Perceiving The Foundation of Storytelling, by Bill Johnson

When many people consider how to tell a story, they think in terms of plot and character. While these are often the most visible aspects of a story, there is an underlying foundation of principles that support a well-told story. These principles could be compared to a house foundation. Without a solid foundation, the other effects of a house -- its character and design -- cannot be fully enjoyed. In the same fashion, these principles of storytelling are also mostly out of sight, but a badly laid story foundation has effects just as damaging as a badly constructed house foundation.

While these story principles are presented in a particular order, a storyteller can come at these issues from any direction. There is no inherently right or wrong way to understand them.

1) Understanding the human need for stories.

A story is a world where every character, every action, every story element has meaning and purpose. This makes a story fundamentally different from life, which offers facts and ideas that don't necessarily have a clear meaning; events that generate emotional states that have no clear resolution; or, events engage the senses, but not in a meaningful, fulfilling way.

Real life, then, can be chaotic, or appear to lack a desirable purpose and meaning. We don't marry the love of our life...or we do, and things go terribly wrong. Or, the one we love is taken from us by a freak accident. Or, we work hard but don't get the rewards we desire. Worse, they appear to go to someone who appears to be completely undeserving of the reward and honor we have worked to attain.

So real life can be painful, unpredictable, or even wildly rewarding. But in spite of our best laid plans or efforts, we can never predict the outcome of any action or series of actions.

Most people, then, have a need for something that assigns a desirable, discernible meaning and purpose to life. This is what a story does. A story promises its audience a dramatic journey that offers resolution and fulfillment of life-like issues, events and human needs.

2) How stories meet the needs the human need for resolution and fulfillment.

Because stories promise experiences of life having meaning, a story fills a basic human need that life have purpose. All stories, then, from the simple to the complex, revolve around some issue that arises from the human need to experience that life have a discernible meaning and purpose. That allows us to experience states of love, honor, courage. Fear, doubt, revenge. To feel a part of a world, even an imaginary one. To feel the freedom to explore new worlds. Or, to experience a desirable state of the movement of the senses, intellect, or feelings to an engaging, desirable outcome. To experience insights into life we might not see on our own, or see deeply. Only when a story engages the attention of its audience via what a story is about at this deeper, foundation level does a story promise something of value to its audience.

Romeo and Juliet, as an example, is a story not about its title characters, but about the power of love. When readers enter its world, they are led to experience something deep and potent and dramatically satisfying about love. This makes the story Romeo and Juliet totally unlike a life-like, factual telling of the courtship and deaths of Romeo and Juliet. To be told that two teenagers committed suicide because their families kept them apart, and to go over the true, factual events that led up to their deaths, is not the same as to create a story around those same events. The story Romeo and Juliet uses the deaths of Romeo and Juliet to create a deeply felt, fulfilling story about the power of great love.

4) Perceiving how a well-written story is true to its purpose.

While a story premise sets out the overall scope of a story's world, every element within that world must be true to it. To visualize this, consider a race with several runners. It has a beginning, middle and end. The varied actions of the different runners makes the action of the race from its start to finish -- its movement to resolution -- visible and concrete. So far, the same could be said of a factual accounting of the race.

In a story, however, the events of the race and its outcome are arranged by the storyteller to create a particular state of fulfillment for the story's audience, in the same way Romeo and Juliet is shaped so readers can experience a deep sense of the nature of love. So the storyteller understands the why a race matters enough that an audience internalizes its movement to resolution. To be story-like in its movement, then, the outcome of a race would revolve around the nature of courage, or faith and determination defeating overwhelming odds, heroism, victory achieved even in defeat, hard work its own reward, some issue of human need being acted out to fulfillment.

When a story's movement -- on this deeper foundation level -- comes across as unclear, a story's audience can struggle to internalize and assign meaning to the actions of the story's characters and its plot. Such characters and plot events can appear to be life-like, i.e., unclear and unfocused, and not story-like, i.e., acted with meaning and purpose. The result of faulty movement is that the story's audience turns aside. Even when the members of an audience can't consciously identify why a story feels false, false movement jars them out of a state of being able to internalize a story's movement. This is comparable to out-of-tune notes in a song detracting from the experience of listening to the song (unless the out-of-tune notes serve some purpose that satisfies the song's audience).

In the case of Romeo and Juliet, the story is true to its movement because every action and expression of Romeo and Juliet moves this story about the nature of love toward its fulfillment. They become the embodiments of the story. But it is what the story itself is about that gives birth to these characters and assigns meaning to their actions.

5) Perceiving how story elements are arranged in a particular way.

A storyteller arranges the elements of a story to create the effect of dramatic movement toward the fulfillment a story promises its audience. Referring again to Romeo and Juliet, this is a story about the nature of love, but its opening scenes play out the hatred of the Capulets and the Montagues via a confrontation on a street in Verona.

Because Romeo and Juliet is about the nature of love proving itself, it is clear what kind of action generates opposition to that: Hate. In Romeo and Juliet, then, the story starts out by demonstrating the hatred of the Montagues and Capulets, because that shows the depth of hatred the power of love must overcome to prove itself. So the story, in its arrangement of its elements, immediately sets out what's at stake in the story; what is at stake for the story's characters, AND, by extension, its audience; and what love must overcome to fulfill the story.

Again, keep in mind that the opening lines of the story refer to the deaths of Romeo and Juliet, so the story's drama is not over the outcome of its plot, but in the arrangement of its dramatic elements in a way that creates a powerful experience of the nature of love for its audience.

Because a story's arrangement of its elements also creates questions about the outcome of events and character issues, a story generates a continuous pull on the attention and interest of its audience.

10) The Craft of Storytelling.

