A Very Brief Introduction to Lajos Egri's "The Art of Dramatic Writing"

by Roger Carbol

A Brief Outline

Be sure to formulate a premise.

Your next step will be to choose the pivotal character, who will force the conflict.

The next step will be to line up the other characters. But these characters have to be orchestrated.

The unity of opposites must be binding.

Be careful to select the correct point of attack. It must be the turning point in the life of one or more of your characters.

No conflict can rise without perpetual exposition, which is transition.

Rising conflict, the product of exposition and transition, will ensure growth.

Characters who are in conflict will go from one pole to another -- like hate to love -- which will create crisis.

If growth continues in a steady rise, climax will follow crisis.

The aftermath of climax is the conclusion.

Premise

Everything has a purpose, or premise.

Different words for the premise include: theme, thesis, root idea, central idea, goal, aim, driving force, subject, purpose, plan, plot, basic emotion.

Every good premise is composed of three parts, each of which is essential to a good play. A premise has to contain: character, conflict, and resolution. Let us examine "Frugality leads to waste." The first part of this premise suggests character -- a frugal character. The second part,"leads to" suggests conflict, and the third part, "waste" suggests the end of the play.

If you have a clear-cut premise, almost automatically a synopsis unrolls itself.

Only when the author champions one side of the issue does the premise spring to life. We, the readers or spectators of your play, do not necessarily agree with your conviction. Through your play you must therefore prove to us the validity of your contention. You should not write anything you do not believe. The premise should be a conviction of your own, so that you may prove it wholeheartedly.

It is idiotic to go about hunting for a premise, since, as we have pointed out, it should be a conviction of yours. You know what your own convictions are. Look them over.

No one premise is necessarily a universal truth. Poverty doesn't always lead to crime, but if you've chosen this premise, it does in your case. The same principle governs all premises.

The premise is a tyrant who permits you to go only one way -- the way of absolute proof. You know, or should know, that every line of your play, every move your characters make, must further the premise. Each character must feel, intensely, that the action dictated by the premise is the only action possible.

Sample Premises:

• Romeo and Juliet: Great love defies even death.
• King Lear: Blind trust leads to destruction.
• Macbeth: Ruthless ambition leads to its own destruction.
• Othello: Jealousy destroys itself and the object of its love.

Character

Every object has three dimensions: depth, height, width. Human beings have an additional three dimensions: physiology, sociology, psychology. A character is the sum total of his physical make-up and the influences his environment exerts upon him.

A character stands revealed through conflict; conflict begins with a decision; a decision is made because of the premise of your play. The character's decision necessarily sets in motion another decision, from his adversary. And it is these decisions, one resulting from the other, which propel the play to its ultimate destination: the proving of the premise.

"Growth" is a character's reaction to a conflict in which he is involved. A character can grow through making the correct move, as well as the incorrect one -- but he must grow, if he is a real character. If a character in a short story, novel, or play occupies the same position at the end as the one he did at the beginning, that story, novel, or play is bad. Every character a dramatist presents must have within it the seeds of its future development.

The dramatist needs not only characters who are willing to put up a fight for their convictions. He needs characters who have the strength, the stamina, to carry this fight to its logical conclusion. Go through all great dramas and you will find that the characters in them force the issue in question until they are beaten or reach their goal.

The truly weak character is the person who will not fight because the pressure is not strong enough. But there is no character who would not fight back under the right circumstances. If he is weak and unresisting, it is because the author has not found the psychological moment when he is not only ready, but eager to fight. The point of attack was miscalculated. Suffice it to say here that every living creature is capable of doing anything, if the conditions around him are strong enough.

If we know that a character embodies in himself not only his environment, but his heredity, his likes and dislikes, even the climate of the town where he was born, we do not find it hard to think of situations. The situations are inherent in the character. You don't need to think about situations. This militant character creates his own situations.

It is pointless to write about a person who doesn't know what he wants, or wants something only halfheartedly. Whenever you have a fully rounded character who wants something very badly, you have a play.

The Pivotal Character, or The Protagonist

The pivotal character is the protagonist. The protagonist is the one who takes the lead in any movement or cause. Anyone who opposes the protagonist is an opponent or antagonist.

In Othello, Iago (the pivotal character) is a man of action.

A pivotal character must not merely desire something. He must want it so badly that he will destroy or be destroyed in the effort to attain his goal. A good pivotal character must have something very vital at stake. A pivotal character is necessarily aggressive, uncompromising, even ruthless.

