The Well

I've been working on the first draft of the second act of my latest full-length play, tentatively entitled Enlightenment. I wrote about twenty pages and then realized that it was all crap. Or, more precisely, I've got enough material for about 10-15 pages, but I've been trying to stretch it into 40 pages.

So I've been trying to figure out what to do. The basic problem is that there aren't enough problems on stage (character goal + obstacle = problem = drama). Why aren't there enough problems on stage? After some thought, I decided it was because my characters are too nice.

There is this theory of character development, called "Tower/Well", that I've been taught. A good character will have both strengths (tower) and weaknesses (well). For example, you could have a character who is the bravest firefighter in the city, but who is also heroin addict who steals to support his habit.

The characters in Enlightenment are too "tower", so if I create some "well", that will improve things. Actually, there's one character who has a lot of "well" in act I, but it wasn't coming through in act II. She's an anti-cult activist, and at the end of act I she meets the head of the cult she's devoted her life to fighting. At the start of act II, she's just standing around, not doing much, so I start to think: how would she act in this situation?

She'd berate him.

I tell myself to think big.

She'd assault him.

Bigger.

She'd try to kill him.

How?

She'd pull a gun.

Remember an old drama rule: if you show a gun, you have to fire it.

So she'd shoot someone.

She'd aim for the cult leader, but she wouldn't hit him, as that would be too obvious.

Which means...

Someone has to die. And I know who.

Damn.

And to my very great surprise, it hurt to make this realization. That was basically the end of my attempts to write last night, as I was too emotionally stunned to continue.

That's right. "Stunned". Over the "death" of a fictional person.

I guess I am a writer.