What Happens Next

“The task of the playwright is to make the audience wonder what is going to happen next…How does one entertain the audience? How does one make it wonder what happens next? How does one accomplish that? Through the structuring of a plot. That is what drama is, and that is the task of the dramatist. The plot, the structure of incidents, is all the audience cares about. The audience may not be able to articulate it, but honest (which is to say, personally necessary) observation by the dramatist will reveal this to be true. (Consider the sales-pitch meeting: When the other fellow’s eyes glaze over, the meeting is done, you didn’t make that sale.) You or I may think, “But what of my talent, my ideas? What of my characters?” and so on, but stand in the back of the house and watch the first audience member yawn (let alone walk out), and learn a lesson.

The task of the dramatist is the construction of a plot. Some will write snappier dialogue. Fine. Note that we enjoy plays in translation, where we have no idea how snappy the dialogue was in the original. Why do we love An Enemy of the People? Because of the plot. In the back of the house (and only there), watching one’s beloved play fail in front of that group that paid to see it succeed, one will learn of the importance of a plot.

How does one learn to structure, that is, to create a plot? Read Aristotle’s Poetics. There we find that a plot is the necessary structure of the incidents (that is, scenes), the failure of each scene driving the hero on toward a new attempt at the solution of the goal stated at the play’s outset. There is a plague on Thebes. Oedipus, the king, sets out to find its cause. He discovers, at the end, that he is the cause. The play is over. Note that it ends in a way, as per Aristotle, both surprising and inevitable. Why has the play survived thousands of years and why did Aristotle adopt it as a paradigm? Because of its perfect plot.

What must the contemporary dramatist do? Learn how to write a plot. How is it done? By writing, revising, staging, revising, and starting again. Good luck.” – David Mamet, book Theatre

For the playwright…

Your number one job and it’s the hardest job–only a few can do it well–is to get the audience to want to find out what happens next. That’s it. Everything else is secondary.

(Side note: As an actor and Artistic Director, I love great character-driven stories. They’re my favorite plays to act in, to see, and to program. But when I reflect on the ones I love, I realize those have pretty good plots too. You care deeply about the characters and want to find out what happens to them.)

Beware of exposition (if you write it, excise it and then if you want, hand it out as backstory for the actor), superfluous “flashy” dialogue that serves no purpose, or anything extra that bogs down the plot.

Because once you lose your audience from wanting to find out what happens next, all Is lost. Game over. It’s curtains for you.

For the writer…

Same as above. Your number one job is to get the reader to want to keep turning pages.