Toot #9
Before going on to look at overall dramatic structure (having begun at the beginnings), I'd like to use this Toot to talk about rhythm -- your play's pulse.
It's possible that you could simply write with careful attention to the rhythm of your material, forget about structure, and still come up with a play that was sound and shapely. In fact, this might be a preferable strategy for some plays, or if you're averse to the notion of mapping out too much before you begin, but still need something to help you decide where to head next (ie., if the last scene was a "fast" one, make the next one a "slow" one). Like structure, rhythm creates a sense of forward movement, of progression in the material, as well as the sort of variety that seems necessary to keep the typical audience's attention. It also has the happy effect of helping us strike a balance between advancing the action and deepening the characters.
SUNRISE, SUNSET
We all know what rhythm is in life: it's the ebb and flow of waves, or the way the day starts off slowly with a morning coffee, then speeds up as work takes over, then slows down again when the mid-afternoon sleepies set in, then picks up again when you have an evening play or ball game to go to. That's rhythm.
In trying to give my own work a similar heartbeat, I find it useful to think in terms of two kinds of movement: horizontal and vertical.
Horizontal
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is action concerned with moving the story from Point A to Point B. It's what I meant when, in Toot 4, I talked about scenes that advance the action in some clear way. It's horizontal movement because it covers ground.
Vertical
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occurs when you slow the story down in order to explore its layers, and the characters' layers, too -- ie., what the characters are thinking or feeling or maybe some aspect of their backstory. It's what I meant when I talked about scenes in which we learn something important about the story or about the characters that we didn't know before. Instead of moving forward you go in depth. It's vertical movement because it digs into the ground.
Melodramas, I suppose (and certainly many movies) have a lot of horizontal movement (amazing plot revelations, people getting killed, that sort of thing) but not much vertical. Chekhov's plays have much vertical movement (people moping) but relatively little of the other sort (though it's amazing how much narrative ground is covered in, say, The Cherry Orchard even though, as you watch, it sometimes feels like not a damn thing is happening). But both kinds are, I think, necessary to most plays. If your play is all horizontal movement, its relentlessness may burn an audience out, and they may not care much about what happens to your characters anyway. If it's all vertical movement, it'll put them to sleep.
This may mean, as I suggested above, conscientiously following each scene that's focussed on driving the plot forward with one that's more ruminative, exploratory. It may mean knowing that if you've had three scenes in a row that are "horizontal," it's time for one that's "vertical" ("comic relief" in Shakespeare's plays is a sort of variation on this), or vice-versa. It may mean allowing for both kinds of movement within a single scene. And, of course, sometimes the two kinds of movement occur simultaneously -- after all, every time a character acts we're also finding out more about them. There is a pure theatrical pleasure to be drawn, however, from simply contrasting the two -- ie., following that "fast" scene with a "slow" one -- just as there is in following a scene set in dazzling sunlight with one set in luscious moonlight.
EXERCISE #9:
Decide whether the last scene you wrote in your play was primarily "horizontal" or "vertical" movement -- ie., focussed on driving the story forward or focussed on exploring the characters. Sharpen this aspect of it if you like -- ie., does the scene present your central character with a clear, new problem, or do we learn something genuinely significant about her or him? Then, write a new scene to follow which is in contrast. If the previous scene was "horizontal," the one following should be "vertical." Or vice-versa. Send me both.
POST-IT NOTE:
"Getting a play from the author's intentions onto the stage and back to the audience is crowded with imponderables and difficulties. It is imprecise. Ideally a playwright can get his play from a page onto the stage and back to the audience, rather like playing tennis against a backboard. But this very seldom happens, because you have to deal with human beings. You have to deal with actors and the director. No performance of a play that is halfway decent is ever as good as the performance the author saw when he wrote it. You must accept this as a fact."
- Edward Albee
To Handout 9