The Art and Craft of Playwriting

by Jeffery Hatcher

  The second movement is designed to alternate raised tensions with relief of tension. The second movement, the middle, is your longest section. Pace yourself during it; a continuous rise in tension is exhausting, so the shrewd playwright follows a fast scene with a slow scene, a violent scene with a funny scene, a romantic scene with a scene of intrigue. The body, the mind, the senses require this constant handoff of mood and tension. Predictability and repetition are deadly to drama, so the second movement of the play is a complex mechanism designed to keep the mind engaged for what in most plays is a full hour or more, including the intermission (hence, the need for a cliffhanger first act curtain). And so, in second movements, princes pretend to go mad and plot ways to trap a killer (Hamlet). A murder goes awry and the plotter has to maneuver into a more ingenious strategy (Dial “M” for Murder). An old lover loses his manuscript, and it is hidden and destroyed by the woman who loves him (Hedda Gabler). The convict hides in a reporter's rolltop desk as the other reporters and policemen are kept on a wild goose chase (The Front Page). The mother tries to convince her daughter not to take her life ('Night, Mother). The Upper East Side couple search for the boy who came to their home and try to find out why he chose them to prey upon (Six Degrees of Separation). The fussbudget's messy best friend invites him to live with him, and various conflicts ensue that will hinder their friendship (The Odd Couple).

  The third movement is designed to raise audience expectation yet again, just when their energies might have flagged. In a contemporary full-length play, the audience has probably been sitting still for a long time. Sugar levels may be dropping; adrenalin may be in short supply. A gauntlet must be thrown to excite the senses. This is what is often referred to as the crisis. Something happens that will change everything for the characters. Someone will win, someone will lose. An end is in sight. And so, the prince is challenged to a duel (Hamlet). An inspector thinks he's found the means to ensnare the killer (Dial “M”). The lover is killed, and there are incriminating circumstances that lead to a blackmail plot (Hedda Gabler). The convict is found and the reporters are arrested (The Front Page). The mother admits her daughter has reason to kill herself but still tries one more time to prevent her action ('Night, Mother). An innocent young man kills himself because of the mysterious intruder who then calls the Upper East Side couple to beg their help (Six Degrees of Separation). The fussbudget and the slob nearly come to blows, and the fussbudget disappears (The Odd Couple).

  It is in the third movement of the play that your characters embark on their final conflict and reach the play's climax. You have raised expectations. You have taken the characters and your audience on a journey. There have been changes and surprises and complications and maneuvers. The search, the quest or the journey must end. The conflict must be resolved. And so, the prince kills his uncle and is himself killed (Hamlet). The wily murderer is foiled by his tiniest mistake (Dial “M”). The woman commits suicide rather than submit to blackmail (Hedda Gabler). The reporters are saved from prison, and the editor and his star writer seem to come to an understanding (The Front Page). The mother tries to save her daughter, but fails; her daughter shoots herself ('Night, Mother). The Upper East Side couple try to save the boy, but they are too late (Six Degrees of Separation). The slob and the fussbudget decide to remain good friends, but not roommates (The Odd Couple).

  These are not all happy endings. There is death. There is separation. There is failure. There are complications even at the resolution of the conflict. But happy endings or sad, the audience's satisfaction is achieved. The central dramatic questions have been answered. Characters have been depicted in action. People have changed. A journey is complete. The human spirit has been affirmed—in light, in darkness, in complexity and with reverberations. A story has been told.

  GREAT PLAY STRUCTURE IN REAL LIFE

  I'm always fascinated by the fact that stories in real life often resemble the pattern of good play structure. Of course, there's another way to write that sentence: “I'm always fascinated by the fact that good play structure tends to follow the pattern of fascinating real-life stories.”

  Take Watergate. It has a strong character as its central Protagonist—Richard Nixon. An intelligent, troubled and complicated figure. He is worthy of scorn, hatred, pity and admiration.

  It has a number of very strong Antagonists (some of which are, as we know, protagonists in their own private plays): Woodward and Bernstein, Ben Bradlee, Judge Sirica, John Dean, G. Gordon Liddy, the tapes, the Constitution of the United States, Congress, Nixon's own complex psyche and many more.

  It has a strong Inciting Incident or Back-Story: Nixon's desire to win the 1972 election and punish his enemies leads to the formation of the secret burglars, or “plumbers” unit.

  It has a great Point of Attack in its Great Beginning: the apprehension of the burglars at Democratic Headquarters on June 17, 1972, the action that necessitated the cover-up, the details of which ended up on Nixon's secret tapes, the revelation of which finally forced him to resign the presidency.

  It has a wonderful Great Middle filled with goals, actions, obstacles, complications, surprises and reversals: the White House cover-up; the investigation taken on by the police, the FBI and the press; the attempts—many successful, many not—by the White House to halt the investigation, bribe witnesses and destroy evidence; the confession of burglars and White House aides to Congress, the Washington Post and Judge Sirica; the Senate hearings and the surprise revelation that the Oval Office taping system existed; the attempts by prosecutors, the press and Congress to retrieve the tapes; Nixon's legal maneuvers to stop them from getting the tapes; the partial release of some tapes, including the one with the famous eighteen-and-a-half minute gap; the House Judiciary Committee's vote to impeach Nixon; the Supreme Court's decision that ordered Nixon to hand over the tapes; and the “smoking gun” revelation, discovered on a June 21, 1972 recording, that Nixon approved “hush money” to the Watergate burglars.

