Chapter 7
Intention, Objective, and Action
Once I start to get some sense of who my characters are, I also begin to get a sense of what they want. This is one of the most important moments of discovering what my play is actually about. Ask yourself early on in the writing of your play “What do my lead characters want?”
Actors are taught in acting classes that they must always know what their character wants (the objective). They are told to make it personal (the intention) and then go for it (the action). As writers, we have to supply actors with characters that have strong wants, or they won’t have much to play. Simply put, the stronger the wants, the more the actor has to play.
To illustrate this important point: my objective now is to teach you, the reader, how to write a ten-minute play. I’m sitting at my computer trying to figure out the best ways I can communicate the meaning of this particular terminology to you. I am determined to find the right words (intention), and by choosing and writing these words that you’re now reading, I hope to get this important aspect of writing a ten-minute play through to you (action).
When working on a ten-minute play you have to be certain that your main character has a strong need. All the other characters (and hopefully there aren’t too many others in your ten-minute play), should also have needs that they may or (may not) fulfill. Because this is a ten-minute play, you want to make these character intentions obvious in (hopefully) the first two pages of your play. This is no time to mess around with a lot of exposition. Get to the point ASAP! Sometimes this means that you overwrite during your first draft. Write as much as you need to set the story in motion.
When it’s all there, no matter how many pages you have, then cut, cut, cut down to the bone, to the basics of the story you need to tell in ten pages. This is where the play actually begins. The trick is to cut just the fat from your storytelling, not the muscle. You must have a cohesive, strong, clear story from the get-go, with characters motivated by strong needs. As your characters interact, trying to have their needs met, you create the universe of your play and the story reveals itself.
Where you set the play will definitely influence the story you’re telling. If you set the play in a prison cell, your characters are going to have very different realities than they would if you placed them at a kitchen table.
The time of day, whether it’s two in the morning or two in the afternoon, will affect the characters’ behavior. There are different rhythms for different times of day or night.
Setting your play on a sweltering hot summer night, or a freezing cold day with little or no heat, will also affect how characters behave.
The Best Way to Tell Your Story: The Play’s Structure
Plays take several forms. They can be naturalistic and have a traditional structure (beginning, middle, and end) or they can tell a story in a nontraditional or nonlinear way. The story of your play and the characters’ interactions can guide you as to which form fits best. Initially you may want to allow your play to move in any direction (and form) that it wants. As it becomes clearer to you, you’ll have a better idea of how you want to tell the story. I have written plays that started off with a traditional structure and eventually called for a major rewrite, switching to a nonlinear structure. With a ten-minute play this isn’t too difficult an adjustment. Just make sure the structure of the completed draft is consistent so that your story comes through clearly.
The story line in a ten-minute play should be more complicated than just the interaction of characters with strong needs. On the other hand, you don’t want to create complications in your story that are not resolvable in ten pages. Perhaps a minor character needs conflict with your lead character to increase the drama. Or perhaps you can introduce an event that will alter the path of the story that you’ve started with. The last thing you want is a play that is predictable, where the audience is ahead of you because your conclusion is so obvious. Of course, the event must be believable and make sense with the facts of your story up to that point. I have seen many short plays in which the playwright seemed to have thrown something in just for “effect,” and it didn’t seem truthful to the story as a whole.
Realizing and Developing the Story of the Play
For me, there is usually an aha point somewhere along the line, where I “really get” what my play is about. I realize what story I’m trying to tell and who these characters are. Following that realization, I start working to make the story clearer. I’ve come to know who my main character is and what exactly he or she wants. Generally the other character(s) in the play have to be part of the conflict that the lead character is trying to overcome. (When, say, the two characters in the play are both trying to overcome a major threat to earth, or a plague, or some scenario like that, the obstacle is the unseen.) In either case, I need to know what specifically is in the way of the protagonist getting what he or she wants (the obstacle). These elements are the foundation for the first draft of that ten-minute play.
Sometimes the more I plunge into the play, the more I become an active participant. I feel the feelings of the characters as they discover their challenges and try to overcome them. I identify with their conflict and feel their frustrations as they attempt to overcome them.
Perhaps it’s the actor in me, but I generally speak the dialogue as I write it, or right after I write it. I’m not sure if other playwrights do that. I know some writers can sit in a coffee shop and silently write their plays. I need to say the lines out loud, see how they feel. Sometimes I need to get up, move around, take the action that’s called for.
