The Art and Craft of Playwriting

by Jeffery Hatcher

  2. What elements can you employ to depict this climax onstage? List them.

  3. What is the meaning derived from this climax? Write it down.

  4. What are the last ten lines of dialogue? Write them.

  5. What is the last stage image? Write it down.

  6. Ascension Endings. The ending of Martin Sherman's Bent is an example of a climax that ends sadly but with ascension. This 1978 British play established Ian McKellan as a major actor on the English stage. In it, he played a homosexual in Nazi Germany who is interred in a concentration camp with other “undesirables.” At the play's end, a fellow prisoner is shot dead by guards inside the barbed wire. McKellan's character, against all odds, moves to the fence himself, where he too is killed. Another grim ending? No. Because McKellan's character found courage in the end and made his attempt at escape. He failed, but he made the gesture of ascension, and in that gesture there is grace. While we mourn the character's death, it is his grace that stays with us.

  Write a climax that combines a positive final action on the part of your protagonist with a failure of the protagonist to achieve his goal.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Dialogue

  The award-winning playwright August Wilson has often said that he doesn't so much write his characters as listen to them. The art of dialogue writing lies in the way dramatists listen both to the outside world and to our inner voices and the means by which our listening is transformed into character, action and meaning. We've already discussed dialogue as exposition and dialogue as action. Any playwright will tell you it's difficult to teach the talent of dialogue writing; you either have an “ear” for dialogue, or you don't. But even a talented dialogue writer can learn a few tricks that may enliven the words on the page.

  PAYING ATTENTION TO REAL LIFE

  When dramatists write dialogue, they often worry about “getting the diction right.” Diction, in this case, means the manner in which a character speaks. It means making a realistic character sound the way she would in real life: cab drivers talking like cab drivers; state department officials talking like state department officials. Different people use different code words and turns of phrase. Diction has to do with education, class, region, age and other character variables. For example, a seventy-year-old Boston-born attorney who graduated from Harvard would probably not say “pants.” He'd say “trousers.” A Pittsburgh mobster wouldn't say, “Do you want me to hit you?” He'd say, “Ya' want hit?” A young lady in Victorian England would never say, “I've dated weirder guys than you”—unless the lady were in a wacky comedy. In writing specific diction for your characters, you should avoid linguistic anachronisms at all costs, the exception being when the anachronism intentionally calls attention to itself for the sake of comedy. Inconsistencies and anachronisms are sloppy errors that take the audience out of the play, making them wonder why the playwright goofed.

  As an example of inconsistent diction, let's look at David Mamet's Oleanna. Some critics argue that the character of Carol, the inarticulate student depicted in the first act of the play could never speak in the smooth, articulate manner she does in the second act.

  The First Act Carol: “I failed. Flunk me out of it. It's garbage. Everything I do. ‘The ideas contained in this work express the author's feelings.’ That's right. That's right. I know I'm stupid. I know what I am.”

  Now look at the Second Act Carol: “You call education ‘hazing,’ and from your protected, so-elitist seat you hold our confusion as a joke, and our hopes and efforts with it. Then you sit there and say, ‘What have I done?’ And ask me to understand that you have aspirations too … if you possess one ounce of that inner honesty you describe in your book, you can look in yourself and see those things that I see. And you can find revulsion equal to my own. Good day.”

  As for anachronisms, we can turn to Kathleen Winsor's popular romance Forever Amber, set in seventeenth-century England and containing—as New Yorker critic Anthony Lane has pointed out—such twentieth-century slang phrases as “Thanks a million” and “Hey, just a minute.”

  A writer has to choose the right dialogue. Try this exercise: Go to a party and tape some of the conversations. You'll pick up speech rhythms, colorful phrases, regional accents, and the stop-and-start pattern of real-life talk. You'll also realize that, for our purposes, a lot of that real-life talk is useless. Remember Hitchcock's definition of drama—life with the dull bits cut out? Good dialogue is talk with the dull bits cut out. Look at the transcripts of a trial, or—better—read the published transcripts of the Nixon White House tapes. The Nixon-Watergate transcripts are wonderful examples of real-life speech recorded while most of the participants were unaware of the taping system's existence. Here's a June 1972 exchange between President Richard Nixon, his chief of staff H.R. Haldeman, and White House attorney John Dean.