  And it has a great Climax: Nixon's August 8, 1974 resignation.

  Not to mention the terrific Subplots: Spiro Agnew's fall, Martha Mitchell's descent into madness, and the struggles of Woodward and Bernstein.

  There are other political scandals and other great characters in American political history. Why does Watergate in particular lend itself to a dramatic story? The characters had everything to win and everything to lose—all of them: Nixon, his aides, the reporters, the people of the United States. The characters had talents and flaws in great and equal measure (good protagonists have good antagonists). There were sudden opportunities provided by life and fate: the security guard who happened to find the taped door-lock at the Watergate complex and the accidental discovery that Nixon taped his conversations. There were outer conflicts and inner conflicts (Nixon vs. the Congress; Nixon vs. the Press; Nixon vs. the Supreme Court; Nixon vs. His Staff; Nixon vs. Himself—his fear, his anger, his frustration, his pettiness and his foolishness). And the characters didn't give up until they had won or knew they had lost.

  It's all incredible. It's all organic. And it's all true. With plots as good as Watergate in real life, we playwrights have to keep on our toes when we're structuring our imaginations.

  The successful authors of the plays we know and love have found that the three-part structure not only facilitates the telling of a story on stage, with the traditional notion of beginnings, middles and ends; it also follows the biological patterns of the human body. Keep in mind that since the days of ancient Greece, plays have been performed either in the afternoons following the lunch period, or in the evening, after the dinner period. This is commonly considered a time of rest, relaxation, naps, siestas—sleep. Biologically, the body is primed for unconsciousness. The organization of a play's events, actions, characters, and other points of interest, then, must be organized to fight the soporific nature of the viewing period. So the construction of a play is designed in a three-part structure, in large part to serve the needs of the human senses.<
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  If I seem to be suggesting that the assemblage of a play is a conscious attempt to offset the effects of eating and the drowsiness that comes with the digestive system, don't take me too seriously. It's not that biologically scientific. But it's amazing that the traditional arcs of storytelling and the traditional plotting of successful plays follow a pattern that is so conducive to the inner workings of the human mechanism. In drama's best, organic fashion, the natural storyteller follows her instinct and uses her knowledge of the theater and dramatic technique not to affect a biological response, but rather because she is so attuned to her own rhythms, to the rhythms of audiences, and to the very rhythm of life. She can't help but write that way. A grasp of the three-movement structure of story is vital to the dramatist's craft and the audience's needs.

  As you plan your play using the three-movement structure, remember that while I may be emphasizing detailed script analysis and extensive outlining, this structural approach will eventually function for your writing like physical memory, like tying a shoe or riding a bicycle. Once learned, understood and practiced, the three-part structure becomes part of your dramatic discipline. For now, however, our bones and muscles still need some limbering. So let's examine each part of the three-movement structure more closely in the following chapters, Great Beginnings, Great Middles and Great Endings.

  EXERCISES

  1. In one to three pages of prose, write a story from real life or one you imagine. Now start looking for its three movements. Are they already there? Is there a beginning that contains an inciting incident and a point of attack? Is there a large middle section with conflicting forces? Is there a climax followed by resolution? Play with the story, reworking it a few times until this shape emerges.

  2. Once you've identified this three-part structure to the story, rewrite it in three to six sentences. This is reductive, true, but it will boil the key actions and characters down to their essentials. It will tell you which actions and characters are most important to you. (Example: Hamlet. Movement One: The ghost of King Hamlet appears to Prince Hamlet, telling him that Claudius murdered him and exhorting Hamlet to avenge his death. Movement Two: Hamlet attempts to prove Claudius' guilt by pretending to be mad and by staging a play that closely resembles Claudius' murder of King Hamlet. Hamlet gets his proof but kills Polonius by mistake and is sent to England to be executed. Movement Three: Hamlet escapes his execution, returns to Denmark and is challenged by Polonius' son Laertes to a duel. Claudius plots with Laertes to kill Hamlet. Instead, Laertes is mortally wounded, as is Hamlet. Laertes confesses to Hamlet, implicating Claudius. Hamlet kills Claudius. Hamlet dies.) Again, many other actions—and deaths—take place in Hamlet. But this tells the essential story.

  3. Now isolate all the verbs you used in the three sentences. How many of the verbs were actions performed by people to get what they wanted? Did they affect other people in the story? Did they cause further actions to take place?

