By Amanda Marlowe (The Bellman)

I’ve had the good fortune to take several acting classes from the Piven Theatre Workshop. While the classes are are fun and interesting in themselves, I find they also have offered me insight into writing well-constructed and interesting scenes. Here are some of the techniques I’ve learned that apply to writing as well as to acting.

Background Image: Jonathan Cutrer/Flickr (CC-by-nc)

Keep Passing the Energy

A significant part of the Piven technique centers on theater games. Many of these games focus on keeping the energy in the room high, by passing it from person to person, trying to grow it with each pass.

Written scenes also need to keep passing the energy, or they start to feel flat. Have characters in a scene pass the energy between each other as they interact. This will keep the scene immediate and draw in the reader more than just dumping the energy into a single character until it fades, taking the reader’s interest with it. If a scene with multiple characters isn’t working, see if one of the characters is dropping the energy instead of passing it. For instance, if two characters are having a fight, keep the anger flowing between them somehow. An easy way to do this is to alternate the action and dialogue between the two. As they argue back and forth, let the energy grow. Escalate the verbal and physical actions in response to this growing energy. Don’t make the fight so one-sided that one of the participants might as well be out of the scene.

You can also pass energy from action to tension and back again. There is usually a natural point at which the impulse of the action changes. Let the shift grow organically from what is happening in the story. Don’t drop energy if the action slows. Instead, shift the energy into internal tension rather than external action. This is another way to keep the energy flowing and keep the reader engaged in the story. Consider our arguing couple. Perhaps one of the participants is yelling, and the other is sitting there not saying anything. That doesn’t mean they aren’t reacting. Think about how this situation might look on a stage. The person who is not responding could be fidgeting, deliberately hiding behind a newspaper, tapping a foot. Let your character do that sort of thing too, and grow the tension. An actor isn’t just standing frozen if he or she doesn’t have any lines. Even if there is little or no action, there is always some kind of interaction.

Interrupted Destination

When you are writing a scene with more than one character, you are probably focusing on just one of the characters in the scene. This is usually the scene’s point of view character or the main character of the story. This character has a set goal and encounters setbacks, and overcomes obstacles present by the other characters. But what about the secondary characters in the scene? Their goals and setbacks are not usually very well defined. How can you round out their actions?

One of the techniques I learned in scene study was the idea of interrupted destination. If you don’t have a clear action goal determined by the plot, find one. But make it one that is constantly interrupted by what is going on. For example, the scene may be one in which you are having an argument with another character. You set yourself a goal of putting on your coat and walking out the door. But each time you start to make progress with this, the argument gets in the way. You may only make it half-way to the closet, or end up with your arm through one sleeve, or, quite possibly, manage to open the door. It doesn’t matter that you don’t succeed—having the goal gives your character an immediacy that he or she wouldn’t otherwise have just standing there screaming at someone else.

The idea of interrupted destination can be used to add a lot of depth to your secondary characters. Think of each character as an individual actor in a play. Even if they only have bit parts, they need to do something other than just stand and speak lines. They don’t need to have a complex goal for the scene, but if each one has some action they want to achieve, and they are interrupted and interrupt each other, the scene will take on an amazing richness. Your secondary characters will also take on additional depth. You can also use the interrupted destination technique to give a major character a physical goal in a scene where the major goals are internal.

Staying in the Moment

When you have memorized lines that you recite multiple times, it becomes very easy to only act, and never react. You know someone is going to make you angry, so you act angry. You know someone will surprise you, so you act surprised. It’s easy to just say and behave the way you know you are supposed to rather than reacting to what is going on. Most people do this with conversations, too—rather than listening to what is being said, most people are thinking ahead to what they want to say. But if you allow your character to be in the moment, instead of anticipating what is ahead, suprising things can happen, and you can build a more genuine interaction.

This applies to writing as well. Your character needs to react as well as act. Your character needs to genuinely respond rather than always anticipating.

Good scene structure stays in the moment. A well-structured story alternates between doing and responding. Stories aren’t just a string of scenes. They are an alternating strings of scenes and sequels. The scene is the action, the sequel the reaction.

A good scene has the following structure:

• Goal—What the main character wants to achieve.
• Conflict—The obstacles the main character must overcome to reach the goal
• Disaster—The character fails to reach the goal.

For example, the main character wants to avoid an argument by putting on her coat and leaving before her husband notices (goal). Her husband comes in, and asks where she is going (start of conflict). She doesn’t respond, and continues putting on her coat. Her husband starts to argue, then yell at her. Finally, he tells her if she leaves, she can’t come back (disaster).

Then the character reacts to the disaster in the sequel. The structure of the sequel is:

• Reaction—This is what keeps things immediate. The character has an emotional reaction to the failure before taking further action.
• Dilemma—The character faces some tough choices because of the failure. Have the character react genuinely to the situation, and work through the options.
• Decision—None of the choices are ideal, but the character has to go with one of them anyway. Time to decide. And that leads the character to a new goal, and a new scene.

In the sequel to the argument scene, the wife is shocked (reaction). She has to decide if she will still leave, or stay and participate in the argument she is trying to avoid (dilemma). She finishes putting on her coat and walks out (decision).

Even on a smaller scale, the character still has to react to what is going on. There is nothing more boring than a play where it feels like the actors are reciting their lines in a set way, regardless of what other actors are doing. Shake up things for your characters so they can’t anticipate ahead of the action. Keep your characters in the moment. Foist an external event on your characters and see how they react first. Then have them act on that reaction.

The “What’s Between”

Another scene study concept that is useful to look at from a writing perspective is something called the “what’s between.” This is, in essence, an actor’s version of “show, don’t tell.” The idea is to act the scene with a hidden tension in it. There’s some secret the actors know that they aren’t sharing, and it comes out in the tension of the interaction. Think about the hidden things in your story whenever two characters interact, and see how you can use them to add tension and energy. For example, suppose you have a father meeting a son for the first time. The mother has agreed to this meeting on the condition the father does not reveal the truth. In what ways would the father act differently under these conditions than he might otherwise? In what ways does the strain of the secrecy come out in the dialogue? In the father’s actions? What tension does the son pick up on? What tension does he miss entirely? Thinking in this way, exploring the “what’s between” in your story and how you can use it to build tension and character, will add that extra dimension and depth to your scenes.

There’s a lot to be learned by studying good actors and good acting techniques. Next time you watch your favorite TV show or movie, see if you can pick up other ideas for enriching your writing.