did. A writer can't help that. But like a good architect who would never dream of starting a building until every detail had been worked out in blueprint form, a good playwright is better advised to work out the story on yellow legal pads before he ever gets near a keyboard. Isn't it easier to change a few pages of notepaper than it is to change an entire play once it's been laboriously typ
ed up as a 120-page script?

  There were false starts and wrong turns in my outline for Neddy. I had to keep remembering the principle of “action verbs.” Remember our discussion from chapter two: “I love you” is an action verb. “If you leave this room, I'll call the police” are action verbs. “I confess” is an action verb. What were my characters doing to each other? What were their actions and reactions? What were the stakes? Were the characters smart, clever, resourceful? Did they make good combatants? Could they strategize? Were they funny? Were they likable? Sad? Could the audience identify with their hopes and aspirations? Their wants and needs, their rebellious natures, their pettiness and crimes? And were the actions part of a larger whole—did every action underscore the ideas of the play, illustrate the ideas I wanted the audience to “get” when the final curtain dropped? All those musings about class and money and work and friendship—were the actions linked to those ideas?

  Once I had an outline that told the story in action verbs, I tracked the dramatic progression of each of the six characters. Did each character have a story? Did each character's story satisfy the audience's questions about the characters? Did the characters all perform actions? Were their actions all organic to their histories and to the situations I had devised for the plot? And were all the characters' actions moving towards the single most important action of the play, the final climax involving Neddy?

  If I found snags—a character whose line of actions seemed to weaken, a character whose story seemed to fade away, a subplot that took the play off its major course—I went back to the yellow legal pad again and thought some more. You have to ask yourself two vitally important questions about characters' actions:

  1. What would they do?

  2. What could they do?

  Sounds simple, but it isn't. What a character will do is based on the background you've given him combined with the situation you've put him in. What a character can do is anything. How interesting can your character be—how bold, how mysterious, how enthralling and entertaining—and still be true to the person you have created? In rethinking your character, you may sometimes change the background and circumstances so that he may perform actions more vital to the story; you may also eliminate some individually terrific actions because, regardless of how stunning they might seem in and of themselves, they do not follow the very sound character background and well thought out circumstances you've settled on.

  Must a character be consistent in all her actions? Audiences look for character consistency, but contradictions are part of human nature. What's more important is to create characters whose actions, no matter how supposedly inconsistent, are understandable in a dramatic context, given their psychology and the set of dynamic, dramatic circumstances the playwright has devised. You can surprise your audience by revealing that a sympathetic character has done a terrible thing, or that a villian has a softhearted side. But make that surprising revelation comprehensible.

  I made some of these mistakes writing my outline, so I reworked it again. And again. Sometimes your first idea for a scene or an action is the best idea. And a lot of the time it isn't. Nor is your second idea. Nor your third. I would advise not starting the actual writing of the play until you really think you've got the story the way you want it. Clear. Strong. Comprehensible. And powerful. With as much complexity and meaning as the actions can display. Then begin to write.

  As you begin your first draft, the temptation is to know vaguely where you're going and hope inspiration will strike along the way. Avoid this temptation. As screenwriters know, and as their guru Syd Field says in his own screenplay texts, it's a little like driving your car into the wilderness: If you know where you're going, if you know your destination (“Know your ending!” admonishes Syd Field), your journey has purpose and you can find wonderful things along the way. If you don't, you may make some wonderful, surprising discoveries while sightseeing, but you're just as likely to get lost, run out of gas, and get stranded in a desert.

  Anthony Clarvoe, who has written such U.S. regional theater successes as Pick Up Ax, The Living, and an adaptation of The Brothers Karamozov, once told me that a writer has a lot of control before he starts to write and a lot of control after he's written but not much control while he's writing. A dramatist sits down at his typewriter or computer or legal pad and consults his outline. He starts to follow the map he's drawn. It's hard to get started. It's thick, heavy work just getting the first stage directions on the page. The first line of dialogue is like knocking down a wall at Fort Knox. But he does start. And then the words come. And something he didn't count on starts to happen. Characters say things he hadn't expected. They're wittier or angrier or do things he hadn't thought of. They want to go to different, more exciting places than he'd imagined. And that's tremendous. It may change things about his outline, but he has to be open to that—open and critical at the same time. Successful writers depend on this kind of inspiration. It's what we live for. It's what makes the hard spade work that came before really sing. Call it inspiration, call it a trance, but hope for it, pray for it.

