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PREPARATION, SUSPENSE, AND SURPRISE

Playwriting: The Structure of Action

by Sam Smiley

  1. Exposition: Any information in the play about circumstances that precede the

beginning, occur offstage, or happen between scenes. It came be subdivided into exposition about the distant past or exposition about the recent past. Whenever one character explains to another any circumstance from the distant past, the present action may be enhanced, but the playwright must take care only to include essential information. No less important are the items from the recent past; these may range from a major discovery to an entrance motivation. It is important, for example, to explain the causes of the conditions at the opening of a play, and often it is important, though of less significance, to reveal why a character enters a particular scene. Exposition may occupy a relatively small proportion of the script, or it may take up a great amount of the dialogue. Oddly, most beginning playwrights pack their scripts with too much exposition. Exposition should be minimal, but sufficient to the needs of the action. Always, it best enters a play subtly and spreads over more than one scene. Some typical rusty devices are: the narrator, the servant, the telephone, and the foil (a minor character who acts as a contrasting confidant to a major one.) Exposition best appears during a conversation about something else, as brief information precipitating a major discovery.

  1. Plant: More specific device. Usually, a plant is an item of information, one that the playwright inserts early in the play and that turns out to be significant later. Often it is an item of exposition, but not always. As one form of preparation, plants provide evidence for subsequent deeds and speeches. Plants assume importance for the characters, and for the audience, in retrospect. Their initial impact is slight, but eventually it is great. They have many uses. Plants should be used o establish character traits before those traits occur in action. They may indicate relationships, provide evidential information, or reveal attitudes. They make possible both surprise and accident. When a surprising event takes place, it may be startling, but it must be credible. Plants establish the basis for credibility. There are at least eight chief devices for plants:

a). An attitudinal speech from or about a character prepares for later action.

b). A minor crisis frequently sets the possibility for a later major crisis.

c). A piece of business, i.e., a physical action at first seemingly unimportant,

often gains significance later in the play. Although the device appears in most

detective stories, it is also used in many kinds of plays.

d). A suggestive or explanatory speech not having much apparent importance can

turn out to be crucial.

e). Minor characters sometimes function as, or present, plants (for example the

confidant).

f). Physical items of spectacle – a setting, a prop, a costume, or even a sound –

occasionally operate as plants.

g). Relationships, especially those established early, can function as plants for

later action. The suspicious and suspended relationship between Stanley and

Blanche in A Streetcar Named Desire provides the logic for Stanley’s final

action of committing Blanche to a mental institution.

h). A Pointer is also a specific device of preparation. Whereas a plant stimulates

a backward view, a pointer impels the characters, or the audience, to look

ahead. A pointer is any specific item in a play that indicates something of

interest will occur later. Pointers arouse questions and anticipations.

Although in a well-written play, nearly everything before the final climax

stimulates forward interest, pointers are the special items that the playwright

inserts to heighten interest, expectations, concern, or dread. In general, most

of the eight kinds of plants can also function as pointers. But more

specifically, pointers frequently take on one of the following particular

shapes:

  1. A statement that some event will take place.
  2. A question about the future.
  3. A prop, scenic item, or piece of business suggesting something to come.
  4. An assertion opposed to the obvious course of activity.

Additionally, the existence of these general things in a play point to the future: a brief conflict leading to a future major conflict, emotional behavior, antagonistic attitudes, and any kind of delay. All the devices of planting and pointing in a drama amount to the overall foreshadowing.

  1. Suspense in a play for the characters – incidentally for the audience – is obviously related to the kind of preparation that produces expectations in them about the future. Thus, pointers nearly always arouse suspense. But most skilled playwrights employ the hint-wait pattern as a technical device. They either check to make sure their play contains several such patterns, or they insert them according to the needs of the particular play. This pattern is simple to learn and to employ, and it is usually effective. The pattern consists of a hint, a wait, and a fulfillment. Some character in a play indicates that something is likely to happen; other activity forces a wait; and then the expected event does take place – in a slightly different way than anticipated. In any given play, when the pattern first occurs, the resultant suspense will be small, but each succeeding time the pattern comes up, more suspense proportionately arises.

SUSPENSE (Cont.)

Suspense automatically occurs during all crises. A crises requires these steps: identification of two opposed forces, an indication that they will fight and that one or the other will win (hint), the occurrence of the conflict (a suspenseful wait while the fight goes on), and a climax (fulfillment as resolution of conflict.)

Finally, suspense also proceeds from deliberation and decision. When a character faces a problem, s/he usually deliberates about solutions or alternatives. This is another form of crisis, another kind of conflict. Whether s/he expediently wonders how to do something or ethically reflects about whether or not to carry out an activity, suspense arises. The fulfillment in such cases is the decision following deliberation. Decision is also, and even more significantly, action and climax. It is action because it demands a change in overall state or activity, and it is climax in that it resolves deliberative crisis. In this special sense, suspense can become action.

  1. Surprise: An unexpected is at best an unexpected event that is fully believable during and after its occurrence. Hence, surprise depends upon antecedent plants for its probability. A play can contain many surprises, but they should be well grounded in preparatory devices and thus are believable within the limits of the milieu and logic of the play. Surprise can also proceed from dual lines of probability. In a series of events, one line of probability is obvious and leads to an apparent outcome; the second line of probability is hidden, or seemingly unimportant, and leads to an unexpected outcome. When the second line suddenly comes forward, surprise results. In this manner, dual probability produces surprise. The other qualitative parts of drama can also produce surprise. A character with a surprising trait, an unexpected thought, a fresh combination of words, a startling series of sounds, a stunning item of spectacle – all such things can produce surprise.

Additionally, surprise can come from chance or accident in a play. Although a play is a network of probability, chance always takes an important part in the action. A playwright should identify all accidents in his/her play and attempt to surround them with probability. It is accidental, for example, that Fortinbras returns to Denmark exactly at the end of the action in Hamlet, but because of several references to him and his one earlier appearance, it is acceptable that he enters the scene at precisely the right moment to conclude the play.

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Beginning playwrights tend to make mistakes with preparation, exposition, plants, pointers, suspense, surprise, and chance. Most often errors come from over-preparing the obvious and failing to establish probability for the unusual. Exposition is best kept to an absolute minimum, and then presented straightforwardly during the course of interesting action. A need for the information should arise before the exposition appears. Planting errors are usually the result of too few plants rather than too many. The beginner often lets characters discuss an event after it has happened rather than pointing to it before it happens. Most plays could have better suspense if their authors would more consciously employ the hint-wait pattern. With surprise and accident, the common flaws have to do with setting up lines of probability. The work of investing a play with sufficient items of preparation is complex. It is best done during the composition of the full scenario. Proper preparation creates the qualities of unity, probability, and economy. Hence, structural preparation is crucial to plot and necessary for beauty in drama.