Structuring a Play

Video Transcript

In this clip we're going to talk about how to structure your play. Now there's a very basic chart, but what we can do is add on to that, and make some changes, and make it a little more workable. So basically at the beginning you have your exposition, which tells the background of all the characters, and the story, just enough for the audience to understand what's going on before the conflicts really start happening. Then you've got your rising action, as the story develops, as the conflicts hit, and that builds and builds and builds, until you get to the climax. Then after the climax, comes the falling action, which is the wrap up from the climax and all that has happened there, and then at the very end of that is the denouement, which is the unraveling. And the structure goes something like this, officially the structure goes exposition, rising action, then the climax, and then the falling action, and then the denouement. Now, what I think is important is if you can, instead of starting off here going exposition, exposition, on this straight line, start it off as quickly and into things as you can, and do the exposition along the way. That, if you can, might work better. It's sort of like a movie in the first thirty seconds sometimes that really grabs us, and there's no reason a play should start off slow and talky until we get into it. So if you can do that with your play, and make it instead of this and up, jump right into it and going up. Now, actually, this whole part of the rising action, is about eighty percent of the play. That's most all of it, and in fact, if you break it down into acts, we're probably going up here in act one, and then in the middle of it we have a break, and then it's still having rising action, and the climax happens towards the end of act two. Then you have your falling action, which instead of this, it should actually, you hit your climax, bam, go straight down and, and do that falling action as quickly as possible, not rushing it, but not dragging that out after the climax. What I also suggest is, at the end of the denouement, is that you put an exclamation mark. In my, my play "Dreams on a Desert Night", which was where they were building a housing development and one of the builders was freaking out because he was seeing U.F.O.s. But at the very end of the play everyone had gone, everything was quiet, the lights went down to half, and then an alien walked onto stage, took his hand, and took him off. Here's another example. The example of a, of a man who's battling with his family, and he sits there all day doing jigsaw puzzles. And maybe we create something where he's always missing pieces for the jigsaw puzzle. Well what happens the family fights and battles that and at the climax he finally passes away, and the falling action is the result after that, the upheaval that the family has gone through. Maybe some of the relief, some of the, of the torment. And then you get to the denouement where they're all talking it out. They worked it out together as a family and they're, they're going on to sleep now. But maybe there's one thing where he's actually missing a piece, and he's been missing this one piece all that time. Maybe at the very end you have his wife sitting there, staring at that jigsaw puzzle, and out from this side of the couch falls this missing puzzle piece, and she goes up, puts it in, and completes the puzzle. Or walks up and completes, puts it in and it doesn't complete the puzzle, it doesn't fit. So whatever you do, some thing at the end, it doesn't need to be earth-shaking, but some little touch at the end is very important in structuring the play. As you're charting all of this out you have your characters, and the different conflicts they're going to go through, different plot points you know is going to happen. You know the husband is going to die, you know they're going to get in a big fight before it. Maybe one of the kids is going to run away from home. So what you want to do is put a lot of this on something like note cards. If you can keep it in your head that's fine, but note cards are very helpful because you're going to switch the order a lot. Of course if you have a spreadsheet, that's very easy to do too, in just switching the order of things. So whatever works out best for you, but just to get those main points, and then switch those around so they make sense for you, will really help with the structure. So a great way to look at it is like, you're going on this journey. You are the driver, and your characters are the passengers. You don't know exactly where you're going, but you're going to have a great time discovering it along the way.

Watch these related videos

• 
  Structuring a Play

  playlist Views: 357

• 
  How to Sign Up for a MySpace Profile

  playlist Views: 4,814

• 
  How to Use Playlists on BearShare

  playlist Views: 1,259

• 
  How to Sign In & Out of MySpace

  playlist Views: 5,449

• 
  Writing Chapters in a Book Proposal

  playlist Views: 488

• 
  How to Start a MySpace Account

  playlist Views: 3,925

Community Members who...

• Favorited this Video
• Rated This Video

Top Tags