The other evening I went to see an improvisation group that was brave but not having an especially good night.
I trained in impro years ago with a group called The Groundlings, so I know how tough it is to come up with ideas on the spur of the moment and make them work when there's at least one other person in the scene who is also coming up with ideas that may or may not jibe with yours.
But it did remind me that the same things that make a scene come alive on the stage can also be used to make one come alive on the page:
* adding a new character so the dynamics of the scene change; this works best if the character has something definite (and emotional) on his or her mind, rather than just being a bystander;
* adding a new emotion from one of the characters, as long as you can justify it;
* remembering that conflict that comes from "and" often works better than conflict that comes from "but." In other words, if one character says "I want to buy your car," and the other one says, "But you can't, it's not for sale," most likely you will end up with static conflict of the yes/no variety. If one says, "I want to buy your car," and the other one says, "Yes, I'll be happy to sell it to you, and will you be paying the $50,000 in cash?" then the first one can respond to that inflated price and the scene can build.
In simplistic dramas (like most action pictures) the conflict is of the "but" variety; in the more sophisticated fare (and our own lives) it tends to come more from the "ands."
Being reminded of these ideas when I'm in the middle of writing a script made the experience useful ...and I'm glad I wasn't up on that stage.
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