Part of the craft of being a storyteller means learning to create images with words. That requires a willingness to learn the craft of language, how to use words to create metaphors, evocative descriptions of scenery, strong dialogue, just as being a qualified carpenter or mechanic means a mastery in the use of the tools of that trade. The storyteller must have a mastery of words, or be willing to study and master that craft.

11) Technical knowledge.

To set a story on a ship, one must have some knowledge of ships. To set a story on an airplane, one must have some knowledge of planes.

This is not a call that to set a scene on a ship one must be a ship's captain, but the writer must be clear about what they describe. Otherwise, by lying to the reader in some detail, they give readers a reason to set aside their stories, to question whether the storyteller understands how to fulfill a story's promise in a way that rings true.

12) The desire to be a storyteller.

In the main, one does not become a storyteller out of a desire for wealth, or fame, or prestige, although some do...and a few even succeed for those reasons. People more often write stories because they feel moved to do so. A storyteller's first audience is themselves. The trap for many inexperienced writers is mistaking their feelings about their stories for the craft of writing stories that evoke potent experiences of fulfillment for their audiences.

13) Understanding the role of characters in a story.

Characters in a story operate to make a story's movement visible and concrete. But a storyteller needs to make the subtle distinction between what a story is about on a deeper, foundation level, from what's at stake for its characters.

In Romeo and Juliet, Romeo is hot blooded and impulsive. He will not be denied the woman he loves...even if death is an obstacle that must be overcome. So Romeo is a character of great strength of will. All characters in well told stories must have this strength of purpose. Whether the issue is love, greed, revenge, compassion, hate, jealousy, characters must be willing to confront and overcome whatever obstacles the story places in their path. Weak characters often fail to offer readers/viewers a reason to internalize their actions because their actions fail to generate a quality of movement. No movement, no drama. No drama, no fulfillment. No fulfillment, no audience.

14) Perceiving how a plot operates to make a story's movement concrete and dramatic.

This issue -- understanding what a plot is -- is easily the most misunderstood in writing.

The purpose of a plot is to make visible and concrete the dramatic movement of a story. A plot serves to make the movement of a story dramatic and potent by taking character concerns and intertwining them with what's at stake in the story itself, then compelling characters to act to resolve what's at stake in the story while plot-generated events block their actions. As characters face increasing obstacles, they must strive with greater purpose to shape the outcome of a story. This generates the effect of a story's plot, a heightening of a story's movement to fulfillment.

To illustrate, consider the novel The Hunt For Red October. On the surface, this story might appear to be a plot driven thriller about a Lithuanian-descended commander of a Russian nuclear submarine attempting to flee to America and freedom. But on a story level, this story is about a clash between freedom and authoritarianism. Because many people desire to experience that state where the values of freedom win out over oppression -- which many times doesn't happen in real life -- the story's audience readily internalizes this story's movement. Because the story, in its every action, proves that freedom can, indeed, overcome oppression, it drew in readers and rewarded their interest.

To describe a story's plot is not the same as describing what a story is about on its foundation level, but to understand a story's movement is to see what gives rise to a story's plot.

To conclude...

A storyteller should to be able to perceive what a story is about at its deepest level, and how to move that to a resolution that offers fulfillment to a story's audience. Understand what about the movement of a story engages the interest, the needs of an audience. Such a writer can better perceive how characters, plot devices and POV work to create a dramatic movement of a story toward its fulfillment. How every element of a story works together in its characters, plot, environment and ideas to make vivid and potent a story's world.

That's why I say that at its heart, a story must have an issue at stake that is of consequence to the story's audience. Something the members of the audience will desire to experience in a state of resolution and fulfillment. Love. Courage. Redemption. Renewal. Some issue that revolves around the aching need of humans to feel they matter, that they have a place in the world.

Even though I assign character, plot and point of view as the last of these principles, it is not to suggest that most writers don't come to a story through some insight or interest in a character, scene, or plot. Some issue that pulls at them. That won't let them sleep at night. But the underlying issue I've sought to explore and illuminate here is the why an audience desires stories, the how a story meets those needs of its audience. From that foundation of understanding, a writer can more easily perceive how words create vivid, potent images that move audiences.

The ideas expressed in this essay are developed more comprehensively in my workbook, A Story is a Promise , available on Amazon and Draft2Digital. Each chapter of the workbook concludes with a series of questions designed to help writers integrate this story as promise concept of thinking about stories. Each class is designed to take students from a story idea, through creating a potent, dynamic plot, to deep into the nitty-gritty of writing evocative, potent sentences and visual images.

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, The Power of Ambiguity

For an audience to get involved with a play and how and why its characters act to shape its course and outcome, what a play is about generally needs to be accessible. Even in a play like Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, which revolves around ambiguity. This review explores how the ambiguity of the story happens within the context of some very concrete plot questions that allow viewers to track the course and outcome of the story.

The title of the play suggests an academic setting; the question, who's afraid of Virginia Woolf, applies to academics who've made a career out of teasing new meaning from Woolf's work, and, conversely, those in academia who have failed to find new meaning and faced a grave loss of face and stature.

While from the outside academia can be viewed as genteel, for those who've been involved in the politics of being a tenured professor, academia can be a brutal life of publish or perish, with collecting students in large classes taught by TA's a necessary evil to justify a budget, space, control, authority, stature, etc. In an environment where people have to establish their credentials through intellectual or pseudo-intellectual means or accomplishments, even holding one's ground can require great effort. When people have to fight to establish themselves, or maintain their rank and status, or advance in status, there can be great drama and tension.

One goal of a storyteller is to understand the tensions and conflicts and desires that can bubble beneath the surface in characters, and then create the environments and situations where these public persona are stripped aside to reveal what is true. This process is what makes a story different than life, where events and people are diffuse, or situations have outcomes but they aren't what someone wanted or expected.

