Plot

The first essential element

Plot is the central action of a play. A plot holds the unity of the story through momentum and direct action that moves the play forward against resistance. It is the arrangement of events — the selection and order of scenes — not the full story itself. A story is a complete account of events, usually in chronological order; a plot is a selection and arrangement of scenes from that story for presentation onstage. The plot is what happens onstage, not what is talked about.

A few working principles:

1. Have some idea — even a vague notion — of the beginning, middle, and end of your story from the outset.
2. A plot may start without much form. If it fades out, file it away rather than trashing it; it may come back to you later.
3. It helps to know the ending — even a vague notion of what you want the audience to take with them as the curtain closes. From the end, write back toward the beginning.
4. Make sure your plot has conflict before you begin: a protagonist who wants something, prevented by an antagonist, trying and failing until the obstacles resolve one way or another.
5. Outline as much or as little as works for you. What works for another writer is what works for another writer.

Trust your instincts, and don't talk about your story until at least a rough draft is finished — outside opinions have a way of rewriting your story for you before you've written it yourself. Once you start a draft, don't go back to revise until the rough draft is done. The formula is 5% inspiration and 95% perspiration. Follow it.

Action

The second essential element

If we were to construct a "grammar of theater," the subject would always be human beings — dramatic characters who represent human concerns. Every subject needs a verb; in the grammar of theater, characters need a verb — some form of action that defines them. The word drama derives from the Greek dran, "to do" or "to act." At its heart, theater involves action.

Characters must do something. Something must happen to them. They must want something. Someone or something must stand in their way. Action may come as physical activity, or as internal conflict and struggle.

Conflict

The third essential element

Conflict is the collision or opposition of persons or forces in a drama that gives rise to dramatic action, for drama or comedy. We understand conflict through everyday experience — people define themselves by how they respond to challenges. A test devised by the playwright, and the character's reaction to it, is one way the meaning of a play is brought out.

An accepted wisdom: all good drama is about a protagonist who wants something but is prevented from getting it by an antagonist — the "frustrated will." A protagonist can even serve as their own antagonist.

Structure — Beginning, Middle, End

Beginning: the hook; establish main characters; set what's at stake and what characters want; plant growing symbols; a false climax followed by a precipitating context; a confrontation where the antagonist gets the upper hand; initial exposition; subplots and obstacles introduced.

Middle: fully establish character and stakes (point of attack); more exposition and subplot development; crises drawing protagonist and antagonist toward major confrontation; obstacles, obstacles, obstacles.

End: climax — the confrontation, the crux; tying up loose ends and resolution; the protagonist emerges changed — wiser, sadder, richer — having succeeded or failed.

Story Line

A play's storyline is a restrictive series of events — what is happening to your characters. There is little room to veer from what the protagonist wants and from what the antagonist is doing to stop them.

1. The storyline is about characters wanting something.
2. The storyline maintains conflict.
3. The storyline is about obstacles keeping the protagonist from getting what they want.

The Blueprint

Consider a stage or screen play a blueprint. A house blueprint needs a foreman, electricians, carpenters, and so on. A stage or screen play needs the same — a director, actors, lighting people, set builders, stagehands. No matter how good your play is, you need equally talented people to build it.

Subtext

Subtext falls equally on the writer and the actor. The writer must offer it, and the actor must interpret it — to exist, it must be in the writing. Subtext is built from a deeper meaning under the obvious dialogue, conveyed through the slightest physical gesture, the least inflection of voice, a slight hesitation.

It reaches an audience through the senses — sight, sound, taste, smell, touch — filtered into a sixth sense, a deeper understanding shaped by each person's own experience. The actor knows the dialogue, but the character doesn't know what happens next.

A few questions worth asking of any scene: What does the audience already know at this point — comedy or drama? What's important to convey, and what's better left unstated? How do age, economics, education, history, and status shape how these characters would actually talk? Each question breaks down into another question.

If you are not writing for an audience, you are writing a journal and not drama.

Symbols & Planting

There are two kinds of symbols — static and growing. A static symbol is recognized immediately, with a shared meaning across an audience — a BMW or a Rolls-Royce as a symbol of money. A growing symbol means little when it's introduced, but by the end of the play has taken on significant meaning — a glove introduced early that, by the final scene, represents what the whole play is about.

Planting is the rule that makes a symbol pay off: if you show a gun at the start of a play, it must be used by the end. Same with a knife, or a jar, or any object given weight early on. A running gag can generally be used three times. You cannot use a gun, knife, or jar at the end of a play if it was not planted.

Stage Positions

The stage, as seen from above, with the audience facing up from the bottom of the diagram.

Stage directions are always given from the actor's point of view, facing the audience — so "stage right" is to the audience's left. Offstage right and offstage left mark the wings; backstage is behind the upstage line.

Action

The exchange of forces seeking to alter, avoid, or adapt. The basis of drama, driven by motivation or purpose.

Antagonist

Opponent of the protagonist in a drama; exerts the major force against the protagonist.

Basic Situation

The specific problem or maladjustment from which a play arises.

