Playwriting: Structure, Character, How and What to Write

by Stephen Jeffreys

Overview

For over two decades, Stephen Jeffreys' remarkable series of workshops—conducted at the Royal Court Theatre, London—attracted writers from all over the world and shaped the ideas of many of today's leading playwrights and theatre-makers. Now, with this inspiring, highly practical book, you too can learn from these acclaimed Masterclasses.

Playwriting reveals the various invisible frameworks and mechanisms that are at the heart of each and every successful play. Drawing on a huge range of sources, it deconstructs them into their constituent parts, and offers illuminating insights into:

• Structure: an in-depth exploration of the fundamental elements of drama, enabling you to choose instinctively the most effective structure for your play.

• Character: advice on how to generate and write credible characters by exploring their three essential dimensions: story, breadth, and depth.

• How to Write: techniques for writing great dialogue, dynamic scenes, and compelling subtext, including how to improve your writing by approaching it from unfamiliar directions.

• What to Write: how to adopt different approaches to finding your material and an exploration of the fundamental "Nine Stories," plus how to evaluate the potential of your ideas.

Written by a true master of the craft, this authoritative guide will provide playwrights at every level of experience with a rich array of tools to apply to their own work.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781559369725
Publisher:	Theatre Communications Group
Publication date:	03/10/2020
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	224
Sales rank:	379,084
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Stephen Jeffreys' plays include The Libertine and I Just Stopped By to See the Man (Royal Court); Valued Friends and A Going Concern (Hampstead); Bugles at the Gates of Jalalabad (part of the Tricycle Theatre's Great Game season about Afghanistan); The Convict's Opera (Out of Joint); Lost Land (starring John Malkovich, Steppenwolf, Chicago); The Art of War (Sydney Theatre Company) and A Jovial Crew (Royal Shakespeare Company). His adaptation of Dickens' Hard Times has been performed all over the world.

He wrote the films The Libertine (starring Johnny Depp) and Diana (starring Naomi Watts). He co-authored the Beatles musical Backbeat which opened at the Citizens Theatre, Glasgow, and went on to seasons in London's West End, Toronto and Los Angeles, and translated The Magic Flute for English National Opera in Simon McBurney's production.

For eleven years, Jeffreys was the Literary Associate at the Royal Court Theatre, where he was a member of the Council. His celebrated playwriting workshops influenced numerous writers and provided the material for this book, which he was working on right up until his early death in 2018.