This dynamic appears in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf as the persona of the characters are stripped away. While the ‘game' the main characters play is ambiguous, the process of creating a situation that gets to a deeper truth about the characters in the play is not.

The three acts of the play are titles Fun and Games, Walpurgisnacht (a European holiday on a night when witches gathered to celebrate), and The Exorcism. These act titles give a road map to the path the play takes.

The play opens with George and Martha returning home from a college party at 2 a.m. He wants her to be quiet, but she insists he name the title of a movie based on a line of dialog. This sets out a central feature of the relationship between this couple, game-playing that becomes biting when Martha says of George, "Don't you know anything?" Status in this relationship is conferred by 'winning' these challenges. But Martha's taunt does raise the question, why does George subject himself to this wife? What status does he get from being with Martha?

George, who is younger than Martha, does get in a cutting return to her taunt, "Well, that [movie] was probably before my time."

These characters know how to hurt each other and aren't afraid to lash out punishment. If this is fun and games, one can only imagine what real cruelty would be. And the play answers that question.

When George refuses to play because he's tired, Martha retaliates that since he's not really doing anything (in his life or at the college), he has no reason to be tired. George fires back about Martha's father, president of the college, and his Saturday night parties, with Martha "braying" at everyone, which zings Martha. This brisk dialog is working in the background details of these two people. This exchange sets out why George is with Martha, his status as a college professor is due, in part, to being married to the college president's daughter, which makes George dependent on Martha for his status.

Martha reveals to the surprised George that they have guests arriving shortly. The guests will turn up at 2 a.m. because of Martha's status as the daughter of the college President. Their arrival will turn what would have been a typical Saturday night of low-key quarreling between Martha and George into something more explosive. There will be an audience for the games George and Martha play, and thus more at stake in terms of who George and Martha are. They'll both want to win this new game.

When George protests guests coming over at 2 a.m, Martha wins this argument by saying that her father asked her to be nice to the new math professor. Martha wins this round, and it reveals something about Martha's hold over George, that keeps his job because of her. When one person is dependent on another for a job of livelihood, there can be tremendous feelings of anger over the dependency. This raises the question, will Martha be able to use this power to win any game she and George play this night? What would George have to do to win? The set up for this plot question for the story is clear and unambiguous.

As the bickering continues, Martha says, "I swear...if you existed, I'd divorce you..." This comment about whether George exists or not foreshadows the game coming up. It's also a way to undercut the status of another person. For example, the way servants can be treated as if they don't exist; or the way African-Americans were often treated in the United States before the Civil Rights movement; or the lack of status held by women in many places in the world. Clashes around status are powerful tools in storytelling.

When the doorbell finally rings announcing the impending arrival of the guests, who will answer the door turns into another verbal brawl. There can be drama about the outcome of any moment in a story. Plays fail when the moments of a story lack dramatic shape.

George is forced to open the door, which is a reflection of his status, but he does so in a way that reveals something unpleasant about Martha to the guests. Score one for George.

One of the new guests is named Honey, and she giggles a lot and says inane things. In a few words, Albee gets across her dramatic truth and her status in life. Nick, her husband, comes across as guarded. As the new professor on campus with Martha's father the president of the college, he has the most to lose if anything goes wrong at this private party and the most to gain in terms of status if he plays his cards right.

George and Martha use their dialog with their guests to continue jousting.

When Martha and Honey leave the room, George starts in with the verbal games with Nick, who turns out to be no fun at all; he's fussy and literal. Nick is a contrast to George, or perhaps a younger version of George before marriage to Martha and a life of servitude.

To keep Nick from fleeing, George turns down the verbal jousting and reveals more about himself, that he's in the history department, but not the history department (a distinction in status). Marriage to Martha has not gotten him to the top of his particular academic heap.

When Nick asks if George and Martha have children, George responds, "That's for me to know and you to find out," foreshadowing the duel at the heart of the play.

When Honey returns and lets it out that Martha is upstairs changing into something more ‘comfortable,' George's reaction suggests her action is taking the evening into an ominous place. Honey confirms that with the announcement to George that she didn't know that he and Martha have a son, which cues George to what a deadly evening this will be.

This is where the ambiguity of the place is fully in place. Do George and Martha have a son, or an imaginary son they've created to use in their verbal jousting? I found the meaning comes down on the side of the son being imaginary, but the play could be played as if the son really existed. But the real issue between George and Martha is over who's the dominant one in this relationship. Martha has, up to this night, won that issue with the trump card of her father being the president of a college. The verbal jousting up until now has been pointed and barbed, but it's soon to go deeper and begin to strip away the facades the characters maintain.

Then Martha returns more...comfortable, Nick is obviously aroused. This raises the question, who will seduce who tonight?

Within a few pages, Nick and Martha are doing a seduction dance within the sub text of their dialog.

Martha then relates a story about hitting George while he was supposed to be training at boxing, and somehow that bollixed his life. As Martha says, "I think it's what colored our whole life. Really I do! It's an excuse, anyway."

As Martha finishes, George appears with a shotgun that he aims at her head. As Nick and Honey verge on hysteria, it turns out to be a toy shotgun, but it gets across the underlying point about George's feelings.

As Honey continues to drink, she keeps bringing the conversation back to George and Martha's son. Martha escalates to relating her expectation that George would become head of the history department, but he didn't make it beyond being a lowly professor, a loss in status for both of them.

The act ends with everyone drunkenly singing, "Who's afraid of Virginia Woolf?"

Martha has opened George's wound in public.

What will he do about it?

To get that answer, the audience has to attend Act Two.

