The Art and Craft of Playwriting

by Jeffery Hatcher

  A strong character must define herself early in a play if the author wants to hook an audience's interest. Oscar Hammerstein II, the great lyricist and playwright who collaborated with Richard Rodgers to create such landmarks as Oklahoma!, South Pacific, and The King and I, said that the lead character in a musical always has to sing an “I Want Song” within the first twenty minutes of the show. The “I Want Song”—or “The 8:15 Number”—is usually the second song in the show. It defines the character's needs and wants. In the Stephen Sondheim/Jule Styne/Arthur Laurents musical Gypsy, the “I Want Song” is Mama Rose's “Some People,” the song that details Rose's ambitions for her daughters and for her own career in show business. It's the song that tells us who she is, where she's been, and where she wants to go. In the Frank Loesser/Abe Burrows/Jo Swerling musical Guys and Dolls, the “I Want Song” is “Oldest Established,” introducing the gambler Nathan Detroit who has to find a hideout for his next craps game. And in the landmark hit A Chorus Line, the “I Want Song” is “God, I Hope I Get It”—the opening number of the show that introduces the dancers who desperately “need this job.”

  Of course the “I Want Song” isn't just found in musicals. It's really the “I Want Moment.” In Shakespeare's Richard III it's the very first soliloquy or monologue: “Now is the winter of our discontent made glorious summer by this son of York.” The speech describes Richard's wounded ego, his warped wit, his intelligence, and his ambition to become king. In Hamlet, it's Hamlet's Act One, Scene Two soliloquy that begins “O! that this too too solid flesh would melt.” It's this speech that depicts Hamlet's pain, anger and resentment at his mother's marriage to his uncle Claudius—and Claudius' usurpation of the Danish throne—so soon after his father's mysterious death.

  When one character's “I Want” comes up against another character's “I Want,” you have dramatic conflict. In musical terms, the two “I Want Songs” clashing together creates disharmony. In August Wilson's The Piano Lesson, the constant refrain is “I want to sell the piano!” followed by “Well, I don't want to sell the piano!” In The Odd Couple, it's Felix Unger's “We have to have a neat home” butting up against Oscar Madison's “I like being a slob.” So while a character can be interesting because of her background, her psychology, her humor, her way of talking, the most interesting thing about a character is what she wants, how badly she wants it, and what her actions will be to get it.

  Interest is generated both by the audience's familiarity with the character's goal and by the actions the character performs to achieve that goal. Are Hamlet's goals familiar to the average audience? I'll admit there aren't many of us who can identify with the plight of a Danish prince. Few of us have witnessed our mother marry our uncle after our father's murder, nor lost our own chance at becoming king. And we seldom bump into the ghosts of our relatives on castle battlements. But we all know what it's like to engage in internecine battles within a family; we all understand jealousy, betrayal and injustice; and although there aren't real ghosts in real life, aren't we all haunted by the recollections of lost loved ones to whom we wanted to speak one last time, and to whom we wanted to prove something? Few of us are the villainous Richard III, but many of us are ambitious; many of us want a better job, a promotion, a chance to shine in power. In Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire, Blanche DuBois' desperate need to hold onto the illusion of her family plantation at Belle Reeve in the face of battered reality may be foreign to many audiences, but the desire for a lost home, the desire for protection, the desire for grace and beauty is one shared by every human being.

  Are there some goals that are better than others? Sure.

  Concrete goals are always better than abstract ones. What are some of the things characters in great plays want? Sex, money, power, love, a jewel, a key, an answer, a job, a fortune, a crown, revenge, truth, justice. Which of these are abstract goals? Which are concrete? Abstract goals are not tangible, they cannot be material. They are concepts. They are important and worthy of a character's desire, but they have no stage presence. Concrete wants/needs/desires/goals are tangible. You can hold them in your hand, touch them, feel them, see them.

  But, you argue, isn't the pursuit of justice a greater goal than finding a bagful of money? Not in drama. Drama takes place in the land of the concrete. But, you argue, Hamlet wanted justice, Hamlet wanted revenge. Aren't those abstract goals? Yes, but Hamlet's desire for justice and revenge was not generalized; Hamlet's desire was specific: to prove Claudius a killer and then kill him. That's very concrete. Goals like that are the best kinds of dramatic goals: concrete goals (prove Claudius is a killer, then kill him) moving the play's action and depicting the play's characters, with big abstract concepts (justice, revenge) standing behind them. To write a character who just generally wants justice is to write a character who grasps at the air.

  A brilliantly drawn villain like Regina in Lillian Hellman's melodrama The Little Foxes certainly has abstract goals, but all of her actions, her dramatic wants are about specifics. She wants money, control of the family business, a new husband, a new city to live in, and she wants her daughter to stay with her. These are concrete wants and goals, but they are connected to abstract ideas about love, sex, resentment, revenge, power and the needs of Regina's sick, hungry soul. When Regina famously sits by and watches her husband Horace suffer a heart attack—watches him as he pleads with her to get the medicine that may save his life—Regina has a concrete desire: to kill her husband. She allows his death. She does not act. What she does not do becomes the most violent action in the play.

