Let’s talk about structure / Creating structure / Little Red Riding Hood…a structure Let’s talk about structure
Structure is the way your play unfolds. Dramaturg Jane FitzGerald calls it “the architecture of a play,” playwright Catherine Zimdahl describes it as the “…shape of your story”.
Structure is rhythm over the arc of the whole play. (Louis Nowra)  |  | In a very basic form, a play will start with the characters at a point where they begin to experience change. In other words, something happens. Perhaps an old friend from their past has unexpectedly turned up. Or, maybe they overhear a plot to take over the world or perhaps they get the news that their sister is in hospital and her life is in the balance.
From here the story’s action continues to rise to some sort of climax or high point of the play. The old friend’s secret turns out to be that he has set fire to a school and now the police have finally tracked him down. The main character discovers that aliens have already replaced all our world leaders and high school students are next in line. The sister dies during her operation and the family’s grief leads to recriminations and secrets revealed.
After this the story moves towards resolution and end of the story. The old friend is convinced to give himself up, the aliens are defeated when they are trapped into eating a sausage roll from the school canteen, the family put aside their differences at the sister’s funeral.
Think about how you might tell the story of your play to a friend. You might simply tell it as it occurred: this happened, then this happened, step by step leading to the end.
But there are other ways to tell your story.
You might start by announcing what happened at the end and then, after your friend has reacted in horror or amazement or whatever, you might go back to the start and tell the events that lead up to it. Now when you describe those early steps, they have a certain resonance because we know how the story ends. | |  |
When you write your play you need to be aware of how you want to tell your story. Telling it in chronological order (that is, in the order that those events occurred), while very common and straightforward, is not the only way, and not necessarily the best. Creating structure
The way you choose to structure your play will depend on the story you want to tell, the characters who inhabit that story, and the effect you want your story to have on your audience.
When we asked this question of leading Australian playwright Michael Gow he gave us a very concise piece of advice: Make sure that whatever happens, it’s less dramatic than what comes next.
In other words, however you decide to tell your story, ensure that each scene builds on the scene before.
Tom Wright gave us this simple but effective tip to consider when you are wrestling with your structure: Know how you want it to end. And write back from there.
Structure is important but it’s not something to get too stressed out about. For instance it’s not something you need to have worked out before you start to write your play. But once you know what your play is about, it’s worth experimenting with the structure. | | …if it is a play about say drugs think laterally about how that plays out and structure the play accordingly – for example the highs and lows in a drug day, the pace of the world, the long languid times followed by the angry hanging out times. Then once you have brainstormed this, draw a picture of the shape of it and write the play with the picture in mind. (Suzie Miller) Sometimes things don’t work and you need to look at your play with a clear head and a willingness to try something else. Be flexible. The shape of your first draft is not carved in stone. If things aren’t working, consider radical change to your original structure – eg you might need to start the story much later, drop scenes, change the timeframe. With my last play “The Peach Season”, we decided to switch around the scene order in the second act long after the opening night, in fact once the play had been running for 3 weeks. The change made the play better, improving the story flow and the emotional build in the scenes that followed. It’s never too late to make a play better. (Debra Oswald)
Be flexible. The shape of your first draft is not carved in stone. If things aren’t working, consider radical change to your original structure – eg you might need to start the story much later, drop scenes, change the timeframe. With my last play “The Peach Season”, we decided to switch around the scene order in the second act long after the opening night, in fact once the play had been running for 3 weeks. The change made the play better, improving the story flow and the emotional build in the scenes that followed. It’s never too late to make a play better. (Debra Oswald) | | |
Something else to consider is whether your play has a two-act structure, a three-act structure and so on. Like flares, piercings and Cabbage Patch Dolls, numbers of acts go in and out of fashion.
One of the benefits of the one-act full-length play is that tension builds and resolves without letting the audience off the hook. The audience is strapped into the emotional roller coaster of character and story that is your play for the entire journey without stopping until you finally fling them, gasping and quivering, to the metaphorical floor like a pair of dirty socks.
Obviously there’s a downside too, and it’s to do with toilet breaks, bar takings, and those audience members who feel ill on roller coasters, but still the one-act full-length is a popular form and many of our playwrights have written in this way.
It’s well worth seeing and/or reading these or other plays with different act structures to consider why these work and whether they might work for you.
Little Red Riding Hood. A Structure
Don’t read those 3 act structure self help for writers books. They are boring. Trust your intuition, you’ve seen tons of stories by the time you are of age – it’s all embedded in your brain somewhere. (Catherine Zimdahl)
Of course not everyone agrees with Catherine here, but it’s a good point that the stories you already know and love have some form of basic structure that ensures their success.
Let’s look at Little Red Riding Hood, a classic children’s fairytale. | | In the beginning we meet the main character, Little Red Riding Hood, who is given a task to fulfil (take these goodies to Granny) and a warning (don’t stray from the path).
She sets off on her mission but quite soon strays from the path to pick flowers and soon meets the Big Bad Wolf who obviously wants to eat her up. She tells him where she is going and he leaves.
In the next part of the story the wolf arrives early at Granny’s house, swallows her whole, and thendisguises himself as her and waits for Little Red’s entry.
Then, the most exciting part of the story…when she approaches “Granny” and begins to realize that all is not well and that she is in danger. (Granny, what big eyes you have!)
The resolution of the story comes in the final part when the woodsman and his trusty axe rushes in and saves Little Red, kills the wolf, slices him open and frees Granny. And at the end of the story, they live happily ever after…with Little Red Riding Hood having learned a valuable lesson about obedience.
You can see how the story is set up, the excitement grows, there is a high point (climax) of the action and then a resolution. That’s the structure. | | |
What happens if you put an important revelation at the beginning instead of the end? Or if a character arrives later? Or a piece of dialogue is swapped with another? See how these kinds of changes might affect the way your play works for an audience. (Jane FitzGerald) Try retelling Little Red Riding Hood this way.
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“I tend to start with an idea or theme or piece of music. I’m not terribly interested in plot or Story with a capital S.”
(Noelle Janaczewska) |