  4. Outline the play idea you've developed according to the plan we discussed earlier in this chapter. Then expand the outline in more detail, using the French scene method.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Great Beginnings

  Every play teaches its audience how to watch it as they watch it. As a play begins, it instructs its audience how to comprehend its journey and its world. If the play says it is a comedy, the audience will agree to comprehend it as a comedy. This comedy cue is referred to as “giving the audience permission to laugh,” usually within the first minute or two of the action. If a play says it is a serious drama, then a serious dramatic experience will be expected, and that permission to laugh will most likely be delayed and granted less often. The beginning of a play is where you plant the seeds for everything to come. Guns displayed in the beginnings of plays often go off at their ends. Character flaws depicted on page five become running gags for the next 115 pages. It's like loading a revolver in preparation to fire it. A good play carries all of its details with it as it moves from its beginning to its conclusion.

  Within the first few minutes of a well-constructed play, the audience must learn:

  • the central characters (Who are they? How many?)

  • the foreshadowing of the central dramatic action (What's the plot? What do the characters want? What's in their way?)

  • the tone (Serious? Comic?)

  • the style (Naturalism? Realism? Restoration?)

  • the design—setting, sound, light, costume (A real bedroom? An abstract unit set? A bare stage?)

  These factors create the world of the play. Most plays stay within the world established in their beginnings. A sudden break from that world or a wandering from the established action is apt to throw the audience off the track. If you subvert the expectations you've established early on, you'd better have a good reason. Imagine an Odd Couple that suddenly changes its plot so that Felix catches an incurable disease. Imagine a Hamlet that suddenly has Hamlet telling jokes to the audience.

  In writing a play today, you have approximately ten to fifteen minutes to set space, time, tone, situation, most major characters and the central issue of the drama. If these central points are not elucidated early on, your audience will lose focus quickly and become frustrated in their attempt to understand and enjoy the play. Aristotle describes this in the Poetics: “In the first act set forth the case.” And a dramatic “case,” like a case in a court of law, requires evidence and information. This detailing of information vitally important to the audience's understanding and enjoyment of the play is called exposition.

  EXPOSITION

  Exposition tells the audience what has happened, what is happening, and what may happen next. Exposition can be communicated in a number of ways:

  • Through dialogue between characters onstage

  • Through monologues spoken by one character to either an unseen character or directed toward the audience

  • Through stage action

  • Through design elements (sets, lights, sound, costumes)

  Most exposition, however, is accomplished by dialogue. There are two ways of communicating expositional information to the audience via dialogue:

  1. Representational exposition

  2. Presentational exposition

  A representational depiction of reality is an attempt to make an onstage dramatic scene appear as if it were happening in much the same way it would in real life. In a representational play, the onstage characters behave as if they are unaware of the audience's presence. A representational play behaves as if unaware of its own artifice. The actors stay “in character” as characters. The onstage characters assume a real fourth wall separates them from the audience. The play pretends it is not a play.

  A presentational play depicts reality within the frame of a theatrical presentation. It knows it is a “show.” In a presentational play, the characters do behave as if they are aware an audience is watching. Soliloquies, asides, direct-address, even audience interaction underline this kind of presentation. The actors are saying, in effect, “We are presenting a play to you. We are not pretending to be real. We know you're out there.”

  Let's look at a few examples of representational exposition. Arguably, it is much more difficult to write exposition in representational theater. You want to suggest place, time and character relationships. You need to move the story's conflict along as well, and propel the action forward. When striving for a naturalistic effect in an opening scene between two old college roommates who were once rivals for the same woman's affections, it would be ham-handed to have the expository exchange go like this:

  BILL: It certainly is good to see you, Tom, my old roommate.

  TOM: I feel the same, Bill, even though we used to have affection for the same girl.

  Why doesn't this exposition work in a representational, realistic scene? Because people don't talk like this in real life. So what do you do? You look for the code words that suggest place, time and relationships:

  BILL: Who was the guy who li
ved down the hall from us?

  TOM: The big fat one from Nebraska?

  BILL: Right. Lowest GPA in the freshman class. Ginnie used to tutor him.

  TOM: Yeah. Ginnie.

  (Pause)

  BILL: Sorry, sore subject. You still hear from her?

  TOM: No. (Beat) You?

  The first representational exposition example is crude and simplistic. The second is subtler and more dramatically effective. By using code words that refer to college (“GPA,” “freshman class,” “tutor,” “down the hall”), the playwright will lead the audience to a conclusion: that these two characters were college roommates. By mentioning one name, “Ginnie”—a name that causes a momentary halt in the conversation—the playwright can not only add further information but also suggest the possibility of a love triangle between two men and one woman. What's useful, as well, is that this past triangle, this past offstage conflict, might become part of a present onstage conflict as well. A past action may influence a present action. The old rivalry over Ginnie might come back.

  When using code in writing exposition, the playwright must seek out the words, phrases, and points of reference endemic to the place, situation, action and characters involved.

  An audience hangs onto exposition that has to do with the dramatic questions posed by the play. An audience hangs onto exposition that has to do with conflict, with action, with mysteries. To that end, the best kind of exposition is deeply worked into the fiber and muscle of the drama. And dramatic exposition is best displayed in active, forward-moving exchanges spoken by characters who need to tell information to other characters who need to know, especially when the information is part of ongoing action, mystery and conflict.