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Character

In the previous chapter on conflict, I stated that conflict does not arise out of nothing; rather, it stems from intentions at cross purposes. Intention, in turn, stems from character. A logical question follows: If conflict comes from intention, and intention comes from character, why start with conflict? Why not start with character? Many writers, as you can see from the Character vs. Action chart (see following page), ask just that question and argue for the preeminence of character. Lajos Egri, a significant and sensible writer on playwriting, concluded, “There is no doubt that conflict grows out of character.” Why not, then, begin there? The answer is this: Character does not necessarily produce obstacles or conflict, but obstacles and conflict necessarily bring out character.

Let’s assume you’ve thought of two characters for the conflict exercise—a doctor and a trash collector, for instance. What do we know about them? Nothing. Now let’s put them in a situation of conflict. Using the prompts suggested, we can first envision a place where the two characters come together, and we’ll use the occupation of the trash collector. He’s making his rounds, and he comes to the house of the doctor.

Now imagine an object that could force their conflict. The trash collector is picking up bags, and a plastic bag bursts, littering debris over the driveway in front of the doctor’s expensive house. The trash collector sighs and mutters an expletive under his breath. Suddenly a man emerges from the house and hurries to the trash collector.

Character VS. Action

It may not be scintillating theater, but in the course of this small conflict, two characters—an arrogant doctor and a proud, defensive trash collector—begin to emerge.

As this example illustrates, you cannot create a dramatic character in isolation. You may list a multitude of characteristics for your characters: age, occupation, physical appearance, favorite activity, recently read books, likes and dislikes, and so on. But the characters won’t really begin to reveal themselves until you place them in dramatic situations rife with action and conflict.

The revelation of character through conflict and action in drama should hardly come as a surprise, for the process is identical to what occurs in real life. You don’t simply meet a person and instantaneously know that person’s character. Rather, the character of individuals emerges bit by bit through their actions, through what they do and say, and through their interactions with other people. Character emerges in drama in just the same way.

Let us for a moment consider you as a character. Imagine that you’re driving down a winding two-lane highway. A bystander might observe aspects of your personality. Are you driving a sparkling new BMW or a rusted pickup truck? Are there any bumper or window stickers espousing causes, identifying a school, or indicating a special parking permit? Are you wearing a tank top or more dressy attire? Do you drive cautiously on the turns, or do you attack them like a race-car driver? All of those elements provide clues about you.

Now let’s complicate your life. Suppose the road is icy. Do you sit up in the driver’s seat? Do we read concern on your face? Perhaps you relish the challenge. What if another car cuts you off? Do you curse or make a gesture at the other driver? Or do you just take a breath and collect yourself? Imagine that your car breaks down or has a flat tire. Do you know what to do to fix the problem yourself? Do you hail a passing motorist? In these instances the conflict generated by the obstacles of weather, another motorist, or the inanimate automobile itself, and your responses to those challenges, would reveal additional facets of your personality.

As you saw from the Character vs. Action chart, critics have expended an enormous quantity of ink in a long-running debate over whether character or action is more important to a play. No one has expressed the case for the dominance of characters over action more eloquently than John Galsworthy, an early 20th-century playwright. He wrote:

More succinctly, Galsworthy said, “A human being is the best plot there is.” That point of view has many supporters, including Henrik Ibsen, Ntozake Shange, Friedrich Duerrenmatt, Terrence McNally, and Jerome Lawrence.

But if writing plays were a debate among authorities, the case for the preeminence of action or plot could be argued by Bertolt Brecht, Thornton Wilder, Robert Anderson, A. R. Gurney, and others. Wilder, for instance, concluded: “Drama on the stage is inseparable from forward movement, from action.”

Unfortunately, as is the case with other long–standing questions such as “Which came first, the chicken or the egg?” the question “Which is more important, character or action?” is, finally, an empty one. Character and action are inseparable. It is as impossible as it is undesirable to have one without the other.

A scene or a play can begin with a story or it can begin with an interesting character. Moreover, a play can begin in many other ways as well. It can start with a word or a phrase. It can be propelled by a firmly held conviction. Tina Howe once said that she always started a play with a setting. Her play Painting Churches takes place in a Boston interior while her Coastal Disturbances takes place on a beach.

Wendy Wasserstein has said that her plays often spring from a visual image. Her Pulitzer Prize–winning piece The Heidi Chronicles began with the picture of a woman standing in front of a group of other women and saying that she’d never been so unhappy in her life. Jean-Claude van Itallie echoes Wasserstein and Ingmar Bergman when he states that, for him, the seed of a play is a provocative and mysterious visual image “which I can turn like a prism or a crystal in the light…. The questionings of that image are the beginnings of the play.”

What’s important is not where plays begin but where they end. No matter what they start with, somewhere along the line of their development they must incorporate all the elements of an effective play—well-defined characters speaking interesting dialogue in a forward–moving story, all brought together within an enticing environment.