Act Two – Walpurgisnacht

This act opens with Nick and George, with Nick unhappy about the previous scene, and, according to him, George and Martha going at it like "animals."

This act brings the play back to a quiet intensity as George relates a story about a friend who accidentally killed his mother, than his father, then ended up in an asylum. Is this a story? A commentary on George's life? It's ambiguous.

What comes out is that Nick's marriage happened under false pretenses (a hysterical pregnancy) and he's struggling to stay non-involved with George's and Marsha's style of fighting.

Then after a jibe by George it comes out that Nick married Honey for her father's money. Nick's facade is being stripped away, partly by alcohol, partly by the corrosive environment, partly because it was never that far from the surface.

This is what a good story does; it gets to the truth of its characters.

George now considers whether Nick is starting to tell him stories about his life as an attempt to play George's and Martha's game, and whether the stories are true. How would George know? How would the audience know? This idea of ambiguity is seeping into things other than George's and Martha's marriage.

Nick sets out how he'll insinuate himself into the college, bed a few wives and groom the right contacts. He seems to be playing along with George, unaware that there's some real truth about himself here as George suggests Martha could be one of the wives he mounts like a dog.

When Martha and Honey return, George and Martha get into another escalating fight about their ‘son,' this time with George accusing Martha of drunkenly coming on to the boy.

It comes out that George wrote a book about a young man who killed his father and mother and Martha's father wouldn't allow it to be published. Is this a story? George reacts strongly to the story, but what does that mean? Is it a true story, as Martha alleges?

Goaded by Martha, George tries to strangle her. But, again, is his anger real? Or just another game?

Then George suggests it was all a game, and for Nick, another game could be Hump the Hostess. But instead the new game is Get the Guests, and to start it out, George says he wrote a second novel, and the characters are clearly Nick and Honey.

George's novel exposes Nick as vain, weak and nasty. Nick tells George he's going to get him for this. What this 'getting' will be, the audience must wait for the answer.

When Martha protests that George has gone too far, it comes out that from Martha's point of view, she's been whipping George for 23 years to get him to acknowledge that he married Martha exactly because she would emasculate him and give him an excuse to be a failure in life. Martha's answer to George's game, "I'm going to finish you." The tension in the story has just gone up another notch, not because of the ambiguity of the game playing, but because of how straight-forward and on-stage this battle is between George and Martha.

George, "I warned you not to go too far."

Martha, "I'm just beginning."

George accuses Martha of living in a fantasy world, and George intends to have her committed. True? Another feint in their battle for supremacy?

Then, George, "Total war?"

Martha, "Total."

The final gauntlet has been thrown.

At that moment, Nick re-enters the room.

When Martha taunts George that she's entertaining a guest by necking with Nick, George encourages her to continue while he reads a book. It's clear that Martha isn't quite sure what to make of this. That by his own reaction George has changed the rules of the game. Some of the insults about George being a failure aren't having the usual effect.

Martha goes off to join Nick in the kitchen and George is joined by a dreaming Honey. Speaking to Honey, George comes to the realization that Honey is taking birth control pills to ensure she won't get pregnant.

Honey keeps talking about hearing bells in lieu of hearing her husband having sex with Martha in the kitchen, and that triggers a thought in George. That it was a call telling him that his imaginary son is dead, a new wrinkle in the game.

The act ends with George, laughing and crying, rehearsing how he'll tell Martha their son is dead.

How will Martha react?

Will this be the end of the George and Martha as a couple if George's gambit means he's beaten Martha at her own game? That he's finally achieved a higher status?

To find out, the audience needs to return for the final act.

Exorcism.

Act Three – Exorcism

Act Three begins with Martha making her appearance in the deserted living room.

When Nick shows up, Martha is sure to let him know he has dandy potential, but at the necessary moment he's been a flop, which sets off the masculine Nick.

Martha reveals to Nick that George does make her happy with his ability to keep up with her games. But the audience knows this lull cannot last. One aspect of good storytelling is the audience knowing more than a character about what's going to happen next. The audience knows what George intends to spring on Martha.

As George banters with Nick and Martha he says, "Truth and illusion. Who knows the difference?" This line restates what's been going on all night.

Sending Nick out to get Honey, George announces, "One more game."

George goads a tired Martha into playing the final game. S she joins him in reciting the details of the son's birth.

Martha wants to end the game with the son going off to college, but George will not stop. He begins to speak the truth about the relationship between Martha and her father, that her father can't stand her, that she needed a son to use as a weapon against her father. This is cutting Martha to the quick in the same way she's been cutting at George all their married life. He is stripping away the facade of her life, that she has power because of her father, but it's only an illusion of power because her father hates her, just as Honey and Nick have the illusion of a marriage more frail then George and Martha because they've both accepted their artificial persona as a means to stay together in some kind of peace.

Martha wants to stop, but George continues on to relate the telegram about the death of their son that afternoon. George continues to goad Martha about this until she spits in his face.

Then, as Martha realizes that George has won the game, "It will be dawn soon. I think the party's over."

Nick and Honey finally leave.

Martha realizes it will be just her and George now, without a son.

The play ends with George chanting, "Who's afraid of Virginia Woolf?"

And Martha's reply, "I...am...George. I...am...."

Final Thoughts

This play demonstrates the power and intensity and drama that can be unleashed when the persona people have created are exposed. While ambiguity drives the action in the second half of the play, the set up for the story began with the question, on this night who would win the games played by George and Martha? Setting up a simple question and moving dramatically toward an answer gives a story meaning and purpose while deeper issues can be explored, the life of academia, the rise of science as a means to understand the future of culture and society, marriage in the early 60's stripped of niceties.

