THE PUZZLE OF CREATION

Constructing the plot of a play is like putting together a puzzle. Not one where the pieces are already jigsawed and painted, while the board is precut to contain the puzzle pieces. Instead. the playwright must shape every piece (unit of action) to fit his own design. The design comes from a dramatic idea. The idea is reveal through events arranged in a believable sequence that builds the proper emotions.

Each piece has a rhythmic and harmonious relationship to all of the other pieces within the framework of the action as a completed whole.

FOUR ORIGINS OF PLOT

1. The Law of Probability. The law of probability creates the structural unity of the plot and lends even the most fantastic actions an air of believability.
2. Quantitative Organization. The short play contains a single act. For one-act play construction you should choose an action that can be developed and resolved within a limited period of time. Thirty minutes is a reasonable standard. However, actions that are whole and complete might take a little longer. Given the typical half-hour television program, thirty minutes worth of solid craftsmanship is a practical goal.
3. Functional Organization. When you decide to write a tragedy, a comedy, or some mixture of dramatic and comic emotions, you have begun to determine an order and the content of scenes. The scenes need to be arranged so that they achieve the proper pleasure afforded by the emotional function of the play.
4. Dramatic Conception. Your imagination is tempered by your sense of what is deserving of dramas power to stimulate thought, evoke emotion, and create images.

In order to deal with these four origins of structural organization we will discuss order and magnitude as formal causes of the structure. The incidents of the plot will be explained as the basic material of structure. With the emotional impact bringing about the structural development. The final outcome of the structure is concluded by the aesthetic function as settled at the hand of the playwright.

Chief among the origins is the law of probability as it brings about the relationship between the incidents of the play as they emerge in time.

Incidents within a dramatic structure, whether the drama functions as a comedy, tragedy, other form, should be created with a progressive series of events built on a cause and effect relationship between incidents. Build the events from those that are likely to happen to those that necessarily occur. As Telford explains, "The potentiality or possibility which the present reveals in respect of the future is the likelihood which the present gives to the future." Thus, event leads to event with a sense of expectation. Sometimes audience expectations are fulfilled and they are satisfied. Sometimes audience expectations go awry. An unexpected event that occurs in a tragedy can be awe inspiring, if the events are prepared through the law of probability. In a comedy, an unexpected event, such as a man who gives his fancied fiance's hand away in marriage, produces laughter.

In either the tragedy or the comedy, the audiences' sense of anticipation relies on a structural unity built out of the laws of probability. As Heffner wrote, " One of the chief devices of probability in plot is the arrangement of the incidents in terms of antecedents and consequences. He points out that in dramatic criticism probability is a poetic term and is not the same as mathematical or natural probability. Instead, " it seems believable within the assumptions of the life frame imagined by the dramatist." Regardless of time and place, a space-platform in the year 3000 or a cave in France in pre-historic times, the events can be made dramatically probable and wholly convincing.

In the short form, the playwright has less time to build events to a satisfying and probable conclusion. This means that the playwright has to depend on such devices as choosing a point of attack close to the conclusion, relying on dramatic exposition to set the antecedent action. To achieve the dramatic conception, along with the desired emotional impact it is imperative that the playwright have a clear sense of where the play is going, what is going to happen, and why it is going to happen. Structural unity planned with incidents arranged according to the laws of probability will achieve the desired artistic affect. Beginning playwrights who wish to create characters within a circumstance and then write with a sense of letting the characters work out their difficulties as they progress are leading themselves down a primrose path of artistic complacency to the dead end of an unfinished play.

Daily life shows the probability of day greeting day in the slow, meandering, often incomprehensible way of life. Artistic achievements are meant to illuminate through the distillation of selection and spotlight the meaning of occurrences. This should be your artistic goal. It is a high calling. Some playwrights can do away with prior planning and contain the ingredients of successful story telling with their head as they allow their characters freedom of expression to do as they will, but most such creations will endure the fate of the characters in Pirandello's play, Six Characters in Search of an Author, who wander in their fictional lives repeating the same events, seeing the events from their own perspective, and continuing to do so, unresolved and unfulfilled.

Thus, for the one-act play see your action as a whole. Know who the characters are and what end they meet. Then plan a series of small actions that precede the end. In a play all actions are present actions and should be fully realized as such. Each present moment is the consequence of a past action, not entirely born full blown from the head of Zeus, but anticipated. Learn to use this talent for anticipation to engage you audience. Lead your audience on and give them proper and startling surprises based on probability You will be master of your art.

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