The Dramatic Writer's Companion, Second Edition

Tools to Develop Characters, Cause Scenes, and Build Stories

Will Dunne

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9780226494111
• Topic: Médias et arts de la scène
• Subtopic: Arts de la scène

In just eight years, The Dramatic Writer's Companion has become a classic among playwrights and screenwriters. Thousands have used its self-contained character, scene, and story exercises to spark creativity, hone their writing, and improve their scripts.
Having spent decades working with dramatists to refine and expand their existing plays and screenplays, Dunne effortlessly blends condensed dramatic theory with specific action steps—over sixty workshop-tested exercises that can be adapted to virtually any individual writing process and dramatic script. Dunne's in-depth method is both instinctual and intellectual, allowing writers to discover new actions for their characters and new directions for their stories. The exercises can be used by those just starting the writing process and by those who have scripts already in development. With each exercise rooted in real-life issues from Dunne's workshops, readers of this companion will find the combined experiences of more than fifteen hundred workshops in a single guide.
This second edition is fully aligned with a brand-new companion book, Character, Scene, and Story, which offers forty-two additional activities to help writers more fully develop their scripts. The two books include cross-references between related exercises, though each volume can also stand alone.
No ordinary guide to plotting, this handbook centers on the principle that character is key. "The character is not something added to the scene or to the story, " writes Dunne. "Rather, the character is the scene. The character is the story." With this new edition, Dunne's remarkable creative method will continue to be the go-to source for anyone hoping to take their story to the stage.

Building Your Story

Story is what happens when a character tries to accomplish something that is not only extremely important but also extremely difficult. The struggle to achieve this goal triggers a chain of events that challenges, reveals, and often changes the character. Use the exercises in this section to help you explore the roots of the dramatic journey, develop an effective throughline, and get a clear big-picture view of the story so that you can better understand what it’s really about.

WHOSE STORY IS IT?

THE QUICK VERSION

Choose a character focus for your story: single, dual, or group protagonist

BEST TIME FOR THIS

During story planning or any time you are not sure whose story you are writing

FIGURING OUT WHO MATTERS MOST

Choosing a character focus for a dramatic story is one of the most fundamental and important decisions a writer makes. Sometimes the choice is easy—an inherent part of the story concept—and other times it is a challenge that requires a lot of thinking and rethinking. In some cases, the writer gets distracted and begins to develop the script without really deciding whose story it is. In other cases, a choice is made but gets muddied as the details of story ideas begin to flow. For example, the writer sets out to write one character’s story and ends up writing another’s.

In the universe of dramatic possibilities, a story may center on one main character, two main characters, or more—even a whole group—depending on the nature and scope of the story concept. Each approach has its own unique set of dimensions and issues. In the end, what matters most is that the writer has made a clear choice about which approach to develop and whom to spotlight within it.

ABOUT THE EXERCISE

Use this exercise to help you define a character focus for the story you are working on now. You also may wish to use this exercise during the writing and editing process if you feel that the character focus has become unclear.

DIFFERENT WAYS TO CENTER A STORY

Will your story focus on the dramatic journey of one, two, or more characters?

1. Single protagonist. From Hamlet by William Shakespeare, to Wit by Margaret Edson, to Doubt by John Patrick Shanley, the vast majority of dramatic stories have focused on the quest of one main character—whether it’s a prince of Denmark who has seen a ghost, an English scholar dying of cancer, or a nun running a Catholic school in the Bronx.

For the dramatic writer, a single main character provides the easiest way to unify the action of the story, communicate its theme, and create an experience that feels dramatically complete. Traditionally called the “protagonist,” the main character is the one who commands the spotlight as the story unfolds and usually drives most of the dramatic action. In the end, he or she emerges as the character most revealed—and affected—by story events.

The more characters you add to the center spotlight, the more difficult it will be to find and maintain a clear focus for your story. This may explain why most dramatic stories center on one—and only one—main character.

2. Dual protagonist. Many dramatic writers have looked beyond the boundaries of the single-protagonist structure and successfully centered their stories on two main characters who have something of importance in common.

Whether they are Estragon and Vladimir waiting for Godot, Thelma and Louise fleeing the law, or Max Bialystock and Leo Bloom producing a Broadway flop, two individuals can share the role of protagonist by having the same goal and equal time to pursue it. It is their common quest that unifies them as “one” and provides a central focus for the chain of events that make up the story.

Or, instead of sharing the role of main character, two equally dominant characters can compete for it, as in Topdog/Underdog by Suzan-Lori Parks or True West by Sam Shepard, which each feature a pair of competitive brothers trying to best each other. In this type of duo, the characters have related but irreconcilable goals that unite them as adversaries. Each is the hero of his own story and the antagonist of the other’s.