While Nick and Honey will probably slip back behind their facades and nurse their grudges and irritations and fantasies, something happened between George and Martha, something shifted in their relationship. Will they continue together as a couple, or was this just another night of fun and games?.

Great storytelling is about getting to the deeper truths of a story's characters, and Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf shows how it can be done.

To read more essays about plays, movies, and novels, visit Essays on the Craft of Dramatic Writing.

Structure of The Iceman Cometh, a play by Eugene O'Neill

The Iceman Cometh by Eugene O'Neill is a brilliant play that explores a very painful emotional terrain: what people tell themselves to get through another day. Although the characters in this play are singularly broken humans, their clinging to a dignity that exists in a better tomorrow always one day away speaks profoundly to how many people get through their lives.

This review explores how O'Neill constructed his play, using the Vintage paperback edition. Page numbers correspond to that version of the play.

The Review

The play opens in a back room of Harry Hope's saloon. It is the last stop before utter destitution and death for a number of men and women. Harry, the owner, is an irascible alcoholic who warmly tolerates a collection of borders who don't pay for their rooms and live for the free drinks he offers. Both of his bartenders double as pimps, but the bartenders, Rocky and Chuck, claim only to be hard-working men protecting "tarts," the women who work as prostitutes and turn over their money to them.

The play opens with Rocky offering a drink of Harry's rotgut whiskey to Larry, the philosopher in residence. Rocky, speaking about Harry's most recent tirade about no free drinks,

"Not a damned drink on the house," he tells me, "and all dese bums got to pay up deir rent. Beginnin' tomorrow," he says.

Larry,

I'll gladly pay up--tomorrow. And I know my fellow inmates will promise the same. They've all a touching credulity concerning tomorrows."

Larry, in his next exchange with Rocky,

"The lie of the pipe dream is what gives life to the whole misbegotten mad lot of us, drunk or sober."

What Larry refers to here goes to the heart of these characters -- how they manage to get by day to day by lying to themselves about who they are and the promise the future holds for them. It also goes directly to the heart of setting up what's going to be the story's story question:

Can Hickey, expected soon to celebrate Harry's birthday, compel these men to give up their pipe dreams and admit they'd been lying to themselves about who they are?

Because this issue is at the heart of his story, O'Neill sets it up as soon as the play opens, i.e., the opening doesn't revolve simply around introducing characters, it revolves around setting out the story's promise.

In terms of structure, there is a second point that should be noted. By beginning with most of the characters on stage unconscious, O'Neill found a way to introduce them through Rocky and Larry. This makes identifying each character and their issue and how they tie into the story's overall promise easier to follow. We know from our introduction to Rocky and Larry, then, that this will be a story about pipe dreams, that Rocky cheerfully is cocooned inside his, and that Larry sees himself as a man who's given up his particular pipe dream, unlike the others. The dramatic question this sets up,

What will it take to pry Rocky and Larry from their pipe dreams? The author sets up this question without directly stating it as a question.

Larry again,

"I took a seat in the grandstand of philosophical detachment to fall asleep (wait for death) observing the cannibals do their death dance."

Story note, O'Neill doesn't use dialogue to allude to the kind of man Larry is. He doesn't use dialogue to make a veiled reference to it. He doesn't use dialogue to create a symbol or a metaphor about Larry. He uses dialogue to make who and what Larry is stand out in bold relief. That quickly orients the audience to what's at stake for Larry's character. Like many great writers, O'Neill cuts to the chase.

The play continues with another character coming conscious for just a few moments to accuse Rocky of owning "slave girls." This gives Larry an opening to get another drink by assuaging Rocky that he's a bartender, not a pimp. It also sets up the expected arrival of Hickey, a traveling salesman due for a drunken binge to celebrate Harry's birthday. Again, the continuing measured pace that introduces characters and issues in a way that moves the story forward. Since Hickey is the one who will challenge the others about their pipe dreams, his introduction comes ahead of introducing the characters already on stage but unconscious.

The play continues with its measured, brisk introduction of characters, setting out each character's particular pipe dream. Introduced through Joe, a denizen of the bar, is that a young man, Parrit, has arrived and taken a room above the bar. Larry knows Parrit from his days in the leftist movement, but denies he's any kind of friend. He then reveals he long ago was one of Parrit's mother's lovers, and she is a radical arrested recently for a bombing that killed several people. When Rocky asks Larry for more information, Larry responds,

"I'm telling you I don't know and I don't want to know. To hell with the Movement and all connected with it! I'm out of it, and everything else, and damned glad to be."

Parrit then makes an appearance and lies about the fact he has money.

Story note, Parrit's arrival begins to create dramatic pressure around Larry getting by with his pipe dream of being in the grandstands of life. O'Neill doesn't wait for the end of his introduction of the story's characters to begin escalating the story's drama around this question of what it will take to compel Larry to give up his pipe dream.

Parrit asks Larry to explain what kind of place Harry's saloon is. This explanation offers the audience background information about the bar, its denizen, and Hickey.

Story note, O'Neill sets his story strongly into motion first, then offers background information. Struggling writers invert the process, offering background information, character detail and setting up their plot, only then beginning their story.

Parrit then tells Larry how grateful he is that he's found Larry, that Larry is someone who'll understand. When Larry asks, "understand what?" Parrit becomes evasive. The audience is cued that there's an issue here for Parrit, but it will come out in a later revelation.

Story note, Parrit is designed to be a character who forces Larry to see that he's not in the grandstands of life, that that's his pipe dream. That's Parrit's dramatic purpose in the play. Hence, he is on the scene quite quickly after Larry's introduction.

Larry and Parrit continue to talk about their lives. Larry also offers Parrit some background information about the other men passed out around the barroom. Again, O`Neill keeps to a measured pace of introducing his story and his characters in a way that it's easy to assimilate who they are.