  Of course sometimes characters say other things you hadn't planned on. Sometimes they're duller and decide to go to less exciting places. You know what you do then? You stop writing. When the characters start talking like people in the grocery store, your creativity has had it for the day.

  When I finished the first draft I noticed something. Neddy contained the ingredients my friend the playwright and teacher Gram Slaton had taught me were found in every great play:

  Goals, Conflicts, Obstacles and Actions. (Ned's desires conflicting with the others')

  Tension and Suspense. (What would happen to Ned? To the group?)

  Secrets. (Four of the characters had secrets revealed)

  Sex. (At least three of the characters were having affairs)

  Love. (All of the characters were in love)

  Money. (Ned's problems stemmed from a lack of money)

  Power. (The power of the school; class power; economic power; personal power)

  Crime. (Characters lied and stole)

  Death. (Neddy threatens suicide)

  Ideas. (Themes about class, failure, growth and responsibility)

  Theatricality. (Multiple time frames; multiple spatial uses; spectacles of fire and color and light)

  By focusing on the essential dramatic elements, I had taken the idea I got that morning in the headmaster's kitchen and turned it into a play.

  EXERCISES

  1. Read a newspaper. The New York Times, The Washington Post, a small-town daily. Find and list at least three stories that suggest play ideas, ones that grab you and connect with your own ideas or interests.

  2. Write each idea on a separate piece of paper. Write down the idea in terms of “situation” first: (a) “A young man is killed in a hold-up”; (b) “A senator resigns”; (c) “A television star is acting in a local small-town summer theater.”

  3. Now write down a potential conflict—either one described in the story or one imagined by you—for each situation: (a) “The young man's killer was his partner in crime”; (b) “The senator was being blackmailed by a rival”; (c) “The television star's ex-wife now lives in the town.”

  4. Now write down a character's journey: (a) “The killer decides to turn himself in”; (b) “The senator admits to an affair he had with his campaign aide rather than capitulate to the blackmailer”; (c) “The television star falls in love with his ex-wife and tries to get her back.”

  5. Now create theatricality in each idea: (a) “The murder of the young man is remembered and re-enacted onstage from various witnesses' points of view, each time appearing as a different set of actions”; (b) “The senator's press conference where he admits to the affair takes place on one side of the stage, while a scene depicting his lover's attempt to swallow sleeping pills takes place on the other”; (c) “The television star tries to keep his wife from leaving the theater audience while acting onstage, switching the lines of the play s
o that he can propose to her.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Structure

  Early in this book I wrote that a playwright is a poet disguised as an architect. It's my way of saying that a playwright must learn to apply structure to her ideas and inspirations before an audience can appreciate the gifts she has to share with them. A work of art can be structured in many ways. A painter may structure in terms of color and composition. A sculptor may use dimension and proportion. A poet may use rhyme, sound, image and meter. Every successful artist must develop a structure that carries the weight of the work's idea, but only playwrights devise a structure that is designed to keep people happily in their seats. As Craig Wright, a talented playwright whose comedy The Big Numbers premiered at the Philadelphia Festival for New Plays, once told me, “A bad painting is just a bad painting. But a bad play you have to sit through.”

  My experience writing Neddy taught me a number of lessons. Some had to do with personal and artistic issues (put yourself in the play), but the majority of the lessons had to do with craft. And the most vital craft issue a playwright can master has to do with structured action. As we discussed in chapter two, action is a crucial element in all plays. Through action we develop character and move the story. To prove to yourself the importance of action, try the following experiment. It requires a good deal of reading, but no terrific playwright was ever hindered by her knowledge of the great plays that have come before. Use the following plays:

  Hamlet by William Shakespeare

  Hedda Gabler by Henrik Ibsen

  Uncle Vanya by Anton Chekhov

  The Front Page by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur

  The Little Foxes by Lillian Hellman

  The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams

  Dial “M” for Murder by Frederick Knott

  Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? by Edward Albee

  'Night, Mother by Marsha Norman

  The Odd Couple by Neil Simon

  Betrayal by Harold Pinter