INTRO: WHAT IS THIS DRAMA-THING?

”With certainty there are laws for drama, as it is an art-form; but it is uncertain in what they consist” – Pierre Corneille, french playwright.

This has mainly been written to develop a greater understanding of the principles of drama and how to apply them when you create a script for one of the dramatic media – the original live theater and the younger electronic brethren, film, radio or TV.

I always use this word – drama – to define what my job is about. Many people, when they hear this word, think about the kind of serious, sort-of-tragedy movies that has a lot of emotions and stuff – the one you find in the video store exactly under that heading: Drama. This is a misconception. Drama is the word used to describe the whole major genre, which this blog is dealing with. Any kind of play for theater, any type of script for a film – funny, sad, scary or whatever – is a dramatic work. This is our major genre. The other major genres are prose, poetry and music. We are the drama.
This is important. Over the years of struggling with creating good scripts for both theater and film – and failing a lot - I learned that - despite my failings - I was in this game for good reasons. I wanted the drama. I believed in drama as a way of approaching and understanding the world. The more I realized this and the principles of drama – the stuff that makes drama, drama – the more I could go with the flow and create scripts I could believe in.

I liked to study the many how-to-books with different script models – you know, the ones that describe how to structure a script – how many acts, different plot points and such stuff. The form is important – but form will always change – whereas principles stay the same. My advice has always been to learn about the models, but never believe in them. Principles are the stuff you should believe in. This blog will also present a variation of an act-model that I find useful when forming a script. I certainly like to think about structure and models – but they also leave me unsatisfied as a basic explanation of drama. They only deal with a form – this is how it looks. Then I always end up asking why? This is where the search for principles comes into the picture.

In our work we have to understand these founding principles of drama, so not to work against them, but with them. During our years of working with drama, we can continue to meditate upon them, deepening our understanding of drama. They will guide us in any difficult passage when creating a script. They are really simple, but that doesn’t make it easy. The simple is often the most difficult art.
I talk about creating a script, because I don’t really any longer see it as writing. There is a trap in thinking of ourselves as writers, because it associates to literature. It is not the writing that’s important. Very few people are going to read it. Most people will watch a film, a play or a TV-series. We create the script as a basis for a production. Actually instead of script I very much like the word the French and Greeks use: Scenario. The word is perfect because it implies that things will maybe turn out in another way in production, than what was imagined when creating the scenario.

Another and maybe more important reason not to think of it as writing has to do with the process of creating and experiencing a drama. A play, a film or a TV-episode has so precious few minutes. When you create a script, you have to be deliberate. There’s no time to waste. Also it is a very expensive art form. Every minute costs a lot of money, even in a small theater production, compared to literature or music. You have to construct carefully, think about production economy, a whole lot about how the audience perceive things (and here I’m not even talking about hitting mainstream, just about communicating the drama in a understandable way), and you have to think even more about what is really, really satisfying for you – because you are going to spend a massive amount of energy on the script. This is why I always spend the majority of my energy and time on a script in planning the construction of it. I never sit down to write the first draft of a script until I’m sure where I’m going and how to get there. And in my experience getting it right from the beginning saves you a lot of energy, time and anguish.

This stuff I'm going to write about here in the blog, it can’t really teach you to write a good script. This is an undertaking you have to struggle with yourself, making the mistakes and finding your answers to how it's done. But maybe I can save you some energy, time and anguish. It took me 10 years of writing not so good scripts – working for TV, film and theater - before I eventually created my first good script. One, I could read over and over without feeling bad about it, and one for which I could get a positive response from production companies. This happened after I had realized the thing. And that’s the thing I’m going to talk about here. And maybe we can even have a qualified exchange and discussion of our experiences with that thing called drama.