Characterization

The differentiation of characters from one another — by what they say, what others say about them, how they dress, how they move, and what they do. Often thought of in four levels: physical, social, psychological, and ethical.

Character-Through-Character

The idea that a character's qualities are seen in relation to another — a son is understood by being juxtaposed with his father, and vice versa.

Climax

The high point of the action, or the final and most significant crisis — the point where the story must be resolved through confrontation. Synonymous with "crux."

Complication

Introduction of a new force that creates a new balance of power and delays the climax — as a discovery (new information) or a reversal (unexpected results).

Conflict

Tension between two or more characters leading to crisis or climax; the most reliable way to create dramatic tension. May arise between characters, within a character, between characters and environment, or between ideologies.

Crisis

The moment dramatic action reaches a point of decision, tension at its tautest, leading to the climax.

Crux

The moment tension snaps and the denouement begins — synonymous with climax, emphasizing release rather than decision.

Denouement

The point near a play's end when suspense is satisfied and "the knot is untied" — the resolution.

Empathy

The audience's vicarious experience of a character's life, sensing the same emotion. Balanced by aesthetic distance.

Exposition

Basic information about character, circumstance, and prior events needed to understand the play. Necessary in some amount, but has a bad habit of stopping a play's momentum.

False Climax

An event early in a play that, if acted upon by the protagonist, would end the play at that point.

Hook

A striking event at the outset of a play designed to seize the audience's attention.

Moment

A sequence of dramatic action during which tension is drawn between the same poles; a new moment begins once tension is redrawn.

Obligatory Scene

The scene the playwright is obliged to deliver, having built up anticipation of an ultimate confrontation.

Obstacle

That which delays or prevents a character from achieving a goal — creates complication and conflict.

Plant

A detail appearing early in a script that later proves significant to the action.

Plot

The patterned arrangement of events and characters, selected and arranged for maximum dramatic impact — distinct from the story itself.

Point of Attack

The moment in the story when a play actually begins — chosen by the dramatist to best start and propel the action.

Precipitation Context

The opening phase of dramatic action, where the world of the play opens itself to us and introduces the force that launches the action.

Probability

The internal logic that renders a play's world believable on its own terms, whether possible in our world or not. Better to have a probable impossibility onstage than an improbable possibility.

Protagonist

The principal character in a play — the one the drama is about.

Subplot

A secondary plot running parallel to the main action, often involving some of the same characters, resolved at the same crux as the main plot.

Subtext

The meaning and movement of a play below its surface — what is not stated but implied.

Symbol

A character, object, or action made to represent something beyond the play itself. Static symbols are recognized immediately; growing symbols accumulate meaning as the play goes on.

Tragic Flaw

A character's chief weakness — what makes them most vulnerable, often intensifying under stress.

The Greatest Line Ever Written

One day Terry's teacher, Josefina Niggli, put a question to the class: what's the best line of dialogue ever written? It was written, she said, by an English playwright some four hundred years ago. The class guessed Shakespeare. "My, what a clever class you are," she said — and three weeks later, gave them the answer.

The setup: a character has been chasing a ghost, or a pocketbook thief, running for hours over hills and rooftops, until finally, bent over and out of breath, the character yells out after them. Only one of the following is correct —

"Where in the hell do you think you're going?"

Not "stop," not "halt," not "freeze." The line works because it isn't a command at all — it's a question, born entirely out of breathless exasperation, and it reveals character rather than simply describing an action. Ms. Niggli's reminder to the class: you are not English teachers, nor philosophers, nor critics. You write dialogue for people who live on a stage in front of a live audience.

Three Opinions

Here Comes the Cavalry. Deus ex machina — a seemingly unsolvable problem resolved by an unexpected, unlikely occurrence. It can be poor writing when it's used simply to end a story the writer couldn't otherwise find an ending for. Used well, it can surprise an audience, deliver a happy ending, or work as comedy.

Open with what the story is about. A good opening lets the audience know, quickly, what the story is about and why they should stay. Ms. Niggli pointed to the opening of Death of a Salesman as an example — a few lines of Linda and Willy that plant the entire premise of the play without spelling it out.

End where you began. A strong structural instinct: if a play opens in a candy shop, let it close there too. If it opens with someone eating ice cream, let it end there — same image, transformed by everything that happened in between.

Three Tips, at the Start of Class

1. Don't talk about your story until the first draft is done. Talking about a story satisfies the need to tell it — and then it never gets written. People will also try to rewrite your story for you before you've written it yourself.

2. If you get stuck, don't go back to page one. Revising mid-draft loses momentum and the story rarely gets finished. Keep moving forward — write garbage for a while if you have to — and finish the worst first draft ever written before you begin revisions.

3. Learn the rules before you break them. There are laws and rules of script writing. The laws can't be broken. The rules can be, once you've learned them and earned the experience to know why.

This applies to both stage and screen — same structure.

Several of the notes above trace back to Josefina Niggli, the Mexican-American playwright, novelist, and teacher whose classroom shaped a generation of dramatists. More on her life and work:

• Josefina Niggli: Mexican American Writer — University of New Mexico Press
• University of Wisconsin Press
• Josefina Niggli — Encyclopedia.com