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- Reading responses must be AT LEAST 200 words.
- Include your full name at the end of your comments. Unnamed comments will be deleted.
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- Reading responses are due by midnight on the night PRIOR to our discussion of the required reading.
I like what Spencer says on page 171, “I don’t believe the act of writing a play should, in the actual doing of it, be broken down into its component parts.” I’m the type of person who likes to look at things section by section, or step by step so I think writing a play; having to keep in mind about characters, plot, and everything else is definitely going to be a challenge for me personally because I’m not so creative when it comes to writing plays, stories, poems, etc. but I like how throughout this chapter we look at how to create a character and more. I absolutely am glad the “Four steps to character” give us insight on how actions and emotions follow speech and behavior and the general qualities and how we can make our audience get a sense of our characters in a play. The overall aspect of the section were reading in Hatchers chapter on “The Six Elements of Aristotle” is about character, as was Spencers. While reading both I found myself seeing how intricate the process of creating a character is. It is intertwined with many things like actions, emotions, plots, how this and that is going to happen and how not to make it bad. It seems kind of overwhelming but hopefully from these readings, I can keep in mind what to do and what not to do with my characters in my plays.
ReplyDeleteIlene Guevara
With Jeffrey Hatcher's piece, I appreciated the in depth breakdown of how a character can be created from concept. His suggestion that antagonists' could be able to be more abstract in nature was relieving, since I was strongly considering doing so for my play idea. I would have liked to see an example/s of antagonists not being actual separate characters, as he insisted, in order to get a good understanding of what can be achieved in trying to go that route. I also really connected with what Stuart Spencer wrote on pages 182-184 about his friend Alan being bogged down with historical facts to the point that he wasn't able to really explore his fictional story for his play. As a concept, I completely understand why Alan would insist on having a clear basis for his story, Despite the freedom that creative liberties grant a writer. I always feel that for characters' choices to be realistic, they should be inspired by the thought processes or actions of similar beings in reality. The same feeling came about when reading about how Spencer describes disregarding the logic of events having to be concretely explicable, and how the audience should be responsible for making connections instead of being told literally what is occuring. It makes me think of showing vs telling and how showing is much more effective and fitting for a play. With that in mind, it makes more sense to save dialogue space in our ten minute plays by having actions carry more weight to convey what we are inferring with our stage directions. - Jesse Rocha
ReplyDeleteI felt like I already knew what these readings were trying to explain since I have heard you, Dr. Moreira, talking about this a lot of times. These were a refresher on what are the important things to focus when creating a character, both books had great explanations that connected to each other. Now, I understand why you were always enhancing the idea that the characters in a play need to want something from each other. I liked the comparison (The Art of Craft and Playwriting, p.24) about how there’s always an “I Want” song in a musical and how the monologue or soliloquy would be the “I Want” for the plays. You had told me once that I should write a musical, but I think I want to start with plays first. What I most liked about The Playwright’s Guidebook was the little chart that lays the sequence of the factors that build a character (p. 176). This book was very helpful, it had a lot of advice that I think I am using. One thing that I am thinking of doing (if I ever run out of ideas) is taking a quality of a person that I know. I strongly believe in the idea that thinking too much about a character would not lead to anywhere, it would only create more confusion or, indeed turn the character into a passive one. I liked the idea of giving them freedom, and it would mostly even surprise us as the play takes a different way than expected.
ReplyDeletePaulina Longoria
Though both "The Playwright's Guidebook" and "The Art and Craft of Playwriting" had a lot of really good instructions and advice, I feel like the information and explanations given in the latter were much more to the point and actually useful. Hatcher’s argument, in summation, is that to write a good character is that you have to understand their desires and their fears, and those desires and fears have to be compelling to the audience, meaning that they have to be desires and fears we all have experienced, at least to a degree. While we all experience the emotions we see characters of a play go through, we don’t act on them, which is what makes us want to watch a play. We see characters like ourselves, do things we would probably never do. I think that if I can grasp this concept, and write my characters like that, then most of the instructions given in Spencer’s guidebook are unnecessary. Spencer’s formula of general qualities, emotions, action, and speech/behavior coming together to form a character seems silly to me. I feel like character is just those qualities, and everything else is an expression of them. I think his formula can help build the plot around the character, but not actually developing the character themself.
ReplyDelete-Lacey Naumann
Hatcher lists the 3 things most characters lack: strong enough goals, difficult enough obstacles, and talents and oppurtunities. Characters need strong, relatable desires that can push the narrative along. Their desires need to be universal, and is the basis of connection between the character and the audience. Characters also need something to push back against them to generate the conflict necessary for a story. Characters must be created with special attention to their desires, making sure their desires are big and relatable enough for audiences.
ReplyDeleteSpencer says that we do not have to “create a harmony or agreement of feeling” to create a sympathetic character. A lot of people fall into the trap of making their characters too nice or good, mistaking that people find goodness sympathetic. Spencer points out that what’s really important is that “characters believe [that they have] good reasons for their behavior.” To sympathize with a character means to get what they are doing, and that you can imagine yourself in the same situation and thinking that you would at the very least think about doing, if not actually doing, the same thing. In other words, a character doing bad things can be sympathetic, maybe even more sympathetic than a character doing the good or right thing.