The growth of a pivotal character cannot be as extensive as that of the other characters. For instance,the other characters might go from hate to love or from love to hate, but not the pivotal character, because when your play starts the pivotal character is already suspicious or planning to kill. The growth of the pivotal character is much less than that of the other characters for the simple reason that he has reached a decision before the story starts. He is the one who forces the others to grow.

The Antagonist

Anyone who opposes a pivotal character necessarily becomes the opponent or antagonist. The antagonist is the one who holds back the ruthlessly onrushing protagonist. He is the one against whom the ruthless character exerts all his strength, all his cunning, all the resources of his inventive power.

The antagonist in any play is necessarily as strong and, in time, as ruthless as the pivotal character. A fight is interesting only if the fighters are evenly matched. The antagonist must be as strong as the protagonist.

Iago, in Othello, is the ruthless, conniving protagonist. Othello is the antagonist.

Orchestration

When you are ready to select characters for your play, be careful to orchestrate them right. If all the characters are the same type -- for instance, if all of them are bullies -- it will be like an orchestra of nothing but drums. The difficulty starts when the dramatist chooses people of the same type and tries to generate conflict between them. Contrast must be inherent in character.

Orchestration demands well-defined and uncompromising characters in opposition, moving from one pole toward another through conflict.

Different orchestration is necessary for different movements. But there must be orchestration -- well-defined, strong, uncompromising characters in conflict commensurate to the movement of the play.

Conflict is sustained through growth. Without growth you'll lose whatever contrast you had at the beginning of the play. The absence of growth signals the lack of conflict; and the lack of conflict indicates that your characters were not well orchestrated.

Lack of conflict is a dead give-away that your characters are badly orchestrated. They are not militant; they do not have unity of opposites, and there is no uncompromising pivotal character in your composition. If all these are missing, then you have no unified work -- just an accumulation of words.

Unity of Opposites

The real unity of opposites is one in which compromise is impossible. The unity between opposites must be so strong that the deadlock can be broken only if one of the adversaries or both are exhausted, beaten, or annihilated completely at the end.

The unity of opposites can be broken only if a trait or dominant quality in one or more characters is fundamentally changed. In a real unity of opposites, compromise is impossible.

Conflict

Every rising conflict should be foreshadowed first by the determined forces lined up against each other. There is one thing we wish to emphasize here: all the conflicts within the big, major conflict will be crystallized in the premise of the play.

There are more complex forms of conflict, but they all rise on this simple basis: attack and counterattack. The counterattack must be stronger than the attack in order that the conflict may not be static.

We see real, rising conflict when the antagonists are evenly matched.

There is no doubt that conflict grows out of character. The intensity of the conflict will be determined by the strength of will of the three-dimensional individual who is the protagonist. You cannot expect a rising conflict from a man who wants nothing or does not know what he wants.

Only conflict can generate more conflict, and the first conflict comes from a conscious will striving to achieve a goal which was determined by the premise of the play.

A play can have only one major premise, but each character has his own premise which clashes with the others.

If you know your character has to travel from one pole to another, you are in an advantageous position to see that he or she grows at a steady rate. You are not fumbling around; instead, your characters have a destination and they fight every inch of the way to reach it. If you wish to create jumping conflict, you have only to force the characters into action which is alien to them.

Real characters must be given a chance to reveal themselves, and we must be given a chance to observe the significant changes which take place in them.

Whenever a conflict lags, rises jerkily, stops, or jumps, look to your premise. Is it clear cut? Is it active? Remedy any fault here,and then turn to your characters. Perhaps your protagonist is too weak to carry the burden of the play (bad orchestration). Perhaps some of your characters are not growing constantly. Don't forget that staticness is the direct result of a static character who cannot make up his mind. And don't forget that he may be static because he is not tridimensional. The genuine rising conflict is the product of characters who are well rounded in terms of the premise. Every action of such a character will be understandable and dramatic to the audience.

Rising conflict is the result of a clear-cut premise and well-orchestrated, three-dimensional characters, among whom unity is strongly established. Tension can be achieved through uncompromising characters in a death struggle.

The premise should show the goal, and the characters should be driven to this goal. Such iron-willed characters, driven by a well-understood and clearly defined premise, cannot help but lift the play to the highest pitch.

In conflict we are forced to reveal ourselves. It seems that self-revelation of others or ourselves holds a fatal fascination for everyone.

Exposition, or Transition

The small conflicts, which we call "transition," lead the character from one state of mind to another, until he is compelled to make a decision. There are small, almost inperceptible movements in every conflict -- transitions -- which determine the type of rising conflict you will employ.

