Let’s talk about style  /  Developing style  /  Exercise your style muscle

Let’s talk about style

I’m not a stylist. By that I mean, I am not interested in style for its own sake, only as a means to tell the story. (Debra Oswald)

Style is the way in which your play has been written.

You may be familiar with some different theatrical styles already. Waiting For Godot is absurdism, Summer of The Seventeenth Doll is naturalism. Bertold Brecht’s Mother Courage and Her Children is epic or Brechtianism (cool – your own ‘ism), Paul Brown’s play about the Newcastle Earthquake Aftershocks is verbatim. (The script is made up from interviews with real people who experienced real events.)  

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Another word for this would be genre. Is your play about seemingly real people, a family for instance, or a teacher and her students? Then it’s probably naturalism. But of course, depending on your plot and characters,  it could also be science fiction. Or a black comedy…  When we asked our playwrights about this they often talked about the range of styles in their work, sometimes within the one play.

My plays have various different style elements – “Dags” is quite cartoony with a narrator leading us through the drama; “Mr Bailey’s Minder” is naturalistic, all set in one room with real time scenes; “Skate” has a Greek chorus of skaters who whisk us from scene to scene; “Gary’s House” is a realist play but a ghost appears at the end. (Debra Oswald)

Defining your style for others can get “tricky” as Noelle Janaczewska points out. She describes her Griffin Award winning play Songket as “narrative drama” but playfully describes Connie And Kevin And The Secret Life Of Groceries  as “romantic fantasy with kimch’i”.

Another of Noelle’s award winners: The Rush Hour Carillon (a radio play), she sees as “carillon for five voices and assorted bells”. 

Developing style

The style to which we are first drawn is probably the strongest indication of what will eventually be our ‘voice’ as a writer. (Verity Laughton)

I don’t care about being stylish or sticking to the rules of style. Just tell your particular story in a way that will hit the audience most powerfully. (Debra Oswald)

Whatever your style, whether consciously achieved or not, try to ensure that it doesn’t come across as simply a writing exercise, but is integral to the play. This might mean having a few goes at telling the story of your play. (That old ‘re-writing’ thing again.)

Tim Jones makes an important point about the style in which your play is written:

Style can also help you tell your story in the right way. If your story is about the rise and fall of the Roman Empire you don’t want it to be a piece of naturalism. Scenes with Roman generals clipping their nails would be pretty boring – better to look at Brecht’s epic theatre style or even Shakespeare as a guide.

If you stay true to your story, if your characters are speaking and acting from a genuine motivation, then the style of your play will feel integral to the story you are telling. 

I like to think I start with a realism bent then push it to a more stylized and compressed version of the same. I then use the form / structure to emphasise that stylized version. When the director and designer come on board, those stylistic hints are taken to another level. Add lights, sound and actors, and the whole thing is like NYE fireworks – just needs an audience! (Suzie Miller)

Many of our playwrights were united in their advice to let the story come before the style. 

Let it find you, don’t decide on one and then write in it. It’ll sound contrived and arch and fake. (Michael Gow)

But others like Caleb Lewis saw the benefit in experimenting.

“I find it really useful to attempt to write each new play in a different genre or style. This may not work for everybody…but for me…writing in this way allows me to continually try something different, and to challenge myself in new ways as a writer.”

And Lally Katz points out that through the process of trying different styles you can discover your own.

Everyone has their own style naturally. And sure you might want to go to extremes sometimes or try something like writing in a very particular style or genre, but again, I think the main thing is that you pay attention to being true to yourself. It’s like clothes. It’s fun to look in the shop windows at different fashions and sometimes you get a coat or something that’s in season, or you get second hand shoes that were fashionable in the seventies, but you probably end up mixing them together and just wearing what is comfortable to you.  

Exercise your style muscle

Pick a play you know well and love. Now, in an act of sheer bravery or complete blasphemy, rewrite it in another style. This might be more of a marathon for your style muscle than a simple exercise so if that’s the case then try rewriting a scene.

Do Hamlet as naturalism, or non-naturalism, or as absurdism or maybe as if you were David Mamet after some very strong coffee.

Style is tone. You have to find your own distinctive tone. There is nothing worse for an audience to think they are in the hands of someone who doesn't have a consistency of tone. (Louis Nowra)