January 17 - Half Ideas

Characters
What do they want?
What are their distinct personalities?
How does this create conflict and drama?
Whats the story?
What do the characters do?
What do they want?
There must be at least a hint of action
o Even if theres no physical action, there must be mental action through dialogue
Conflict
Should be at the core of every scene and character
No one wants to see a play about nice things happening to nice people. Unless
something really unhappy is about to happen to them. Richard Walter
Unity of Action
Whats the throughline?
Characters, action, conflict, but no single subject that bring it all together
Choose a central conflict and develop it
Plausibility
Action must be logical for the audience to buy it
Seek out the truth inherent in your premise and reveal it for the audience through a
plausible sequence of events
Pseudo-Philosophical Gobbledy-Gook
Must communicate ideas, not just string together long words
Unity of Time and Place
Avoid using too many scenes, locations, or jumps in time
Scope
Avoid looking at too wide a subject
A good play focuses on a limited number of characters, with only a few hours time in
their lives presented (although that time can be spread out over days or years)
Lack of Focus
There must be a single focus
One protagonist and things happen around them
Trendy
Hot topics change quickly
Dont write for success and popularity write your truth what you need to write, what
you want to write. Something you care about, whether it is successful or not
Skit Concept vs Play
Plays a single joke to an extreme
Not enough substance for a full play
A good start
Has conflict, crisis, the beginnings of characters, appropriate scope, and deals with a
basic truth
 Be careful to avoid preaching to the choir obvious right and wrong sides of a politically
correct topic. This can end up smug, sanctimonious, and pointless
January 19 - Dramatic Rules vs Dramatic Principles
These are not the same!
Dramatic Rules
Change over time
Aristotles Poetics
Plot, Character, Thought, Diction, Music, Spectacle
Three Unities of Time, Place, and Action
French Neoclassical Ideals
Dramatic Principles
Structure that has changed very little over time
Conflict
Protagonist and Antagonist come to an impasse because they cant agree on something
Protagonist has to try to compromise
Desire + Obstacle X Lack of Compromise = Conflict
Truth
Playwrights often try to convince the audience of some sort of point of view
Truth in plays can be emotional or intellectual
o Emotional Truth is more important
Must be entertaining as well
o Pure entertainment is an opiate.
Spectacle
What the audience sees is often just as important as what they hear
Has to make sense in the world of the play
Dramatic/Structural Unity
All other elements must come together under one Spine
Logical Cause and Effect
Surprises are okay, but they have to be logical
Must have a clear beginning, middle, and end
Character
The people who interact
Action
What happens in the play
Their interactions
January 31 - Formula
Most basic stories follow a basic formula, whether you realize it or not
Formulas Purpose
Character and plot must be developed simultaneously FORMULA allows you to do so
Relies on established structure (skeleton) but you provide the skin, eye and hair color,
height, weight, nose, mouth, etc.
Beginning
Event
o Grabs the audience right away
o Natural and obvious, not contrived
o Contains the essence of the story
o Hints at whats to come
Inciting Incident
o The Disturbance or Point of Attack the turning point in the lives of one or
more of your characters when they begin to ACT
o Protagonist falls into a situation of potential conflict
o Protagonist must face the potential conflict from a disadvantage
o 10% Rule
Major Decision
o Protagonist makes a decision that sets him on a course through the rest of the play
o Is responsible for the rest of the plays action its Core
o Defines what the play is about
o Clarifies the protagonists GOAL
MDQ
o The hook that will keep the audience in their seats for two hours
o What is going to happen? provokes curiosity and suspense
o When answered, often gives us the theme of the play
o Must not be answered until the end
Middle
Series of Obstacles
o Make sure your protagonist doesnt succeed for a while (if at all!)
o Too strong, too soon, there is no conflict
The Three Cs
o Conflicts, Crises, and Complications
o When the protagonist faces no more of these, the play is over for the audience
o Dont solve everything too soon or have a denouement that goes on for several
pages
o A scene doesnt need to be action-packed to have complications (imminent
conflict)
Rising Action
o AKA Upping the Stakes
o The dramatic escalation of the Three Cs
o Each solution gives rise to a new C
 o Each C must be a higher stake than the previous one
o Middle of the play should follow the path of the most resistance
The Dark Moment
o All is lost!
o The ultimate obstacle
o Protagonist has failed, usually because of their own actions
o Signals the beginning of the end
Drama: the protagonist has lost
Comedy/Positive Ending: false moment of despair
Ending
ALERT: Ending must be consistent with the beginning
o Audience should not feel tricked by an out-of-the-blue deus ex machina
o Surprise ending is okay, but must still be logical
o Dont write yourself into a corner
Enlightenment
o Protagonist learns how to defeat the antagonist (positive ending) OR realizes that
the antagonist cannot be defeated
o Something the protagonist could not have known without the previous trials and
tribulations
o Carefully set up since the beginning, but not obvious at the time
o Forms of Revealing the Truth (for the audience and the protagonist)
The protagonist joins forces with another
There is a revelation that brings new understanding to the situation
Protagonist finally sees the light after falling into the dark moment
Climax
o Now enlightened, the protagonist is ready to defeat the enemy (or at least try)
o Pace should accelerate
o Climax = when the antagonist/situation is defeated in some way (including in a
tragedy)
o Defeat can be physical, mental, emotional, etc.