The play continues as characters drift out of hangovers to consciousness. Each talks about their life in a way that sets out their particular pipe dream.

When Rocky's two girls arrive, it's just in time for many of the other denizens in the bar to drift back to sleep. A natural way to turn over the stage to the new players to introduce them and their issues. Like the men, the women live in their pipe dreams. Pearl, one of Rocky's girls, accidentally refers to him as a "pimp," which threatens to set off Rocky, but the girls live and let live. Rocky's not a pimp, they're "tarts," not prostitutes.

Chuck and Cora, whose pipe dream is marriage and a farm in "Joisey," are the next denizens to arrive. They also bring news. They've seen Hickey, and he can be expected shortly. With the news of Hickey's imminent arrival, everyone starts coming to. Hickey's arrival means the beginning of a week-long bender.

Story note, now that O'Neill has set his story into motion and introduced his characters, he quickly brings Hickey onto the scene.

Hickey comes in to a rousing greeting that quickly turns to incredulity when he announces he no longer drinks. The reason, according to Hickey, is he's finally killed the pipe dream that has ruled his life and for the first time has found real peace. Hickey soon lets on that his purpose in coming to see Harry and the others is to help them get over their pipe dreams and find the same peace he's discovered. The others are incredulous, unsure, uneasy.

When Larry challenges Hickey, Parrit joins in with Hickey in protesting that Larry also lives a pipe dream, one that he's in denial about.

Hickey falls asleep, and one of the denizens comes up with a story that seems to explain Hickey's odd behavior. It lightens the moment, until Act One ends with Hickey waking long enough to say,

"...all I want is to see you happy."

Act One ends with the others looking uneasily at Hickey.

All the issues of this story have been put into play in this first act and it ends on a note designed to powerfully pull the story's audience back.

What the story itself is about -- how and why people manage to live in denial being challenged by Hickey -- is fully into play. What's left open as a question is what exactly Hickey plans to do to bring people out of their denial. This is a major issue because struggling storytellers withhold what their story's about to create a revelation to climax each act of their play. O`Neill, on the other hand, sets out quite concretely what his story's about. What's set out to create a revelation is what exactly Hickey intends to do to bring this "peace" he's discovered to the others. It's an escalation of the drama around the course and outcome of the story, not a late revelation about the dramatic purpose of the story. It's an escalation because these particular characters have all found a measure of "peace" through clinging to their particular pipe dreams, and Hickey threatens that.

Act Two

Act Two opens with the surly denizens of the bar preparing for Harry's birthday party with a large cake and flowers bought by Hickey. The denizens are surly because Hickey has spent the day going around pushing them to actually act on their pipe dreams and find out who they are.

Story note, O`Neill leaves out Hickey going around to everyone and pointing out to them their true situation in life because the play isn't about that, it's about what happens when people are forced to actually resolve the lies -- the pipe dreams -- they created to get by. That's the dramatic purpose of the second act, so that's where it opens with these characters, when they are in the heat of the moment of confronting who they really are, not the build-up to that moment.

As each of the bar's denizens protest they really are going to go out the next day and fulfill their pipe dreams, the others derisively point out the absurdity of what they're talking about, while still maintaining that they themselves will follow through on their pipe dreams. It's a whole series of angry, evocative, sharp exchanges that highlight in bold relief just how desperate these people are to live in the denial that supports their lives.

Several times the bars denizens come to near blows as they each reveal the raw wounds Hickey's prodding has brought to the surface. It's Larry who points out that Hickey himself seems afraid of something, something he's not talking about. This is good plot work that foreshadows a later element of the play.

Story note, the exchanges that open Act Two don't revolve around setting up a revelation about Hickey's secret. That is merely another element to the story. It would skew the work if the exchanges revolved only around setting up a revelation for later in the story. Instead, the revelation is the depth to which these people cling to their denial. That's the dramatic purpose of the second act.

Hickey continues to insist that he's going to help Larry and the others find peace. Larry and Hickey spar about this "peace" he's bringing everyone until Parrit arrives. To Hickey's calculations, Parrit is the one who will force Larry to make a value judgment that shows Larry is not sitting in the grandstands of life at all.

Story note, because Larry speaks a voice of reason amidst the chaos, he becomes a kind of everyman. Through Larry, O'Neill sets out to prove that it's not only alcoholics and the dispossessed who lie to themselves; it's a condition that afflicts much of humanity.

Parrit goads Larry unmercifully, slowly dragging out of Larry his condemnation of Parrit's action in setting up his mother to go to prison. It turns out that Hickey has all the denizens of the bar turning on each other to point out everyone else's pipe dreams, or their fear of what will happen to them if Harry drops his pipe dream about not being afraid to leave the saloon.

Harry's birthday party, orchestrated by Hickey, turns into a disaster of bad feeling.

Story note, what was set up to be met with so much anticipation by the denizens of the bar -- Hickey's arrival and the blowout for Harry's party -- has turned to ashes in their mouths. A great example of foreshadowing.

Hickey takes the floor and swings into a long speech about the method behind his madness in trying to bring his friends to give up on their pipe dreams. Larry calls him on the fact that since Hickey always made jokes about the Iceman having sex with his beloved wife, perhaps that's what has brought on Hickey's odd behavior. Hickey feels forced to reveal a truth he's withheld, that his wife is quite recently deceased. At first the others offer Hickey their sympathy, but the act ends with Hickey replying,

"But now she is at peace like she always wanted to be. So why should I feel sad? She wouldn't want me to feel sad. Why, all that Evelyn ever wanted out of life was to make me happy."

This throws the denizens of the bar into a state of bewildered confusion and is the end of Act Two.

