Let’s talk about dramatic action  /  Developing dramatic action  /  Exercise your DA muscle

Let’s talk about dramatic action

Everyone must want something all the time. (Michael Gow)

Dramatic Action is a hard concept because it sounds like it could mean about twenty things.

It seems to suggest Drama! And also Action! And putting the two together should suggest at least twice the exclamation points, right? And capitals too. DRAMATIC ACTION!!

So at the very least there should be shouting and fist-clenching and maybe a car chase, although how you’re going to do that on stage I don’t know. But in fact, dramatic action doesn’t mean that, even though all those things could well be in your script (including a car chase because theatre is magic and you can do anything at all).

Ah…the old dramatic action!...everyone has a different view about what it is, how it works…but when you have a glimpse of it you really know what it is and when you have a feeling that you understand it you can’t talk about it for fear of losing…it! (Suzie Miller)

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Dramatic action is an oddly intangible thing to define but it’s about the emotional movement of the play. That’s not the emotion of the actors or characters on stage, it’s the response in the audience themselves. It’s the way that an audience is able to feel the movement/action of the play, and it’s the way that the play takes them on an emotional journey. Within a play, the main character should be transformed. By the end of the play they should have experienced something profound, something potentially life changing and that can happen in a small way, it needn’t be open heart surgery or a decision to create their own cult. The character may decide not to respond to what happens, they might decide to ignore it or shrink away or move in another direction but this is still a transformation. And beyond the play, the audience should also be transformed by the experience of watching and of experiencing that dramatic action at work. Audiences want to see characters attempting something. If it’s something that appears impossible, all the better. Their struggle to succeed and their conflict with characters or events that try to prevent them succeeding is what makes the drama. Most people don’t know the difference between conflict and argument. They think people yelling at each other is dramatic conflict but in actual fact that’s just people yelling at each other. Conflict suggests a deeper tension. (Rachel Hennessy)

Developing dramatic action

Dramaturge Jane FitzGerald advises an overview approach to developing your dramatic action: “think about the way the dramatic action and tension rises and falls, give it a shape…a flat line will make your play seem dull”.

Catherine Zimdahl suggests you “make sure it comes from the engine of the characters.”

Debra Oswald invites you to “take a clue from the way actors approach a scene. They ask ‘what does my character want in this moment?’…if…a character has a strong purpose for saying or doing something it can turn a static moment into something essentially dramatic.”

atyp Artistic Director Tim Jones has this to say about dramatic action:

If there is not a want for characters to pursue, an objective, then there is no dramatic action – no real emotional journey and this is what engages an audience.

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Dramatic action is intrinsically tied to the characters’ motivation and their conflict. There is a sort of alchemy achieved by setting characters with differing needs in a scene each against the other.  Keep the stakes high and don’t make anything easy for your characters. If they want something, make them earn it. Only out of struggle will their true character emerge and only out of that turmoil will they grow and change as characters. (Caleb Lewis) Think of the tension that grows when a character who wants something very badly is prevented from this goal by someone or something. What are they prepared to do to get what they want? And how does this move your play along?

Exercise your DA muscle

(dramatic action) is about a doing word (verb) such as… a character is actively trying to impress or ridicule or seduce or disgust the other character despite the actual text being about something entirely different.

So for example, even though the characters are talking about different brands of coffee, or where to meet at MacDonalds, there is something exciting happening – one character is attempting to do something (e.g. impress, ridicule, seduce, disgust) to the other. I often write the verb below the text so that when I am rewriting I can prune whichever part of the dialogue isn’t maintaining the dramatic action. MOST IMPORTANTLY this way of thinking makes writing really really fun and lots of unpredictable things happen. (Thanks to UK playwright Simon Stephens for this tip.) (Suzie Miller) 

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As an exercise, why not follow Suzie’s advice and see if you can write the verb/action for each character beside their dialogue. Look at a scene and decide if your characters are actively doing something each time they speak or move. If you can’t decide, perhaps your dramatic action is wavering a bit. Try assigning a verb/action to your character at that point. Does this change anything?