Issue #10 - Unlock Your Lead's POV With 3 Theatrical Devices (5 min)
Hello and welcome to issue #10!
I can't believe I've already been doing this for ten weeks. Wow, 2021.
This is a short read, five minutes, plus links to a couple of other pieces.
I hope you enjoy it and find something helpful!
Unlock Your Lead's POV With 3 Theatrical Devices
Julie and I went to see IN THE HEIGHTS on its opening weekend at The Alamo Drafthouse, my first time at the movies since THE INVISIBLE MAN. It was the perfect movie to celebrate that moment with, filled with over the top spectacle and overflowing with joy.
It made me miss musical theater but it also made me envious of how efficiently musicals cover the necessary exposition and lay out everything you need to get audiences invested emotionally. A lot of musicals do this through the “I want” song, which is exactly what it sounds like. It’s the song early in the musical in which your main character/characters lay out their desires. It's “Part of Your World” from LITTLE MERMAID, or “Over the Rainbow” from THE WIZARD OF OZ.
Usnavi tells you his backstory and situation in the opening verses of IN THE HEIGHTS. The opening number in HAMILTON tells you Alexander Hamilton’s entire backstory leading up to his arrival in New York. In less than four minutes you learn where he’s from, that his father left, his mother died when he was a kid, he survived a hurricane, he had a brilliant mind and a gift for moving people with his words, and that his whole town chipped in money so he could move to New York and make something of himself. How could you not be invested in him after that? And that's BEFORE the real "I want" song, "My Shot."
We often get notes about clarifying a character’s emotional point-of-view or motivation early on and about answering the “Why will the audience care” question. I was about to press send tweet on, “Normalize putting an “I WANT MONOLOGUE” in the opening scene of every movie and pilot,” but then I stopped because I realized this could be a helpful exercise.
I picked a protagonist from a current WIP and wrote an “I want” monologue for them. Then I broke that monologue down sentence by sentence and asked myself, “Am I communicating this to the audience? If not, then can I do it through conflict or can I translate it visually?” It was like shining a UV light on a motel bedspread. My first act looked a lot different under that light and it gave me new ideas on how to tell this dramatize those wants.
Then I realized were other devices from theater that can help me unlock and clarify my character’s POV through the rest of the script.
The next one was THE SHAKESPEAREAN SOLILOQUY. Soliloquies aren't just monologues. Typically a character is talking to themselves about a problem they're wrestling with. The effect is that it takes the audience inside their head, letting us into their thought process. “To be or not to be” is Hamlet grappling with thoughts of suicide. In "Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,” Macbeth is working through his feelings about the futility of life after the death of his wife.
My next exercise is to write an Act Two soliloquy where my lead character is working out the core conflict of where they are in the middle of my story, laying out all the arguments, and their thought processes and feelings about what's going on. Then I’ll do the same thing I did with the “I want monologue” where I break it down to see if that’s coming across.
When I get to Act Three there's a perfect device for getting me in my character's head as they're headed toward the climax, it's called THE ELEVEN O’CLOCK NUMBER. That’s the big showstopper late in the second act of a musical where a character comes to a major epiphany about their situation. (Named for the fact that it typically happened around 11pm back when the curtain went up at 8:30) Think “Rose’s Turn” from GYSPY or “I’m Here” from THE COLOR PURPLE. If I write an 11 O’clock number-style monologue for my character that sums up where they are at the end of act two and their drive going into Act Three I think it will give me that same diagnostic tool to make sure all of that is coming across and may spark new scenes.
I came to this kind of late for this current WIP so it's all being done after the fact. But I think for the next one, once I've laid out my structure I'm going to write three monologues in the spirit of those theatrical devices before I ever start writing my script:
ACT ONE - I WANT MONOLOGUE (laying out desires)
ACT TWO - SOLILQUY (wrestling with core conflict mid-story)
ACT THREE - 11 O’CLOCK NUMBER (what they've learned, going forward)
Put together, those three pieces should be a pretty effective emotional road map.
Links to a few of the cited examples below. That Cynthia Erivo clip is one of my all-time favorites. Perfect match between character and material.
Hamilton - Aaron Burr, Sir / My Shot (Original Cast 2016 - Live) — www.youtube.com This video is not mine, it's from Hamilton on Disney+All rights go to The Walt Disney Company
To be or not to be - Kenneth Branagh HD (HAMLET) From Hamlet, by Kenneth Branagh
I'm Here Definitive Version Cynthia Erivo performing "I'm Here" from The Color Purple with clips of Oprah at the Kennedy Center Honors.
EXERCISE - TURN A SONG INTO A SHORT
A couple of years ago I was listening to "Raspberry Beret" and thinking about how cinematic it was, filled with character and lots of great little details. As an exercise I turned it into a short script called THE KID, imagining a young Prince Rogers Nelson stuck working at a five and dime store and the woman who walks "in through the out door." Check it out!
FLASH FICTION - WEEKENDS WITH GG
A few issues ago I wrote about "tulpas." He's a piece of flash fiction that came from some of that research and putting together the building blocks of a new idea.
WEEKENDS WITH GG – Extant StoryTech — extantstorytech.com Weekends With GG A Flash Fiction Story by Mickey Fisher On Friday nights, after she finished her studies, Iona and her grandma would make Rice Krispie treats and watch movies that were a little scary but not too scary. Before they went to sleep they poured