Story note, this is a story about the kind of denial people use to get by in life. The plot of the story revolves around Hickey showing up determined to bring everyone out of denial. The story's dramatic purpose has been clearly and potently set up around this issue of why people need to be in denial, as presented through Larry. In this way, the information about the death of Hickey's wife serves as both a revelation for the story's plot while it also advances the story along its story line.

In this second act O'Neill has clearly escalated the dramatic pressure around every character. The story has advanced from characters cheerfully living in denial to characters snarling at each other like cornered animals as they confront facing their pipe dreams.

Act Three

This act opens with Parrit continuing to force his life and his issue about what to do to resolve his guilt about betraying his mother onto Larry. Larry gives ground but can seemingly find no way to stop Parrit from intermeshing his life with Larry's.

For the others in the bar, this act revolves around their being compelled by Hickey to confront their pipe dreams. Harry, the owner of the saloon, grudgingly prepares to go for that walk around the neighborhood he hasn't taken in the twenty years since his wife died. Everyone sullenly and with vicious hangovers goes out to fulfill their pipe dreams. But as soon as Hickey gets Harry out the door, he admits to Rocky the bartender,

"Of course he's coming back. Speaking of Harry fearfully returning to the bar). So are all the others. By tonight they'll all be here again. You dumbbell, that's the whole point."

When Harry returns to the bar with a report of a phantom automobile that almost ran him over, Hickey responds,

"Now, now Governor. Don't be foolish. You've faced the test and come through. You've rid yourself of all that nagging dream stuff now. You know you can't believe it any more."

Story point, Hickey believes that if he can bring each denizen of the bar out of denial about their particular pipe dreams, they'll find this peace he's promised.

But instead of finding peace, Harry says,

"Stay passed out, that's the right dope. There aren't any cool willow trees--except you grow your own in a bottle."

Larry taunts Hickey about this "peace" he's brought to Harry, but Hickey can't let go of the idea that at some point soon, Harry will be at peace with himself. Instead, Harry finds a new problem in his life: his rotgut booze no longer seems to have any effect. He drinks, but can't get drunk. He blames the effect on Hickey.

Story note, a great twist that Hickey has not only failed to bring peace, he's taken away what peace Harry could find in a bottle. Great story movement, this confounding of the confident Hickey's expectations.

It comes out that Hickey's wife was murdered. And now Larry fears that the real truth will come out, that Hickey murdered her. Parrit, beside Larry, finally admits that he sold out his mother to the authorities. The Third Act ends with a bewildered Hickey trying to understand why Harry has not yet found the peace Hickey has found with the death of his wife.

Story note, the looming note about the truth of how Hickey's wife died ends the act on a powerful note that literally compels the return of the story's audience.

**********************

The full review of The Iceman Cometh can now be downloaded from Smashwords for .99 as a PDF, Kindle, or html. The review is part of a collection that includes reviews of Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, The Heidi Chronicles, and Death of a Salesman.

To view more of my structure reviews of plays, movies, and novels, visit my website at http://www.storyispromise.com/">Essays on the Craft of Dramatic Writing

Review of 'night, Mother, a play by Marsha Norman

`night, Mother by Marsha Norman is a brilliant play.

This review explores its structure.

Briefly, `night, Mother is a play one act with two characters on the stage, Jessie Cates, late thirties to early forties, who lives with her mother, Thelma. The play opens with Jessie asking her mother where a particular gun is kept. She finds it with Thelma's help. As she cleans the gun, she quietly announces she's going to be killing herself at the end of the evening. Jessie's announcement sets off a fierce struggle between mother and daughter, with Thelma using every strategy she can conceive of to talk Jessie out of her plan. Thelma becomes so desperate, she even resorts to telling Jessie the truth about a number of issues that have affected her life.

This play is brilliant in every way, characters, dialogue, pacing. The reason I've included it in this work book is because it illustrates a central facet about the nature of what creates drama in a story: the anticipation of an outcome for a dramatic issue. In this case, that means that Thelma, and the story's audience, learns early on of Jessie's plans. And because of learning Jessie's plans, both Thelma and the story's audience are thrust deep into the heart of this story's story question:

Will Jessie really kill herself, or can Thelma find a way to stop her?

What's at stake in this story is made chillingly clear:

Jessie's going to kill herself. Can Thelma talk her out of it?

Of all the many issues that bedevil the inexperienced writer, one of the more damaging is the myth that one creates drama by withholding information and revealing it piecemeal. In reality, one creates drama by setting up a situation with an outcome in doubt and then resolving that issue in a fulfilling way. The territory that 'night, Mother explores is that the more reasons Thelma tries to grasp to convince Jessie not to kill herself, the more she reaffirms Jessie's belief that her life is useless and it's simply better to end her suffering with a clear mind.

By setting up her story question so concretely, the author uses the situation to compel Thelma into what is for her completely unexplored territory: her own heart. What follows will be a review of the play's structure that makes concrete this journey that Thelma takes to a dark, bitter illumination.

`night, Mother

The play opens on what appears to be a typical Saturday night for Jessie and Thelma. Thelma finds the last snowball -- some junk food -- in the fridge, Jessie asks some black plastic bags. It's on their schedule that Jessie will give Thelma a manicure. Then on page 7 (Noonday Press edition of the play), Jessie asks,

"Where's Daddy's gun?"

Life for Jessie and Thelma is such a dull routine, Thelma doesn't even pause to consider the request odd. She evens helps Jessie figure out where the gun is kept. It's not until page 9 that Thelma asks,

"What do you want the gun for, Jess?"

"Protection," answers Jessie.

Story note, with the introduction of Jessie's question about the location of the gun, the author begins setting the hook for her story question.