  Positive goals are better than negative goals. For example, you might want to write a play about a philosopher who is trying to disprove the existence of God. To disprove God may seem like a fascinating goal, but there are problems with it. Does the problem have to do with religion? No. It doesn't have to do with disproving God; it has to do with (improving. It's negative. Its dynamic is less magnetic, both for the character and for the audience. In our “disproving God” example, the goal is weak because:

  • it is abstract and amorphous;

  • it is, by definition, impossible to prove a negative;

  • it is difficult to depict in concrete dramatic terms.

  But, you say, Richard III has negative goals. Wrong. Richard III has nothing but positive goals—to “get” the crown. True, he's a villain, he kills people along the way, but his goal, from his point of view, is a positive one.

  Active goals are better than reactive goals. If your character's primary goal is to escape, to run away, you have a weak goal. From Shakespeare's As You Like It to the movies North by Northwest and The Fugitive, drama has often depicted characters in flight. But if your character is running away from something, he must also be running toward something. Running away is reactive. Running toward is active. That's why movie heroes on the run from the law (reactive goal) are also trying to prove their innocence and find the real culprit (active goal). “Will our hero be caught?” and “Will our hero catch the real killer?” is more interesting than simply “Will our hero be caught?”

  To gauge a character's level of compelling interest, you'll need to know that character well. I'll make the argument that the best, most organic and safest way to develop characters would be to create detailed biographies, backgrounds, psychology for the character before writing or outlining the play. Once the playwright understands what her character will or will not do under a multitude of circumstances, only then can she proceed to construct a story based on the character's actions.

  One surefire way of assuring an audience's interest in your character is to make him or her likable. Even a glancing look at the history of great dramatic characters will tell us a few basic points that should be remembered by every dramatist:

  • Most memorable dramatic characters are likable.

  • If they aren't likeable in a traditionally understood way (more below), they're passionate or witty or magnetic.

  • If they're villainous mons
ters, they're monsters with charisma.

  • They do great things (greatness within context, of course).

  Likability is tricky. It's not the same as being “nice.” For example, we like Richard III. Why? He's a killer, to be sure. He murders his entire family to get the English crown. He even has two little boys smothered in a tower. But he's been bruised by life (that humpback, that deformed hand), and we pity him. He's obviously the most intelligent political thinker in the court, so we sympathize with his wounded sense of justice. He's witty. He's funny. He's charming. And—this is vitally important—he does extravagant things and gets away with them. We wish we could too. Sure. We like Richard.

  In Hedda Gabler we like Hedda. Why? She's cruel to her husband, her in-laws, her old school friend, her lover, everyone. But, like Richard III, she does things we wish we could do. She fights against constraints. She bucks the claustrophobic world in which she lives. Most important, Hedda desires beauty and passion—the fully lived, fully experienced world of love, intellect and fire. What audience member hasn't desired that? Sure. We like Hedda Gabler.

  Character in Action

  When you're sure you have an interesting character, your next step is depicting this character to your audience. “Action is character,” goes the old saying, “as character is action.” They cannot be separated. For example:

  Character is action—A man conditioned by his upbringing to cut corners, look for easy ways out and be greedy steals a suitcase full of money. The kind of character determines the action.

  Action is character—A man steals a suitcase full of money; therefore we conjecture he may be the kind of man conditioned to cut corners, look for easy ways out and be greedy. The action determines the kind of character.

  A fictional character is depicted onstage by the evidence of that person's actions. The audience acts as a detective. The audience looks for clues to understand a stage character, just as they look for clues to understand a real person. There are three ways to display your character onstage:

  1. What a character says about herself.

  2. What other characters say about her.

  3. What the character does.

  All three are useful ways of depicting character. But is one of these more important than any of the others? Yes. Number three: what a character does. If I hear a man say he is honest, and I hear his friend say he is honest, I may well surmise that he is honest … until I see him steal a suitcase full of money. His actions prove him dishonest, despite what he says or what others say. To stoop to a cliche: “Actions speak louder than words.”

  Aristotle identified the main character, the hero of the tragedy, as the protagonist. In its various Greek definitions, a protagonist is the “carrier of the action”; an actor who plays the first part; the chief personage of the drama; the principal character in the plot; one who contends for a prize; a combatant; an actor. Break up the word: Pro—to be “for” something; Agonize—to “struggle.” To struggle for something.

  In classical tragedy, the protagonist was a high figure—a king, a prince, a royal personage: Oedipus, Hamlet, Othello. He was a noble figure with a tragic flaw—pride, jealousy, ignorance. He fought against great odds (events, people, nature, the gods) and was eventually destroyed by them. In a contemporary play, the main character need not be a good person, but the protagonist's problems, goals, intelligence, charms and weaknesses must be worthy of our interest and our time.

