Drama

CREATIVE WRITING

Drama

Definitions

Fiction represented in performance by actors as interpreted by directors.

A live work.

Goals

Create tension, something the audience will want to see resolved.

Tell an intense story in a short amount of time.

Similar to Fiction

Tells a story of human changeA character goes on a mental journeyInvolves a power struggle between a protagonist and an antagonist

Arrives at a situation different from that in which the story began

Fiction vs. Drama

Writer writes what the reader reads.

Takes place in the reader’s head.

Takes place in private.

All images, sensory experiences, and ideas are in words, transcribed in the brain.

Script is interpreted by the director and cast.

Takes place here and now on the stage.

Takes place in public.

Actors, props, costumes can be seen; dialogue and music can be heard.

Fiction vs. Drama

Can go into character’s thoughts.

Can go into the past.

Can be any length; there’s room to digress.

Can be taken up and put down at will.

After publisher’s initial cost, can be reproduced indefinitely.

All thoughts must be externalized in other ways.

Past must be made part of the present.

Length is more or less prescribed; must be focused.

Continuous performance.

Theatre holds only so many seats.

Plot

Important Choose the particular portion to be dramatized

Why does the action begin in the place and time you choose? Inciting incident: something that happens before the curtain opens, which creates the situation in which the protagonist finds him/herself.

Exposition: the section of the drama in which a writer expresses the situation

Point of attack: setup of conflict

Cinderella Example

Can you identify the inciting incident, exposition, and the point of attack in Cinderella?

Inciting incident: mother died, father remarried.

Exposition: the stepmother and stepsisters mistreat Cinderella

Point of attack: invitation to the ball

Length & Intensity

A play is short. Think about it: it takes much longer to say something aloud than to read it silently.

Therefore, it is intense. Audience must be invited into the story immediately.

Several things must be going on at once to keep their attention.

Setting

In drama, setting is limited because it is performed on a stage.

Stage changes take time and should only be used if necessary.

Start by choosing one room to work in.

Stage Directions

Tell us what we see. Do not give us any information that we must learn through dialogue.

Distinguished from dialogue through italics or parentheses.

Dialogue

It is the stage writer’s responsibility to create the words said between people.

You may not, for example, say in a stage direction, “Joe calls in from the bathroom, still complaining.” Instead, you must craft Joe’s complaint.

Revealing Thought

Soliloquy AsideVoice over