Thelma at first considers that she and Jessie have nothing to steal, and what was valuable was stolen by Jessie's son, Ricky.

Thelma,

"I mean, I don't even want what we got, Jessie."

Story note, this conversation about what Jessie might be seeking protection from provides an entry point into other characters in her life, principally Ricky at the moment.

Jessie begins cleaning the gun, and by page 12, the stage directions set out that Thelma is now concerned about it.

Jessie,

"The gun is for me."

Thelma,

"Well, you can have it if you want. When I die, you'll get it anyway."

Jessie,

"I'm going to kill myself, Mama."

Story note, the "hook" of this story has just been set.

At first Thelma upbraids Jessie for her bad "joke," but Jessie patiently insists she's serious. Thelma then insists the gun won't work, the bullets are fifteen years old. Jessie tells her that Dawson, her brother, told her where to buy new bullets. As Jessie describes Dawson's enthusiasm to tell her about bullets, the author has found another avenue to introduce a major, if unseen character, Dawson. Thelma threatens to call Dawson, to have him come and take the gun away. This leads Jessie to insist that if Thelma makes the call, she'll kill herself before Dawson can get there, and she and Thelma won't have that last evening alone together.

Jessie,

"I'm through talking, Mama. You're it. No more."

Thelma responds that the likelihood is that Jessie will only shoot off her ear and turn herself into a vegetable. This is an important exchange, because it sets the story on a course of exploring the emotional terrain of both Jessie's life and her life with her mother. And from the moment Jessie made her pronouncement about her impending suicide, everything about the terrain now stands in bold relief.

Thelma continues trying to find something that will give her leverage over Jessie, that Jessie can't use her towels when she kills herself, etc. She then switches tactics, to try and find out why Jessie wants to kill herself. This continues the story's exploration of Jessie's life and her relationship with her mother. All of this minutia is given dramatic weight because of Jessie's promise. Finally Jessie says,

"And I can't do anything either, about my life, to change it, make it better, make me feel better about it. Like it better, make it work. But I can stop it. Shut it down, turn it off like the radio when there's nothing on I want to listen to."

Story note, this is brilliant dialogue, spare, evocative, tightly written. It cuts through to the heart of Jessie's reasons for wanting to die.

In the next series of exchanges, it comes out why a friend of Thelma's refuses to come into her house, because she's seen the death in Jessie's eyes. This is a deeper step into the author using what's at stake for Jessie -- her life or death -- to explore the reality of Jessie's life. For probably the first time ever in their relationship, Thelma begins to speak a deeper truth to Jessie.

This sets up Jessie asking whether her mother ever loved her father. Again, Thelma speaks a truth she's never voiced before. It leads up to a revelation that Thelma suspected that Jessie's father also suffered from the seizures that have plagued Jessie's life. The secrets Thelma has kept hidden spill out in a torrent. That Jessie's father never really went fishing, he's just go sit by a lake in his car. Thelma even starts to get into this new mood, by threatening to not cook again, or do other things. It comes out that Jessie has mentioned Thelma's friend as a way to introduce the friend living with Thelma when Jessie is gone.

In the case of her life with Jessie, this has meant creating an almost impenetrable surface of meaningless chat that only Jessie's impending death has been able to breach.

Next, Jessie and Thelma talk about Jessie's ex-husband, who Thelma conspired to introduce to Jessie. During the marriage, Jessie fell off a horse, and the accident was thought to have led to her seizure disorder. But one of the truths that has come out was that Jessie began having seizures as a child, but Thelma covered it up. It was something she didn't want to think about, so she found a way to simply go on.

Thelma,

"I don't like things to think about. I like things to go on."

As Jessie talks about her former husband, another area of her life comes into stark relief. Again, the author has found a way to use Jessie's impending death to give each revelation about her life a jewel-like quality of clarity.

When it comes out that because of her medication Jessie can now think more clearly, Thelma jumps on that as a reason to live. But for Jessie, the medication had another effect,

"If I'd ever had a year like this, to think straight and all, before now, I'd be gone already."

As the time nears when the "night" will be over, in desperation Thelma tries to find some way to forestall Jessie,

"I didn't tell you things or I married you off to the wrong man or I took you in and let your life get away from you or all of it put together."

But as that final moment of Jessie's life draws near, Thelma becomes calm and pliant. She simply accepts that Jessie will end her life. She repeats back to Jessie her suggestions about what Thelma should say to the people who come to Jessie's funeral.

Jessie goes into her room to do the deed. Thelma collapses and cries out,

"Jessie, child.... Forgive me. (pause) I thought you were mine."

The gunshot answers with a sound like "no."

Thelma, following Jessie's instructions, goes to the phone and calls the home of her son and asks to speak to Dawson.

This is a profoundly moving play. The principle that I want to point out one last time is that it develops its drama not from hiding what's at stake -- Jessie's impending death -- but by setting it out in a way that the storyteller develops drama around the outcome of the question:

Will Jessie kill herself?

It is the nature of drama that one can only have a story if there's a visible, concrete cause to what sets the story into motion. By using words like "visible" and "concrete" I don't mean blunt or obviously. `night, Mother is an example of where something blunt and obvious -- Jessie's impending death -- can give dramatic meaning to mundane events, making some cocoa, eating a caramel apple. The storyteller who fails to set up the issue at the core of their story in a way that it connects with their audience risks assembling words and images that create characters and events to no particular dramatic purpose.

By making what's at stake in a story clear and direct, the storyteller frees themselves to begin the real task that faces every storyteller:

Bringing their audience fully into and involved with the world their characters inhabit and seek to shape.

`night, Mother is a great piece of storytelling and a fine example of the art of storytelling.

More of my reviews that explore story structure are available at http://www.storyispromise.com