  Most great plays have one strong protagonist, but some great plays have two, three, four or more strong, active characters working toward their goals. For example, Terrence McNally's Tony Award-winning Love! Valour! Compassion! concerns seven gay men who spend an entire summer together. Each of the men passionately pursues his own goals. In one sense, every character in your play is the protagonist, with strong goals and a rich, complex personal history. If you think of the protagonist as “the ball carrier,” or a football player, and if you think of your play as a football game, then the point from one end zone to the other side's goalpost is the trajectory of your plot. Your protagonist(s) must get the ball across that goal line. The other characters are there to help or, in most cases, to hinder. The job of everyone playing against the protagonist is to stop his progress down the field, tackle him, confuse him, and take the ball away. How the ball carrier plays the game determines the kind of player he is.

  When you think about your plays and the characters who people them, you probably think in terms of lead characters and supporting characters. This makes sense. Hamlet is a lead; Ophelia, Polonius and Claudius are supporting characters. In Hedda Gabler, Hedda is a lead; her boring husband Tesman, her lover Eilert Lovborg, and the sardonic Judge Brack are supporting characters. In The Odd Couple, Felix and Oscar are leads; the poker buddies and the Pigeon sisters are supporting characters. You've probably heard the old saying “There are no small parts, just small actors.” Let me share one of my favorite theater anecdotes to illustrate a point. It involves the first New York production of Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire, starring Jessica Tandy, Marlon Brando, Kim Hunter and Karl Maiden, in addition to a number of actors in smaller parts. The roles of Blanche DuBois and Stanley Kowalski are obviously the leads; in a classical sense, Blanche is the active protagonist (a bruised soul seeking shelter), and Stanley is the active antagonist (a magnetic brute jealously guarding his invaded territory). But there were ten other actors in that play, portraying neighbors, drinking buddies, others. One of these ten actors played “the doctor,” who, with his nurse, comes to take the shattered Blanche away to the sanitorium in the last minutes of the play. It's a tiny part, no more than a line or two. It is the doctor to whom Blanche says the famous line, “Whoever you are—I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.” One day a friend bumped into this actor on the street. The actor told his friend that he was in a new play by Tennessee Williams. The friend asked the actor what the play was about. The actor said, “It's about a doctor who comes to take a woman to a sanitorium.”

  This is a very telling story. It's funny, of course; a story about an actor's ego. But it's illustrative of how an actor should think of the character he's playing. It's also illustrative of how playwrights might think about all their characters.

  Characters in Conflict

  What do your characters consist of? Wants. Needs. Desires. Sure, but what else? Fears. Phobias. Addictions. Weaknesses. How smart are they? (Smart is always better than dumb.) How shrewd? How clever? How devious? How charming? How funny? How ethical? How practical? How malleable? How pathetic? How willing are they to negotiate? Some playwrights and teachers refer to all dramatic conflict as negotiation. What will one character do or say to get something from another character?

  I'll argue that the reason many plays fail—even ones written by talented writers—is because the author hasn't given her characters

  1. Strong enough goals,

  2. Difficult enough obstacles,

  3. Talents and opportunity.

  Why do I stress “talents” and “opportunities”?

  Take Hamlet. Hamlet is very intelligent. He's clever, witty and ingenious. He pretends to be mad so that he may spy on the court and arouse less suspicion. These are talents. But Shakespeare also gave him opportunities—the arrival of the players is such an opportunity. It's happenstance that they arrive while Hamlet is conducting his clandestine investigation. But their presence at Elsinore gives Hamlet the idea to stage the play that will “catch the conscience of the king.” When Hamlet is later sent to England via ship with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, the audience knows what Hamlet does not: that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern carry a letter from Claudius to the English king ordering Hamlet's execution upon arrival. Hamlet is smart enough to find that letter, open it, and change its contents so that it will order Rosencrantz and Guildenstern's execution instead of his own. But that's not enough. Shakespeare also provides Hamlet with the opportunity he needs—an attack on the ship by pirates. Hamlet escapes onto the pirate'
s ship, and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern sail on to England and their doom.

  The successful playwright knows how to combine her character's skills with a judicious sprinkling of opportunity. A smart playwright won't overuse either of these, however. A protagonist who has a successful strategy for every obstacle is a combination of Einstein, Superman and James Bond. And a playwright who tosses in nick-of-time opportunity after nick-of-time opportunity to save her hero courts accusations of contrivance. As you plan your play, you have to keep asking yourself: What should happen? What could happen? As each obstacle is overcome, does a new obstacle rise up in the protagonist's way?

  The protagonist's enemy is the antagonist, the “opposer of the action.” The antagonist is anyone or anything that tries to stop the protagonist, take the ball, or get in the way. A good antagonist is as powerful or more so than the protagonist.

  • A good antagonist is a strong villain—Claudius in Hamlet.

  • A good antagonist is a loved one—George and Martha in Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

  • A good antagonist is fate—in classical Greek tragedy, a god.

  • A good antagonist is society—the oppressive and corrupt community of Henrik Ibsen's An Enemy of the People; the ancient city of Thebes in Sophocles' Oedipus.

  • A good antagonist is weather—the draught in N. Richard Nash's The Rainmaker.

  • A good antagonist is chance, luck, circumstance—a random act; a mad sniper who kills the hero's friend at a key moment in the play is acting as an antagonist.