THE PLAY’S THE THING

I was always a good girl. Ready to work hard for my grades. Careful to follow the rules of society. And certainly never wanting to confront… really… anyone. Although I have grown more assertive with time, I am still careful not to unduly offend, or stomp on people’s feelings.

But when writing a play (or any other form of fiction) you cannot play nice. When it comes to how you treat your characters - sorry, gloves off. In good dramatic writing you need to place your characters in tough, sometimes untenable situations that bring out both the worst and the best in them. You need to challenge your characters, force them to take risks, place them in either emotional or physical danger (or both) and royally stir up their lives. In other words, in good dramatic writing, the worst thing you can do is avoid conflict.

Now, I find beginning writers get a little confused about what dramatic conflict is. What it is not is a scene filled with people yelling at each other, if that is all they are doing. Nor is it a scene of people taking different stances on a subject and debating it back and forth. But… (that beginner might say) these scenes are full of conflict. No, they are full of argument, that is not dramatic conflict.

Dramatic conflict always has movement. Characters and forces oppose each other in order to move the story line and the premise of the play ever forward. Conflict for conflict’s sake is static. Conflict that takes the character (and thus the play) into ever escalating action that leads to an inevitable confrontation (called the obligatory scene) and then to a resolution, is dramatic conflict.     

I have also noticed a tendency in some writers to believe all conflict is external. They put their character in imminent physical danger, have that danger become increasingly worse, and then have the character find his way out. This is a good formula for some action films and thrillers, and even, I imagine, for a certain type of play. But generally conflict needs to be expressed at both the external and internal levels. You need to create situations for your characters in which they are not only in conflict with others (or the world) but with themselves. Their inner belief system or deep values should be seriously challenged. This is the kind of conflict that makes multi-dimensional characters and a more nuanced story. Think, for example of Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman. Ostensibly his conflicts are with the world: his boss who fires him, his sons with whom he continually fights because they don’t live up to his dreams for them. But at the heart is his inner conflict (most poignantly represented by his dreamlike conversations with Uncle Ben) in which he cannot accept that the American Dream is not within his grasp. It is this need for self acceptance predicated on worldly success that ultimately drives him to suicide (to get the insurance money and prove he has some “worth” in the world).

So ultimately, conflict is not an arbitrary story element you paste onto a scene because you know you must. It is instead a breathing, organic key to creating drama, it is the fuel that energizes your entire play.