Writing for Vaudeville Part 28

(c) _The Character Motive from which the Complication Rises_. If the causes lie in character, you must show the motive of the person of the playlet from whose peculiar character the complication rises like a spring from its source. You must expose the point of character plainly.

But in striving to make your premises clear do not make the mistake of being prolix--or you will be tedious. Define character sharply.

Tell in quick, searching dialogue the facts that must be told and let your opening scenes on which the following events depend, come with a snap and a perfectly adequate but nevertheless, have-done-with-it feeling.

2. Points that Must Be Brought out in the Middle

In every scene of your playlet you must prepare the minds of your audience to accept gladly what follows--and to look forward to it eagerly. You must not only plainly show what the causes of every action _are_, but you must also make the audience feel what they _imply_. Thus you will create the illusion which is the chief charm of the theatre--a feeling of superiority to the mimic characters which the G.o.ds must experience as they look down upon us. This is the inalienable right of an audience.

(a) _The Scenes that Make Suspense_. But while foreshadowing plainly, you must not forestall your effect. One of the most important elements of playlet writing is to let your audience guess _what_ is going to happen--but keep them tensely interested in _how_ it is going to happen. This is what creates the playlet's enthralling power--suspense.

It is so important to secure suspense in a playlet that an experienced writer who feels that he has not created it out of the body of his material, will go back to the beginning and insert some point that will pique the curiosity of the audience, leaving it unexplained until the end. He keeps the audience guessing, but he satisfies their curiosity finely in the finish--this is the obligation such a suspense element carries with it.

(b) _The Points that Balance the Preparation with the Result_.

Nothing could be more disastrous than to promise with weighty preparation some event stupendously big with meaning and then to offer a weak little result. And it would be nearly as unfortunate to foreshadow a weak little fulfillment and then to present a tremendous result. Therefore, you must so order your events that you balance the preparation with the result, to the shade of a dramatic hair.

But take care to avoid a too obvious preparation. If you disclose too plainly what you are aiming at your end is defeated in advance, because your audience is bound to lapse into a cynically smiling does-this-fellow-take-us-for-babies? att.i.tude.

The art of the dramatic is the art that conceals art. The middle of your playlet must conceal just enough to keep the stream of suspense flowing eagerly toward the end, which is dimly seen to be inevitably approaching.

(c) _The One Event that Makes the Climax Really Big_. From the first speech, through every speech, and in every action, your playlet has moved toward this one event, and now you must bring it out so prominently that everything else sinks into insignificance.

This event is: _The change in the relations of the characters_.

This is the planned-for result of all that has gone before. Bear firmly in mind that you have built up a suspense which this change must _crown_. Keep foremost the fact that what you have hidden before you must now disclose. Lay your cards on the table face up--all except one. This last card takes the final trick, completing the hand you have laid down, and everyone watches with breathless interest while you play:

3. The Single Point of the Finish

If you can make this final event a surprise, all the better. But if you cannot change the whole result in one dramatic disclosure, you must be content to lay down your last card, not as a point in itself surprising, but nevertheless dramatically.

_The Finish must be Complete--and Completely Satisfy_. You have sprung your climax; you have disclosed what it is that changes the relations of your characters; now you must show that those relations _have_ been changed. And at the same time you bring forward the last strand of plot that is loose and weave it into the now complete design. You must account for everything here in the finish, and do it with speed.

III. PUTTING PUNCH INTO THE IDEA

Now let us say that you have expanded the first draft of your plastic scenario into a nearly perfect ma.n.u.script. But as you read it over, you are not content. You feel that it lacks "punch."

What is "punch," and how are you going to add it when it is lacking?

Willard Mack says: "'Punch' is the most abused word I know. The dramatic punch is continually confused with the theatrical trick.

Critics said the third act of 'Kick In' [1]--in which the detective is overpowered in a hand-to-hand fight after a hypodermic has been jabbed into his wrist--had a punch. It didn't. What it really had was a theatric trick. But the human punch was in the second act, when the little frightened girl of the slums comes to see her wounded lover--who is really dead. If the needle should suddenly be lost in playing the third act the scene would be destroyed.

But the other moment would have its appeal regardless of theatrical detail."

[1] Developed into a long play from the vaudeville act of the same name.

Punch comes only from a certain strong human appeal in the story.

Punch is the thing that makes the pulse beat a little quicker, because the heart has been touched. Punch is the precise moment of the dramatic. It is the second in which the revelation flashes upon the audience.

While whatever punch you may be able to add must lie in the heart of your material--which no one but yourself can know--there are three or four ways by which you may go about finding a mislaid punch.

If you have turned the logical order of writing about and let your playlet drag you instead of your driving it, you may find help in asking yourself whether you should keep your secret from the audience.

1. Have You Kept Your Audience in Ignorance Too Long?

While it is possible to write a most enthralling novel of mystery or a detective short-story which suddenly, at the very last moment, may disclose the trick by which it has all been built up, such a thing is not successfully possible in a playlet. You must not conceal the ident.i.ty of anyone of your characters from the audience.

Conceal his ident.i.ty from every other character and you may construct a fine playlet, but don't conceal his motive from the audience.