o Does not need to be overly dramatic
o The protagonist must be the driving force behind the climax their actions bring
it home
Catharsis
o Purging of the emotions Aristotle
o Tragedy: audience feels pity for the protagonist, or fear they will suffer the same
fate
o Positive Ending: audience feels a deep sense of satisfaction
o A deeper sense of self-awareness for the audience
o Hint of what is to come
o Get in and out! No wallowing!
The Formula Trap
 Fundamental elements happen in the same order (event, inciting incident, major decision,
conflict, dark moment, etc.) this form of storytelling is as old as storytelling
The trap is winding up with a boring, uninteresting play it sells but its not art
Dont become too comfortable youll avoid risk
The playwrights ally in finding danger and risk in his play that follows formula is
CHARACTER
February 9 - Character
Frankensteins Monster
Characters will always wind up being a little part of yourself, but you MUST study others to
have empathy (being able to imagine yourself in the situation of others).
Begin to UNDERSTAND other peoples lives:
Personalities
Motivations
Emotions
2 Methods for Creating Stage Characters
Deconstruction
Assume the parts can equal the whole
Assume individuals can be divided into fractions
Hope to mix up the right formula
Moving Targets
Treats characters as moving targets
Allows characters to move, take action, and react to stimuli
How much information is enough?
Avoid relying too much on character biographies
Deconstruct the character instead
Physical
Appearance
Health
Medical problems
What they wear
Age and gender
Sociology
Family relationships
Nationality
Religion
Hopes
Class/status
Occupation
Career
Financial situation
Political views
Psychology
Superstitions
Talents
Ambitions
Disappointments
Temperament
Tastes
 Fears
Phobias
Inhibitions
Morals
Mannerisms
Hobbies
Obsessions
Philosophy
Background Information
Childhood
Education
Parental relationship
First kiss
War record
Greatest moment of happiness
Greatest moment of sadness
Dont let this get out of hand!
Brief answers are the best
Dont treat this as a character analysis as though you are an actor preparing for a role
Dont try to reproduce a living person; this is a character giving the impression they are a
real person within the confines of a particular story
You must be selective!
Present Tense
Be selective
If elements of their history affect the characters actions NOW, it is relevant. If not, cut it
Remember the sequence of events character actions must point to a final end
Subtextual information
Select and arrange information
Dominant Traits
Concentrate on their dominant traits and emotions:
o Aaron, the snobby irritating guy at the office who steals food from the
employee fridge.
o Jennifer, the emo girl at school who keeps sending roses to her exs house.
o Jared, the bored Starbucks barista who pretends he cant hear your actual
name.
o Lola, the stripper from Louisiana who takes alcoholics to AA meetings.
The Fine Line
Characters must be unique and different from one another
One EMOTIONS usually defines them the most (thin back to the Breakup characters)
o Cheerfulness
o Lust
o Anger
 o DO NOT make self-pity dominant unless they take action to snap out of it
Simple traits lead to refined traits
Stereotypes
The dumb blonde
The redneck
The cranky old man
The scatterbrained scientist
Use them IF you can make them unique, surprising, distinctive
o The cranky old widower who uses a million balloons to fly his house to South
America.
You ARE what you DO Characters in Action
Characters are what they DO, not how they appear
Their true self may be different from their obvious characteristics
True self emerges when PRESSED TO EXTREMITY
Dramatic change/surprise (if justified) can be one of your greatest techniques
Action, Action, Action
Use anything that drives a character FORWARD
o Desire, want, goal
Character who does the most to move the action forward (or does the most to prevent it)
sets the play on course
Real people usually make bad stage characters we rarely take significant action
The Characters Action must have a Goal
Its easy to confuse effective dramatic action with activities. Activities are the dramatic
equivalent of busywork. They may look like actions (like a fistfight) and sound like
actions (a shouting match), but if they dont cause a reaction, theyre not actions.
Activites do not matter unless they provoke a reaction
Why do Characters Fail?
Goals are not strong enough
Obstacles are not difficult enough
They have not been given enough traits or opportunities to take action
Careful about the Problems You Choose
Dont use addiction, alcoholism, etc.; dont mistake the symptom for the cause
Characters motivation always needs to be to turn a negative into a positive
February 16 - Dialogue
Good Dialogue is:
Not weighed down by exposition
o Show, dont tell
Has a purpose and builds towards something (escalates)
Evokes the way people talk without sounding like the way people talk
o Real people use too many filler words and are boring
Characters do not necessarily have to say what they mean
o Reveals their personality
Goes easy on exclamations
o Ugh, Blech, Woo-hoo, Ha ha!
Unpredictable
Read, say the lines out loud as you write them,