  NIXON: Hi, how are you? You had quite a day today didn't you. You got Watergate on the way didn't you?

  DEAN: We tried.

  HALDEMAN: How did it all end up?

  DEAN: Ah, I think we can say well at this point. The press is playing it just as we expect.

  HALDEMAN: Whitewash?

  DEAN: No, not yet—the story right now—

  NIXON: It is a big story.

  HALDEMAN: Five indicted plus the WH former guy and all that.

  DEAN: Plus two White House fellows.

  HALDEMAN: That is good that takes the edge off whitewash really that was the thing Mitchell kept saying that to people in the country Liddy and Hunt were big men. Maybe that is good.

  Nixon was asking John Dean if he was keeping a lid on the Watergate break-in scandal without giving the press the appearance that the White House was trying to cover-up—or “whitewash”—its involvement. The “WH former guy” is E. Howard Hunt, who worked in the White House and for the CIA. The “two White House fellows” are Hunt and G. Gordon Liddy. Haldeman's last speech refers to his hope that the investigation will go no further than Liddy and Hunt. Nixon campaign chairman John Mitchell had told lots of people that Hunt and Liddy were key operatives in the campaign structure, so Haldeman thinks most observers will assume the buck stops with them.

  What parts of this real-life dialogue would be valuable to a dramatist?

  • The immediate action (“You got Watergate on the way, didn't you?”)

  • The exposition (“Five indicted plus the WH former guy and all that … that takes the edge off whitewash.”)

  • The peculiar and authentic-sounding code words (“the WH former guy.”)

  • The interruptions (“—the story right now—” “It is a big story.”)

  • The sense of rushed, real-life fractured grammar and syntax (“That is good that takes the edge off whitewash really that was the thing Mitchell kept saying that to people in the country Liddy and Hunt were big men.”)

  But not all of this raw material is dramatically useful. Some of it is fat. Some of it is confusing. What “dull bits” would you cut out to make the scene sharper? What would you add to make the scene clearer? I'll bold-face my deletions and italicize my additions to the scene:

  NIXON: Hi, how are you? You had quite a day today didn't you. You got Watergate on the way didn't you?

  DEAN: We tried.

  HALDEMAN: How did it all end up?

  DEAN: Ah, I think we can say it went well at this point. The press is playing it just as we expected.

  HALDEMAN: Does the press think we're trying to Whitewash it?

  DEAN: No, not yet—the story right now—

  NIXON: It'is a big story.

  HALDEMAN: Five indicted plus the WH former guy and all that.

  DEAN: PlusTwo White House guys.

  HALDEMAN: That'is good. Admitting that two of them were connected to the White House takes the edge off any accusation of a whitewash. really that was the thing Mitchell kept saying that to people in the country Liddy and Hunt were the big men. Maybethe investigation will stop with them.

  Let's look at the final vers
ion of rewritten reality.

  NIXON: You had quite a day today didn't you. You got Watergate on the way?

  DEAN: We tried.

  HALDEMAN: How did it all end up?

  DEAN: I think we can say it went well. The press is playing it just as we expected.

  HALDEMAN: Does the press think we're trying to Whitewash it?

  DEAN: No, not yet—the story—

  NIXON: It's a big story.

  HALDEMAN: Five indicted plus the WH former guy.

  DEAN: Two White House guys.

  HALDEMAN: That's good. Admitting that two of them were connected to the White House takes the edge off any accusation of a whitewash. Mitchell kept saying that Liddy and Hunt were the big men. Maybe the investigation will stop with them.