As I begin to speak and embody the words I write, the play takes off, and a very rough first draft starts to emerge. I’m still trying to get my characters fleshed out, see what their conflicts are, and figure out how they may resolve them. I constantly return to the opening dialogue and follow the trail of the play I’ve written so far. My mind becomes a bit more analytical as I make small “refinements” along the way; a word here or a line there. Anything that, in the moment, feels right. Sometimes it becomes apparent that some dialogue needs to be placed earlier or later in the play, or maybe even removed as it no longer is necessary to tell the story. Reading through the play also helps me to ensure that all of the characters are necessary, and that all of them have a definite throughline.
You must always keep in mind that what you’re writing is a ten-minute play, so everything must move the story forward. There is no line or moment or action that should digress for long enough to throw the story off track in even the slightest way. Once again, it’s not only what must be said, but what must be said now! That said, don’t confuse digression with a real change of direction. When the audience is ahead of you and can predict the outcome, you’ve lost their interest. Surprise yourself as you go along and you’ll surprise them.
As you keep rereading what you’ve written and fine-tuning your work, you should see your creation emerge from an amorphous state into a defined, specific play.
Actors, since perhaps up until now you’ve only acted in plays, take this opportunity to act in your own play. While writing it, read it aloud. As you’re reading, do your characters feel real to you? Do you understand what their intentions are? Can you feel the dynamic between your lead character and the other characters in your play? Start off reading only the words you’ve written so far, but then allow yourself (perhaps with some improvisation) to open up the dialogue where it feels necessary. Eliminate lines of dialogue that don’t feel real. Feel free to immerse yourself as an actor in your play, playing all the roles. If you like, get up, move around as the characters; see how that feels. Stay concentrated, in the moment, and you’ll see where things do and don’t work. Here’s where the actor in you starts to become the critic of your own play. Trust your actor’s instincts to guide you as you observe what’s working and what isn’t.
See if you can feel the play moving towards its conclusion. If not, try to see where it veers off course.
To me, the most important moments of my plays are the opening and closing moments. I feel that the opening moments give the audience a peek into a whole new world. The closing moment is like saying good-bye to that world. The ending of your play must always be earned by the story that precedes it. Playwriting is storytelling. It’s as simple as “Once upon a time . . .” After you’ve opened the box, the story unfolds.
The title is the first thing readers discover about your play. It can be a metaphor about your play or something descriptive. Descriptive titles don’t always resonate well and may even be somewhat boring. I personally prefer metaphoric titles. Metaphoric titles at their best hint at the theme of the play and can be very enticing to a reader. A metaphoric title can have a double meaning, which is especially effective after a reader has read your play and then reflects on it.
Your play’s title may come from a line of dialogue, or a character’s name, or from what you feel the play is about. It can come to you in a flash, or after some reflection on the theme of your play. It may come to you after you’ve finished writing the first or second draft. There’s nothing wrong with changing titles as many times as you wish (before you send out the finished play). Most importantly, the title should communicate in just a few words some essence of what you feel your play is trying to say.
The first draft of your play really is about discovery: discovering what the play is about, the story you’re trying to tell. It may well run over ten pages as you allow the story room to unfold.
Once I’ve completed the first draft I sometimes put it away. I want to come back to it fresh before I start any major rewrites. You may discover on a later read that ideas, moments, that you thought there were there, actually aren’t there. What you thought was on the page may be still in your mind. Now you have another opportunity to make sure it’s on the page.
Sometimes I find myself thinking about the play even when I’m not consciously working on it. I try to clear my mind and go on to other things. But then perhaps while I’m on the treadmill, having dinner, or even just out walking, a light will go on about some aspect of the play. Sometimes it’s a word, or a line of dialogue, or it may be a plot point that I hadn’t thought about. Or I’ll have some epiphany that will shed light on what the play is really about. It might mean that when I go back to working on the play I’ll have to change major plot points, or eliminate an unnecessary character, or any one of a million other things. If the thought seems important enough, I might jot it down. Or, I might let it ferment in my mind until I actually get back to work on the play at my computer.
Neil Simon, in his book Rewrites: A Memoir, discusses coming back to a play after he’s put it away for a while. He says, “When I take it out and reread it . . . what’s good remains good, but what’s bad jumps off the page and smacks me right across my ego.”