- Rodin Grajo
Seeing as I am still new to the playwriting scene (only dabbling in it a year ago) learning how in-depth a character can be was very interesting. I had always known that a character had to have different levels their goals, their fears, but what I didn't know is which goal was correct. That abstract goals are worse and concrete goals are what should be focused on. Reading further into Hatcher and seeing how the most dramatic characters are the likable ones made me look back into some movie and book characters that always stood out. In High School Musical you remember Sharpay, in the first Avengers movie you are drawn to Loki, these characters are dramatic and charming. Knowing what they want and going after it no matter the cost. Having these references makes it easier when thinking about my characters and how I want to shape them.
ReplyDeleteSomething that has always stopped me from writing was characters and character development, it was a skill that was never taught in school. Before coming to college it was something you learned on your own. In Spencer’s book he says “They were teaching you to be readers, not playwrights”(page 171) which calms my fear of never writing. Being able to read his work and understand what goes into a character makes everything clearer (especially the chart on page 177)
Kendra Lara
Spencer’s take on character is a very intriguing one, breaking down every aspect and making them each shine to their own merit. A character in any play, who every they are, must leave an impression and differ from any character written. They need to feel authentic to the audience, the movements they make and the speech they produce all are important aspects to make the characters more realistic. I may sometimes have difficulty trying to write a character, whether it be the names I come up with or how they should pronounce their slang words. Other playwrights come up with clever names that have an underlying definition to the grand idea of the story, but maybe it would be easier for me to not force myself into writing too deep in a character’s name.
ReplyDeleteHatcher’s take, however, took a more post-play approach; to how the characters complex is and how they should advance the plot. He brings up a point about how the plot should drive the character to face his or her’s struggle. It goes with the notion about writing plays that scare the audience, have them think, make them feel emotions they wouldn’t expect to feel at a night out to the theater. He talks about how Aristotle believed that the plot was more essential than the characters; I believe this to be true as character’s can be made to drive the plot forward, but a plot can’t be written because of what the author wishes the characters to be. It removes what strength the play originally had.
-Luis Alonzo
Jeffrey Hatcher and Stuart Spencer both introduce interesting points about building characters. Personally, I tend to have anxiety when turning in a creative piece because it's not that I'm worried people won't like my story, but specifically the characters. I've always carried the belief that an audience who falls in love with a character will enjoy the story more than if they didn't grow an attachment to them. I have aimed for this through trying to make my characters relatable or fall victim to the human condition. Spencer talks about how the emotions that characters are susceptible to force the story to go. A strong enough character can carry their own as well as the plot. An option I've thought about but never knew how to execute was making all the characters equal. I know he references Chekhov about structuring his characters that way. I'm not very familiar with Chekhov, but reading his work is something I hope to do soon to maybe spark inspiration. I might disagree with Hatcher because of how he agrees with Aristotle on the plot being more important than characters. He does acknowledge that modern playwrights, "believe in the primacy of character," but the plays that stand out and withstand the test of time have unforgettable characters.
ReplyDelete-Gabriela Urbano
I really enjoyed the two readings, it gave me perspective on what to expect going into writing a play. In Hatcher’s excerpt he writes, “Drama takes place in the concrete”, and concrete goals are the best kind of goals when it comes to drama. This paragraph had me rethinking my own writing. I had an idea for this class, and what i would like my 10-minute play to be about, however after reading that i realized that my character didn’t have a concrete goal. It was more in the realm of abstract. But after reading the chapter i feel confident in coming up with something attainable for my character. In Spencer’s writing a part in the beginning stuck out to me when he say “Creating a character is the same as creating a set. What we call a character is merely words on a page...” He mentions how your character is completely made up they are not real, which i understand, but it’s also a little bit contradictory in my mind. Like many writers when create a character I love that character like a child (not all characters but some of my characters), they feel almost real to me i don’t think of my characters as an illusion, as Spencer puts it. This comes fro writing for the screen, i write characters that are their own thing, and I expect my actor to completely embody that character or the story it self wont be believable, and it won’t work. I have a lot more to learn, and both readings have really shown me that i have my work cut out for me.
ReplyDeleteAisha Teegarden
Both Jeffrey Hatcher and Stuart Spencer both make good points about character development. I like the point that Hatcher makes about trying to create compelling characters. I agree with the fact that a playwright should always try to make interesting characters. No audience wants to go see a play that has uninteresting characters with no good dialogue or backstory. Adding from what Hatcher claimed, I think that it is also very important to note how plays are not meant to contain regular dialogue. As I mentioned on my previous post, dialogue should be interesting and dramatic—hence a play is a drama piece. I think one of the other very important points stated in the text was to create characters that have “conflicts.” I don’t think the audience wants to see characters that are “good” with no predicaments whatsoever. Whenever you are developing a character, you should make sure that the character possesses any type of conflict, whether it is internal or with other characters in the play in order to make the play a lot more fascinating—like you want your audience to be intrigued and wait for the conflict or climax to unravel to a resolution in the end.
ReplyDeleteIvanna Zamudio Treviño