The very nature of the drama--depending as it does on giving to the spectator the pleasure of feeling omniscient--precludes the possibility of "unheralded surprise." For instance, if you have a character whom the audience has never seen before and of whom they know nothing suddenly spring up from behind a sofa where he has overheard two other characters conspiring--the audience may think he is a stage-hand. How would they know he was connected with the other characters in the playlet if you neglected to tell them beforehand? They could not know. The sudden appearance of the unknown man from behind the sofa would have much the effect of a disturbance in the rear of the theatre, distracting attention from the characters on the stage and the plot of the playlet.

If your plot calls for an eavesdropper behind a sofa--though I hope you will never resort to so ancient a device--you must first let the audience know who he is and why he wants to eavesdrop; and second you must show him going behind that sofa. The audience must be given the G.o.d-like pleasure of watching the other two characters approach the sofa and sit down on it, in ignorance that there is an enemy behind it into whose hands they are delivering themselves.

This is only a simple instance, but it points out how far the ramifications to which this problem of not keeping a secret from the audience may extend. Moreover, it should suggest that it is possible that your playlet lacks the required punch--because you have kept something secret that you ought to have disclosed.

Therefore, go through your playlet carefully and try to discover just what you have not treated with dramatic frankness.

On the other hand, of course, if you decide you must keep a secret--some big mystery of plot--you must be sure that it is worth keeping. If you build up a series of mysterious incidents, the solution must be adequate to the suspense. But, I have treated this angle of secret-keeping in "preparation versus result," so I shall now direct your attention to the other side of the problem of dramatic frankness--which may be the cause of the lack of punch:

2. Have You been too Frank at the Beginning?

Go back through the early moments of your playlet and see if you have not given the whole thing away at the very beginning. If you have, you have, as we saw, killed your suspense, which is the road on which punch lies in wait. The way to remedy this defect is to condense the preparation and so express it in action and by dialogue that you leave opportunity for a revealing flash.

In going over your ma.n.u.script you must strive to attain the correct balance between the two. The whole art lies in knowing just what to disclose and it when to disclose it--and what not and when not to disclose.

3. Have You Been Too "Talky"?

Remember that vaudeville has no time for "fine speeches." Cut even the lines you have put in for the purpose of disclosing character, and--save in rare instances--depend chiefly on character revelation through _action_.

4. Have You Lost Your Singleness of Effect by Mixing Playlet Genres?

One of the most common reasons why playlets lack the effect of vital oneness is to be found in the fault of mixing the kinds: for example, making the first half a comedy and the second half a tragedy. It is as if a song began with one air and suddenly switched to a totally different melody. If your playlet is a comedy, make it a comedy throughout; it if is a deeply human story, let it end as it began; [1] if you are writing a straight drama or a melodrama, keep your playlet straight drama or melodrama all the way through. Go over your playlet with the eye of a relentless critic and make sure that you have not mixed your genres, which only in the rarest cases can be done effectively.

[1] See Chapter XIV, section II, topic 3.

5. Are You Sure Your Action Is All Vital?

Finally, if every other investigation has failed to develop the needed punch, go over your playlet again to see if it is possible that you have erred in the first principle of the art. If you have permitted even one tiny scene to creep in that does not hold a vital meaning to the single point of your climax, you have lost by so much the possibility of the punch. Remember, here, that a great playlet can be played without a single word being spoken and still be vividly clear to everyone. Realizing this, chop every second of action that is not vital.

6. The Punch Secured.

But long before you have exhausted these suggestions you will have developed your punch. Your punch has risen out of your material-- if you possess the sense of the dramatic. If the punch has not developed--with a series of minor punches that all contribute to the main design of the "heart wallop"--there is something wrong with your material.

But even a realization of this ought not to discourage you, for there are instances every day of well-known playwrights who have chosen the wrong material. We all have seen these plays. You must do as they do--cast your playlet aside and begin anew with new material. The man who keeps at it is the only one who wins--but he must keep at it with the right stuff.

IV. SELECTING A PROPER t.i.tLE

When you have trimmed your playlet by cutting off _all_ the tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs, your thoughts naturally turn to a t.i.tle. More than likely you have selected your t.i.tle long before you have written "curtain"--it is possible a t.i.tle sprang into your mind out of the germ idea.

But even then, you ought now to select the _proper_ t.i.tle.

1. What is a Proper t.i.tle?

A proper t.i.tle is one that both names a playlet and concisely suggests more than it tells. For instance, "The System" suggests a problem vital to all big cities--because the word "system" was on everybody's tongue at the time. "The Lollard" piques curiosity--what is a "lollard," you are inclined to want to know; it also carries a suggestion of whimsicality. "The Villain Still Pursued Her,"

tells as plainly as a whole paragraph could that the playlet is a travesty, making fun of the old blood-and-thunder melodrama. "In and Out" is a short, snappy, curiosity-piquing name; it is a t.i.tle that hangs out a sign like a question mark. "Kick In" is of the same cla.s.s, but with the added touch of slang. "War Brides" is another luring t.i.tle, and one that attracts on frankly dramatic and "problem" grounds. "Youth" is a t.i.tle that suggests much more than it tells--it connotes almost anything. "Blackmail" has the punch of drama and suggests "atmosphere" as well. But these are enough to establish the fact that a good t.i.tle is one which suggests more than it tells. A good t.i.tle frankly advertises the wares within, yet wakens eager curiosity to see what those wares are.

2. What is an Improper t.i.tle?