Table of Contents

Foreword April De Angelis xi

Editor's Note Maeve McKeown xiii

Introduction 1

1 Structure 7

Theatre Events Structure 10

I Story Structure 13

The Three Elements of Story 13

The Three-part Story: Macbeth 17

The Advantages of Conventional Story Structure 24

Story Structure in Plays with Multiple Characters 26

II Time and Place Structure 28

Open/Closed Time and Place 29

I Closed Time, Closed Place 30

(a) Choose an interesting location 32

(b) Use the interval 34

(c) Plot devices 34

(d) What happens offstage? 34

2 Open Time, Closed Place 35

3 Closed Time, Open Place 38

4 Open Time, Open Place 39

The three-act play 39

The four-act play 43

The multi-scene play 47

The two-set play 52

Recurring settings 53

Panorama plays 53

A dominant scene 55

Lots of scenes 55

Scene changes 56

III Experimental Structures 59

Disrupted / Simultaneous Time and Space 61

1 Disrupted Time, Closed Place 62

2 Disrupted Time, Open Place 64

3 Disrupted Time, Simultaneous Place 67

4 Open Time, Simultaneous Place 69

Playing with Narrative 71

Mimimalism 71

Inundation 72

Interruption 74

Repetition 75

Appropriation 75

Subverting Other Dramatic Conventions 79

Character 79

Language 80

Theatre's Relationships with the Audience, the Artist and the World 80

2 Character 85

1 The Three Dimensions of Character 89

1 The Character's Story 90

The Past: The Backstory of the Play 90

The Present: The Action of the Play 91

The Future: What Happens Next? 96

2 The Character's Breadth 97

Physical Characteristics 98

'Fads and Quirks' 99

What the character says about themselves 100

What other characters say about them 101

What they do 102

What the writer says about the character 103

3 The Character's Depth 105

II Working with Character 109

Aristotle's Four Criteria 109

'Good' 109

'Appropriate' 111

(a) The character who is appropriate to the: the task, and succeeds 111

(b) The character who is appropriate to the: the task, but fails 112

(c) The character who is ill-equipped for the: the task, and fails 113

(d) The character who is ill-equipped for the: the task, but succeeds 114

'Lifelike' 115

'Consistent' 117

Personality Types 118

Jung's 'Compass' 119

Extroverts and Introverts 122

The Myers-Briggs System 123

Other Tools 124

Observation 124

Character Relationships 125

Number of protagonists 128

Group characters 128

Harriet Walter's 'Six Keys' 129

3 How to Write 131

I Six Kinds of Logic 133

Deductive and Inductive Logic 134

Causal and Off-the-wall Logic 138

Dialectical and Poetic Logic 142

II Dialogue 149

Types of Dialogue 149

Ordinary Speech 149

It's not consecutive 151

False starts 152

Interruptions 152

Self-correction 152

Private code 152

Bad grammar 152

Character-based Dialogue 154

The Authorial Voice 157

Neutral Dialogue 159

Tools for Writing Dialogue 161

Grice's Conversational Maxims 161

Maxim of Quantity 162

Maxim of Quality 162

Maxim of Relevance 162

Maxim of Manner 162

'Actions' 168

III Writing Scenes 169

The Left-brain Approach 170

The Visual 170

The Structural 171

The Right-brain Approach 172

IV Subtext 180

Analysing Subtext 181

Writing Subtext 183

Three Types of Subtext 184

4 What to Write 191

Foxes and Hedgehogs 194

I Types of Play 196

Autobiographical Plays 197

The Zeitgeist Play 197

The Parallel-world Play 199

The Specific-experience Play 200

Researched Plays 200

The Microcosm Play 201

The Verbatim Play 204

The Workshop Play 205

Historical Plays 206

Plays Based on Historical Characters 210

Historical Situations 211

Historical Themes 212

Adaptations 213

Well-known Novels 213

Lesser-known Novels 214

Other Books 215

Movies 215

The Form-led Play 216

The Specific-commission Play 217

II The Nine Stories 218

Group One: Beginnings 219

1 Romeo and Juliet: 'The Love Story' 219

'The Love Story' inverted 223

2 Orpheus: 'The Gift That is Lost' 224

Orpheus inverted 226

3 Jacob and Esau: 'The Rival Siblings' 226

Inversion: siblings united 228

Group Two: Middles 229

4 Circe: 'The Spider and the Fly' 229

Circe inverted 231

5 Tristan and Isolde: 'The Love Triangle' 231

'The Love Triangle' inverted 233

6 Achilles: 'The Fatal Flaw' 233

Achilles inverted 236

Group Three: Endings 236

7 Cinderella: 'Good Triumphs in the End' 236

Cinderella inverted 237

8 Hercules: 'The Hero Who Keeps Going' 238

Hercules inverted 240

9 Faust: 'The Debt That Must Be Paid' 240

Faust inverted 242

Combining Stories 242

Endings 244

5 Epilogue 245

Redrafting 247

Submitting Drafts 248

Meeting with Literary Managers or Directors 249

Lunch Theory 250

The Four Criteria for Accepting Commissions 251

Your Voice 252

Appendices 253

I Fifteen Dos and Don'ts of Playwriting 255

II A Map of Three Sisters 257

III Types of Chorus 258

IV Recommended Reading 260

Index of Names and Titles 263

Index of Subjects 268

Editorial Reviews

"Like a bird in the air, Stephen was utterly in his element as a teacher. We sat spellbound."

Phyllida Lloyd

"I had the great pleasure of working with Stephen on his play The Libertine. Would that all playwrights had his openness, his talent, his hard-headedness, his experience, his enthusiasm, his audacity, his complexity, and perhaps best of all his talent and interest in eliciting the best in others."

John Malkovich

"Stephen's wit was legendary. 'Wit': from the proto-Indo-European word 'weid' meaning 'to see'/'to know.' Stephen 'saw' clearly and 'knew' profoundly; which is why we sought out the clarity of his words and learned deeply from his laughter."

Simon McBurney

"Stephen Jeffreys is as important a teacher as he is brilliant a writer... Without him, I wouldn't have been able to write the plays that I have written."

Simon Stephens

"What Stephen taught me has shaped my mind and I have shared this with countless writers."

Kwame Kwei-Armah

"Stephen was a true mentor... I still draw upon much of what he taught me today."

Abi Morgan

"An incredibly useful writing helpmeet. As witty and humane as its author."

Emma Thompson

"What Stephen Jeffreys doesn’t know about playwriting isn't worth knowing."

Stephen Daldry

"Stephen was more than just a great bloke whose easy laugh set a room alight; he was a genuine geek, an obsessive about the craft of writing... As I read, I was reminded again of his deep connection to plays and how they work. There are gems in here, there is guidance, there is the spirit of Stephen Jeffreys."

April De Angelis