What drives a good play?
Plot or character? Well, both
have to be compelling for a play to sell.
A good story and identifiable characters are key to connecting with your
audience. So what comes first, the
chicken or the egg? Does a playwright
form a plot around characters or does she develop the characters in service of
the plot? Too much emphasis on plot and
you could end up with “Downton Abbey”-like machinations that don’t ring true to
human nature. Too much emphasis on
character development and your plot could languish hopelessly in Ionesco-land minus
the French avant-garde
genius-factor.
If your characters are believable, if you’ve found their
unique voices, the plot will naturally fit.
Giving characters a “voice of their own” is what makes them real, and
what will make your story flow, no matter how packed your plot is with
extraordinary events.
Jane Austen’s plots are full of coincidences, twists of fate
and, in spite of the lace, outrageous sexual perversion (seducers, sadists, and
“appetites that are not what they should be” are all there if you look past the
euphemisms). But she has been called the
first veritable “realist” of English literature--because her characters act and
speak in ways that people really act and speak.
They even think in ways that real people think: selfishly, foolishly,
rationally, and hysterically. Their
words reflect their personalities. The
best adaptions of Jane Austen, from Emma Thompson to Andrew Davies, rely
heavily on Jane Austen’s own dialogues.
Okay, so few of us, if any, possess Jane Austen’s
preternatural abilities. Or Cormac
McCarthy’s or Anton Chekhov’s. Read,
read, read, is always the first tip to any writer wishing to improve
characterization. Meanwhile, here are a
few tips specifically for playwriting:
1. Vocabulary. What
words is a character likely to use? You
may have a great SAT-worthy vocabulary, but does your action hero? Not all characters are going to use words like
“preternaturally” or “avant-garde.” Keep those for your nerdiest, most professorial
characters, or the writing bloghounds.
2. Phrasing. Characters, just like painters and their
brushstrokes, have signature sentence structures. Powerful characters give orders, interrupt
others and hold the floor longer. Meeker
ones ask more questions and end them with question tags, like “This is the secret code, isn’t it?” The
point is not to imitate natural speech, but to telegraph individuality.
3. Black out the
names on your play and then see if you can fill in the names based on the lines
(no cheating!). It should be obvious who
says what. Or read all one character’s
lines only to judge consistence and voice.
4. Character is
destiny, but don’t be predictable. Give
characters depth and allow them to grow.
Introduce a stereotypically grumpy elderly man, for instance, but give him
the sweetest line of the script.
5. Exercise your
dialogue muscles by eavesdropping.
Again, you’re not going to imitate natural speech (that would be way too
boring), but you will begin to recognize patterns.
6. The last tip is
that LESS is MORE. In order for your
plot to move, Western Union (or think texting before Swype-typing) your
characters’ speeches. Cut to the chase
and move on.
However you write, plot-first or character-rich, or in that
inexplicably inspired zone where they mesh, let the voices be heard!
Treanor Wooten Baring is currently a free-lance poet and
playwright. She began her professional arts career as a television
producer/director and script editor with public television in Mississippi and
Massachusetts. Her latest play premiered in 2014 in Houston, Texas, and
will soon be published by Theatrefolk, Inc.
Treanor Baring
NLAPW, Inc
Pen Woman Magazine Poetry Editor
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