  Selected reality. The truth is there. The clarity and shaping is imposed. It's the same with fictional dialogue. It's the old question of what to keep and what to throw away. Jon Jory, the artistic director of Actors Theatre of Louisville, once said in an article in The New York Times that he knew Marsha Norman would be a successful playwright because she “knew how to rewrite.” Cutting, shaping and clarifying dialogue is the largest part of rewriting. As you rewrite, draft after draft, you'll be amazed how much you find to change in your play. There's always more to cut, always more lines to be improved. According to the late critic Kenneth Tynan in a New Yorker profile, Tom Stoppard once read to a group of students twenty-four different versions of an invective spat out by Tristan Tzara to James Joyce in his literary-political comedy Travesties. The first version was “You blarney-arsed bog-eating Irish pig.” The last was “By God, you supercilious streak of Irish puke!” Commented Stoppard, deadpan: “All this takes weeks.” Getting it right takes time. And, as many writers have said, plays are not so much written as rewritten.

  STYLIZATION

  Stylization in dialogue is hard to define, but a true, original, effective style is always recognizable. Look at the language found in the plays of Oscar Wilde, Harold Pinter and Sam Shepard. An epigram like this one spoken by Lady Bracknell in Wilde's high-comic masterpiece The Importance of Being Earnest: “To lose one parent may be regarded as a misfortune … to lose both seems like carelessness” is identified by its perfect balance, its symmetrical rhythm, its precise repetition of the words “to lose,” and the solemn silliness of its surprising punch line “seems like carelessness.”

  Look at a speech like this one from Harold Pinter's Old Times:

  DEELEY: You sat on a very low sofa, I sat opposite and looked up your skirt. Your black stockings were very black because your thighs were so white.… I simply sat sipping my light ale and gazed … gazed up your skirt. You didn't object, you found my gaze perfectly acceptable.… There was a great argument going on about China or something, or death, or China and death, I can't remember which, but nobody but I had a thigh-kissing view, nobody but you had the thighs which kissed. And here you are. Same woman. Same thighs.

  It's pure Pinter. Suggestive. Spooky. Full of menace and sexuality. It's also reminiscent of three of Pinter's great influences—the witty English drawing-room dialogue of Noel Coward, the absurdist flourishes of Samuel Beckett, and the speech rhythms of London's Jewish East End, where Pinter grew up in the 1940s.

  The roiling, southwestern tang of a Sam Shepard aria from The Toothof Crime, a futuristic tale of two desperado rock stars, is redolent not only of the mythical, violence-prone loners he often depicts but also of the rock lyrics that permeated his experience of living with the songwriter and poet Patti Smith: “Beat it! I'm too old-fashioned. That's it. Gotta kick out the scruples. Go against the code. That's what they used to do. The big ones. Dylan, Jagger, Townsend. All them cats broke codes. Times can't change that.… They were killers in their day.… Cold killers.”

  You can't choose a dialogue style, like those of Wilde, Pinter, Shepard, Tennessee Williams, David Mamet or Christopher Durang. That comes with you, or it doesn't come at all. But you can refine it and mine it for all its dramatic and theatrical potential. The danger comes when a playwright imitates another writer's language. A writer can borrow a plotline or a story. The British playwright Alan Ayckbourn, in his play The Revenger's Comedy, which concerns a man and woman who meet on a bridge while attempting suicide but instead decide to murder their tormentors, combines the plot of Murray Schisgal's Luv, in which a man and woman meet on a bridge while attempting suicide, with Alfred Hitchcock's Strangers on a Train, in which two men plot to murder their tormentors by trading victims. A writer can borrow an idea, he can even develop a language that is a hybrid of other writers; but a writer who slavishly impersonates another author's style is always a pale thief. Just as dangerous: a writer who starts with a recognizable style and then turns that style into a crutch. Tennessee Williams wrote some of the greatest dramatic language in the American theater. He wrote great stage poetry, evoking the hothouse passions, shattered psyches and honeyed tones of a baroque, dreamscape South. But the plays he wrote in the last fifteen years of life—when he was plagued by doubts and addictions—were parodies of that style—overblown and unintentionally funny. It can happen to the best writers. An original style is often millimeters away from going over-the-top. The finest stylists—Pinter, Mamet, Shepard among them—have often had to reign themselves in after becoming a bit too indulgent in one play or another.