Other dramatic stories with some type of duo at their center include Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead by Tom Stoppard, Oscar and Felix in The Odd Couple by Neil Simon, Sam and Willie in Master Harold and the Boys by Athol Fugard, and Gil and Ray in Thief River by Lee Blessing.

3. Group protagonist—or, no protagonist. Sometimes it “takes a village” to tell a story. This has been demonstrated many times in plays like The Cherry Orchard by Anton Chekhov and films like Nashville by Robert Altman, where no single character or throughline dominates. Such stories focus instead on a set of individuals who either have a common purpose or comprise a larger collective identity. For example, a story may center on a group of individuals with the same goal, such as the taxi drivers fighting management in the play Waiting for Lefty by Clifford Odets or the airline crew and passengers resisting terrorist hijackers in the docudrama film United 93 by Paul Greengrass.

Or, a story may center on the collective identity that is suggested when a group of different story lines are combined with a common focus. This collective identity often functions as a metaphor for something greater than the sum of the story lines we have seen, just as the collective identity of August: Osage County by Tracy Letts might be defined as the dysfunctional American family, and the collective identity of Crash by Paul Haggis might be viewed as racially divided American society.

Other dramatic stories with a multiple focus and no single main character include Ghosts by Henrik Ibsen, The Women by Clare Boothe Luce, The Hot L Baltimore by Lanford Wilson, Angels in America by Tony Kushner, and Dealer’s Choice by Patrick Marber.

DECIDING WHOM TO SPOTLIGHT

Think about what happens in your story, who is involved, what they want, and how they function in relationship to one another. Use the following checklists to help you select a specific single, dual, or group protagonist from the characters you are developing.

1. Single protagonist. If your story will revolve around one main character, you need to know who among the population of your story is best suited for this role. He or she will need to be someone who can stir up and maintain your interest as well as ours, dominate the dramatic action, and cause the story to happen. This character is most likely to succeed dramatically if he or she

• is the character most affected—in a positive or negative way—by the inciting event of the story;

• embarks on a quest that begins with the inciting event, drives the story forward, and does not reach its success or failure point until the story ends;

• has a strong will and is so motivated to complete the quest that it seems virtually impossible to compromise or give up;

• pursues the goal actively by tackling problems and initiating strategies rather than passively responding to the actions of others;

• has the most to do and say in the story, and consequently commands and receives the most attention;

• has the strongest emotional investment in the story;

• provides the dominant point of view for dramatic action;

• faces bigger problems than anyone else and has to make the most difficult decision in the story;

• is sympathetic—someone we like—or at least empathetic—someone we understand and care about even if we do not like what the character does; and

• embodies the subject and theme of the story.

If your story will center on one main character, who is it? What does this character want overall? What is his or her central conflict? What is at stake?

2. Dual or group protagonist who function dramatically as one. This approach will pose the same demands as a single-character journey, except that you will be juggling more than one individual in the central role. The challenge is to keep the focus on these characters equally balanced. A pair or group acting as a single character is most likely to succeed dramatically if these individuals

• are pursuing the same story goal;

• have an equally important motivation to achieve the goal;

• face the same problems or equally challenging ones;

• remain in synch as they move forward through the story;

• are equally active in their pursuit of the goal;

• equally shape the story’s point of view;

• carry the same dramatic weight so that neither character dominates;

• face either the same crisis or an equally demanding one; and

• have to make an equally difficult crisis decision.

If your story will center on two or more characters who function dramatically as one, who are the characters and what is their common goal? What is the biggest obstacle they both face? What is at stake?

3. Dual or group protagonist who function dramatically as more than one. This approach will pose the same demands as a single-character journey, but repeatedly, since each story line must be composed as a dramatic journey of its own. The key challenge is to bring focus to the script where there is no single dominant character or throughline to anchor it. You will need to figure out what the different journeys have in common, how they intersect, and why their presence in the same script is not arbitrary. A story with no main character is more likely to succeed dramatically if the individual dramatic journeys

• are essential because each tells part of the whole story, reflects a common theme, or suggests part of a central collective identity;

• are unique because each represents a quest different from the rest;

• each center on a character with a difficult but important objective and a reason to achieve it;

• are limited enough in number that we have time in each story line to find out who the characters are, understand their situations, and track their progress;

• unfold at a complementary pace;

• raise enough interesting questions to keep all of the story lines moving forward as the focus shifts from one to the next;

• intersect without disrupting our interest or creating a competition for our attention;

• have ties that become evident as different journeys intersect and either affe...