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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.
2. 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.
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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.
2.
3.
4.
A statement that some event will take place.
A question about the future.
A prop, scenic item, or piece of business suggesting something to come.
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.
3. 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.
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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.
4. 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 overpreparing 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.