  DIALOGUE AS TEXT

  George Bernard Shaw and Tom Stoppard are masters of “writing on the line.” Writing on the line means that the characters say what they mean. There are exceptions, of course (see Pygmalion), but by and large when Shaw's Henry Higgins speaks, we know he means what he says, nothing more, nothing less (and with Shaw, there's seldom any less). When Stoppard's characters, such as Henry in The Real Thing or George in Jumpers or Lenin in Travesties, speak, they are speaking their minds—clearly—without filters. Other writers who do this “on the line” writing might include the British writers David Hare, Howard Brenton and Caryl Churchill, as well as Tony Kushner, author of Angels in America. What kind of plays do they—and Shaw and Stoppard—often write? Political plays. Writing on the line is direct and clear, and political plays usually attempt to clarify complicated ideas and issues. That doesn't mean a writer can't approach politics or other complicated subjects like religion or philosophy from the avenue of metaphor. Tom Stoppard often writes very direct, elegant speeches about various subjects and ideas, but look at this example of metaphor from his Tony-winning play The Real Thing. Henry is talking to his wife about writing and the power of words. He holds a cricket bat in his hand.

  HENRY: This thing here, which looks like a wooden club, is actually several pieces of particular wood cunningly put together in a certain way so that the whole thing is sprung, like a dance floor. It's for hitting cricket balls with. If you get it right, the cricket ball will travel two hundred yards in four seconds, and all you've done is give it a knock like knocking off the top of a bottle of stout, and it makes a noise like a trout taking fly … (He clucks his tongue to make the noise) What we're trying to do is write cricket bats, so that when we throw up an idea and give it a little knock, it might … travel …

  It's a metaphor, but it's written on the line. You can deliver ideas and information in overt sentences (“One should write well”), or you can say it with metaphor (“We're trying to write cricket bats”), but writing on the line means that the language used is a direct, conscious attempt by the characters to communicate what they're thinking. Below is the term we use for unconscious or indirect communication.

  DIALOGUE AS SUBTEXT

  Actors know what the term “subtext” refers to in performing dramatic scenes. Its strict definition is this: (1) the complex of feelings and motives underlying the actual words and actions of the character being portrayed, (2) an underlying meaning or theme. Subtext means, for example, trying to find ways of saying “I love you” without having the words “I love you” at your disposal. The “I love you” is under the text—below the line.

  Play
wrights have to develop their subtext muscles. As we've discussed before, dramatic action is as much about what doesn't happen as what does. The trick to writing dialogue that underscores a romantic subtext has little to do with alternative words or codes for “I love you.” You don't have to write “I adore you,” or “Hey, babe: ‘eight letters,’ know-what-I-mean?” (“I love you” has eight letters). The trick is being able to write, “Pass the salt, please” or “Nice dress” or “When do you want me to be there?” and still be certain that the audience knows it means “I love you.” In Shaw's Pygmalion, to take a famous example, we know that Henry Higgins is in love with Eliza Doolittle when he says he has “grown accustomed to (her) face.”

  Again, it's a question of context. In a play about infidelity, the audience takes its knowledge of the information it has received and applies it to the action they are watching.

  Here's an example from Harold Pinter's Betrayal. Emma, under duress, has confessed her affair with Jerry to her husband Robert. No one has yet told Jerry that Robert knows. Robert, a publisher, and Jerry, a literary agent, are best friends. Jerry doesn't suspect a thing. They meet for lunch.

  ROBERT: Emma read that novel of that chum of yours—what's his name? … Spinks.

  JERRY: Oh Spinks. Yes. The one you didn't like.

  ROBERT: The one I wouldn't publish.

  JERRY: … Did Emma like it?

  ROBERT: She seemed to be madly in love with it.

  JERRY: Good.

  ROBERT: You like it yourself do you?

  JERRY: I do.

  ROBERT: And it's successful?