In a play, each conflict causes the one after it. Each is more intense than the one before. The play moves, propelled by the conflict created by the characters in their desire to reach their goal: the proof of the premise.

Your character is always involved in vital action, and action, any kind of action (conflict), is exposition of a character. This is transition: we are never, for any two successive moments, the same.

Transition is the element which keeps the play moving without any breaks, jumps, or gaps.

Foreshadowing

Set any two fanatics or groups against each other and you will foreshadow conflict of breathtaking intensity.

Foreshadowing is really promising; in our case, conflict. Foreshadowing conflict is not conflict yet, but we are eagerly waiting for the fulfillment of the promise of it.

Foreshadowing conflict is tension in theatrical parlance.

We are interested in witnessing the things happening to those who are forced to reveal their true characters under the stress of conflict. Both sides are on the verge of losing or winning everything. The very determined set-up between these people creates tension, which, in our lingo foreshadows conflict.

Point of Attack

Even if a person knows what he wants, but has no internal and external necessity to achieve this desire immediately, that character will be a liability to your play.

A play might start exactly at the point where a conflict will lead up to a crisis. A play might start at a point where at least one character has reached a turning point in his life. A play might start with a decision which will precipitate conflict. A good point of attack is where something vital is at stake at the very beginning of a play.

The curtain rises when at least one character has reached a turning point in his life. We must start a play at a point of decision, because that is the point at which the conflict starts and the characters are given a chance to expose themselves and the premise.

Good orchestration and unity of opposites ensure conflict; the point of attack starts conflict.

It is bad playwriting first to marshal your evidences, drawing in the background, creating an atmosphere, before you begin the conflict. Whatever your premise, whatever the make-up of your characters, the first line spoken should start the conflict and the inevitable drive toward the proving of the premise.

An author must find a character who wants something so desperately that he can't wait any longer. His needs are immediate.

Crisis, Climax, Resolution

Crisis: a state of things in which a decisive change one way or the other is impending.

In every act, crisis, climax, and resolution follow each other as day follows night. A single scene contains the exposition of premise for that particular scene, exposition of character, conflict, transition, crisis, climax, and conclusion.

A man steals: conflict. He is pursued: rising conflict. He is caught: crisis. He is condemned by the court: climax. Transferring him to prison is the conclusion.

A novel, play, or any type of writing, really is a crisis from beginning to end growing to its necessary conclusion.

Miscellaneous Wisdom

The moment you start to worry about the opinion the managers will have of your play, you are lost. If you have a deep-rooted conviction, write it, regardless of what the public and the managers think. Everything is timely if it is well written.

If you are interested not in writing good plays, but in making money quickly, there's no hope for you. Not only won't you write a good play; you won't make any money. Don't write for the producers or for the public. Write for yourself.

Do not forget that most plays which become successful are not terrible.

We have seen mediocre men outstrip geniuses who were too lazy to learn and to work. Yet we must not forget one important attribute of the genius: an infinite capacity for taking pains in the field where his interest lies. The majority of braggarts spend too much time boasting to have much left for painstaking work.

Knowledge of the exact sciences does not exclude imagination, taste, grace in actual execution.

A play is not an imitation of life, but the essence of life. Art is not the mirror of life, but the essence of life.

If you write about love, you should write about great love. If you write about ambition, it should be ruthless ambition. If you choose affection, it should be possessive affection. They generate conflict.

We are often astonished at how glibly people decide to be writers or playwrights. It takes about three years of apprenticeship to make a good shoemaker; the same is true of carpentry or any other skill. Why should playwriting -- one of the hardest professions in the world -- be acquired overnight, without serious study?

Example character traits: affection, abusiveness, arrogance, avarice, accuracy, awkwardness, brazenness, bragging, craftiness, confusion, cunning, conceit, contemptuousness, cleverness, clumsiness, curiosity, cowardice, cruelty, dignity, dishonesty, dissipation, envy, eagerness, egotism, extravagance, fickleness, fidelity, frugality, gaiety, garrulity, gallantry, generosity, honesty, hesitance, hysteria, heedlessness, ill- temper, idealism, impulsiveness, indolence, impotence, impudence, kindness, loyalty, lucidity, morbidity, maliciousness, mysticism, modesty, obstinacy, prudishness, placidity, patience, pretentiousness, passion, restlessness, submission, sarcasm, simplicity, skepticism, savagery, solemnity, suspicion, stoicism, secretiveness, sensitivity, snobbery, treachery, tenderness, untidyness, versatility, vindictiveness, vulgarity, zealousness.