If it doesn’t add, it subtracts
Playwriting doesn’t work like mathematics.
In math, two plus one equals three.
In playwriting, having an extra character often leads to a negative outcome.
That’s because a character you don’t need – a character that isn’t essential to the scene, that doesn’t bring any additional insight or conflict or entertainment value – winds up detracting from the scene. Worse, that extra character cheats other, important characters out of additional opportunities.
One of my students was writing a smart, fresh and funny play about a hometown guy who finally has a chance with the high-school princess. For reasons we don’t know, she’s returned home from the big city and is seeing with new eyes that our protagonist has qualities we all admire: a humble, centered, decency. We sympathize with him when the other mechanics at work tease him and root for him when the pretty woman’s interest in him arouses the envy of others. When he takes her out for dinner, he’s honest about what he can afford and what he can’t. In every way, he reflects simple human goodness.
Imagine how disappointed I was, then, when we read the scene where we learn why the prom queen has returned: Our man isn’t in the scene. Instead, we learn through the introduction of a new character, the woman’s father, that she has returned to care for him as he recedes farther and farther into Alzheimer’s disease. We get a full scene of his ranting about Commies or Nazis or insurance investigators and such, and her trying desperately to deal with it. This is followed by a scene with her relating what just happened to our hero, her new would-be boyfriend, and his sympathizing and sharing his own world of hurts.
It may have accomplished the goal of explaining – but nobody goes to the theatre for an explanation. They go for entertainment and they go for enlightenment.
When I asked the class to restructure the scene minus the father, it didn’t take long for everyone to realize we didn’t need that character. With the father in the scene, we miss our protagonist, we’re subjected to a scene that fills us with grave doubts (we all had a hard time buying the reality of the father’s ranting), and the end result is a scene of confession and sharing – not exactly high drama.
But without the father, and with the scene rebuilt to focus around the two leads, we were back in the realm of dramatic tension. Our hero goes to pick up the woman for a date but she’s flustered and apologetic – something’s wrong and she can’t go. She tries to put on a brave face, but our hero pulls the facts from her (which by the way highlights his compassion and all his other positive traits.) Her father’s sick – it’s really bad. It can’t be that bad, he says. (And here, as we hear only glimmerings of the old man’s condition, our mind is free to fill in something even more stark than we would have seen.) There is tension in what is not said – her real problem – until it is said; there is tension in what is not shown – the extent of the old man’s dementia; and there is tension in what this means for the relationship on the doorstep of what would have been their first date.
Any character that doesn’t add to the tension somehow or other in the play is a character that winds up weakening that tension. Sometimes when you add one, you’re actually subtracting from the whole.