To demonstrate how different elements influence each other, particularly how action and character reinforce one another, let me describe an action. This action was written by a student in a playwriting class.

Example

That action not only exudes a somber tone, it conveys a sense of character. The middle-aged woman is alone at the holidays. Her unsmiling expression and regular pace alert us to her depression. Her concern that the tree be properly upright informs us that this is a precise, meticulous woman. The scene suggests that she is attempting to keep a hold on her lonely life through the ritual of trimming the tree. But when the ornament box falls and a special ornament is broken, she becomes desolate and cannot sustain the pretense. She gives up and leaves the room.

Now let’s turn around and describe a character. I’m thinking of a boy of about ten. He has a constant runny nose, which he wipes with the back of his hand. This young man wants to be thought of as tough. Even on the coldest days he leaves his shabby coat unzipped. He is something of a bully, taunting the younger children at school and throwing snowballs at them.

Here we have the seed of a character, and even in this early stage the character begins to emerge in terms of action and conflict: what he wears and how he wears it; his personal behaviors; what he does to other people.

You probably discovered as you wrote your action and direct conflict scenes that they, like the paragraph about the woman at the Christmas tree, began to suggest moods and convey character. That occurs not because action and conflict are more important than other elements, but because the various elements of drama work together, support each other, and reveal each other.

That is what happens in the action of the woman trimming the tree. Her determined walk and unsmiling visage work together with her gray hair to suggest a certain character. That, in turn, is supported by her slow, hesitant movement and careful breathing in response to the fallen ornament box. And all of those elements, juxtaposed within what should be a joyous event, create a revealing, dramatic moment.

Although you cannot create character in isolation from other elements, you can use characters as the impetus for a scene or a play, and one way to do that is to write about characters with whom you are familiar.

•  •  • Exercise 3.1

Example

Example

Evaluation

In the first example, the student used her own “Big Brother” as the germ for the scene. Rick is certainly dominating and irritating, but perhaps the most intriguing part of the scene is the way in which Sarah allows herself to be manipulated. She knows Rick will abuse her good nature, but she goes ahead anyway, almost as though she feels a compulsion to do things for him even though she knows he’ll exploit her. She seems to want to be a martyr. As for Rick, he enjoys the contest. Clearly it would be simpler for him to make the sandwich than to get his sister to do it for him—but there’s no challenge to that!

The structure of the scene works well. Rick interrupts Sarah and badgers her. She finally agrees to his entreaty, but only after she achieves what she thinks is a bargain. Then the playwright crafts a reversal, where the scene seems to go in one direction, then abruptly changes course. It appears Sarah and Rick have reached a compromise, but after Sarah does her part, Rick reneges and gloats in the fact that he has taken advantage of his sister yet again. Dealing as it does with sibling rivalry and with one person trying to take advantage of another, the scene probes relationships with which we can easily identify.

The second scene, another example of what is sometimes called “kitchen table” drama because it treats basic domestic relationships, could take place in virtually the same kitchen as Big Brother. The scene sprang from an observed relationship, and its charm results directly from the use of the prop—the little candy hearts—as conversation starters. One character is trying desperately to create a conversation. The other is just as intent to avoid it. We don’t know what Nathan is writing, but we can see clearly that Ellen is not a part of his activity. The turning point comes when Nathan takes some candies but refuses to engage in the conversation that Ellen insists goes with them. Here, too, we see a reversal. It seems the two will come together over the hearts, but instead Nathan simply drops his candies back in the bowl, and the defeated Ellen winds up eating the hearts without even reading them.

Significantly, both scenes utilize props and basic but important actions. Sarah’s making the sandwich is a central development, and the candy hearts are especially well chosen because they’re something everyone knows and they resonate with notions of Valentine’s Day and metaphors of love.

Playwrights often use props or games to provide dramatic tension, to act as a metaphor, or to help provide a structure. The central focus of The Gin Game, the Pulitzer Prize–winning play by D. L. Coburn recently revived on Broadway, is an on-again, off-again card game played by an elderly man and woman. In Tina Howe’s Road to Zanzibar the characters play a game called Geography, which leads to the title of the play. In A Streetcar Named Desire, Stanley’s poker night serves as an emotional backdrop for the climactic moment of the play.

The dialogue of both scenes, while basic, flows naturally. Ellen’s recounting of the old man calling her “Darlin”’ and the MY DARLING candy at the end provide clever and meaningful brackets to the scene.

In both scenes characters are revealed because of what they want and how they go about getting it. Not only does Rick want the sandwich, but he wants to trick his sister. And he succeeds. Ellen wants to start a conversation and revive a relationship, but she fails, and the failure seems to take the heart out of her.

Now that we’ve created some characters to inhabit the worlds we invent, in the next chapter we’ll work on how to provide characters with effective voices—in other words, how to write dialogue.