Script Writing Terms
I know this is no time to start some sort of blazing romance But You were just so damn slow......
Terms
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- Foreshadowing
- A hint of whats to come
- The passover question
- A Play must show us the most critical moments in the main character's life
- Climax
- The ultimate fray between opposing forces in the play
- Personal Demon
- Something that we struggle with for our whole lives
- Deux Ex Machina
- A plot in which all of a sudden something comes out of nowhere at the end and makes everything all right
- Exposition
- Revelation of information that the audience needs to know in order to understand the play. Exposition may happen either through scenery, sound effects, action, or dialogue
- Ur-Play
- A story that is alive in your subconscious and that needs to come out and be told
- Foregrounding
- Calling attention to something by placing it in the foreground against a background
- Scene of Recognition (Anagnorsis)
- A Moment when a main character had a realization or makes a significant discover regarding the conflict, a truth about the past, the truth about herself, or the irony and/or severity of the present situation. Also Known as Anagnorsis, or epiphany
- Predictability
- Even though it is important to plant seeds, avoid making your outcomes predicable
- Theatricality
- Any event or series of events that heightens the audience attention
- Intrusion
- The event the sets the conflict into motion. At this moment wit becomes clear who the main character is and what he/she needs to do
- Launch
- This usually makes up most of the play. The main character attempts to achieve his/her dramatic need
- Epic Time
- A play that takes place in several short episodes (scenes or acts) over the course of a long period of time (i.e., a lifetime, the duration of a war, an era of some sort, etc.) Scene locations may vary or stay the same.
- Trigger
- An Event that causes or permits another vent to happen
- Tactic
- the strategy a character uses in order to get what he or she wants; how the character attempts to remove the obstacle to his or her need.
- Heap
- An Event that is caused or permitted by a trigger
- Stakes
- The characters have to have something important hanging in the balance
- Plot twists
- Keeps the audience interested, don't let them surpass the importance of other elements of the play, they should be plausible
- Dialogue
- Lines exchanged between two or more characters
- Catharsis
- the feeling of release after the dramatic tension of watching a tragedy
- Aside
- Short speech to the audience with out the other characters hearing
- Lifting
- The play tends to cut out all the downtime, randomness, unrelated details, and unimportant monotonies of real life
- Three Act Structure
- Act 1: Introduce the problem, Act 2: Develop the problem, Act 3: Resolve the problem
- Dramatic Irony
- Situation in which a character makes a remark that the audience is intend to understand as ironic, or in contradiction to the full truth
- Stichomythia
- Short choppy dialogue
- Flashbacks
- Scenes that occur in the past--outside of the time sequence established by the rest of the script. Rather than simply having a character tell the story of what happened long ago, the playwright can simply write that scene and include it in the play. Rather than simply having a character tell the story of what happened long ago, the playwright can simply write that scene and include it in the play.
- Unified Time
- Aristotle spoke of the notion of The Three Unities (Place, Time, and Action). This meant that the entire play was to occur in one location with one continuous flow of action and time.
- Forwards
- Events or lines that make the audience want to find out what is going to happen next
- Hamartia
- Tragic Flaw
- Non-Sequential Time
- When the scenes of a play do not progress in chronological order
- Chunky Dialogue
- Dialogue that is monologue heavy (lots of longer speeches being exchanged between 2 or more characters).
- Traditional Tragedy
- The protagonist fails
- Monodrama
- A play consisting of one long monologue; a one-person show
- Tragicomedy
- The protagonist succeeds or fails but the result is not exactly what the protagonist though it would be. Or perhaps, the protagonist gets what he wants, but also get another thing that he wasn't expecting or hoping for
- Traditional Comedy
- The protagonist succeeds
- Denouement
- It shows how the world of the play had or has not changed due to the resolution of the conflict
- Safety Needs
- Security, stability, order, protection, and freedom from fear or danger
- Self-Actualization Needs
- Creativity, self-expression, personal fulfillment
- Byplay
- Action that takes place off to the side or in the background while the main action continues; byplay captures the audience's attention and adds humor without being overly distracting
- Contained Monologue
- When one character speaks for an extended period of time, to the other character within a scene
- Verisimilitude
- The play must communicate the truth about life and the human condition.
- Episodic Time
- A play that takes place in several short episodes (scenes or acts) over the course of a relatively short period of time (i.e., a weekend, a month, a season, a few years, etc.) Scene locations may vary or stay the same.
- Beat
- the use of one tactic in the context of a play/scene/act; most scenes have multiple beats
- Social needs
- Love, acceptance, belongingness
- Ebb and Flow
- A play's focus and retreat from the its central conflict. Longer plays retreat from the main conflict in order to provide backstory, create atmosphere, explore character dynamics, and provide comic relief.
- Multi-Temporal Sequential
- Multiple stories happening in different time periods are woven together to create one play.
- Monologue
- When one character speaks for an extended time
- Periscope Ending
- when the final scene occurs a long time after the climax. In this final scene, the effects of the climax are revealed through exposition.
- Subtext
- what is really meant by what is said
- Soliloquoy
- A character speaks his/her internal thoughts, while alone on stage
- Flash-Forwards
- A vast jump forwards in time.
- Direct Address
- A character talks directly to the audience
- Ego needs
- Esteem, reputation, self-respect, status, metaphysical worthiness
- Conflict
- Dramatic need+Obstacle=Conflict
- Physiological Needs
- Those things without which we cannot live: food, water, air, shelter clothing. Survival
- Event
- Anything that occurs
- Subplots
- Sometimes relate to the main plot merely through a similarity in theme. Sometimes they feed into the main plot, affecting its outcome.
- Economy
- The notion of only including characters, actions, speech, and settings that are absolutely essential contributions to the plot and theme(s).
- Framing Device
- A device in which a setting and a few characters are established. Then, one of the characters will begin telling a story which makes up the bulk of the play. At the end we return to the original characters, realizing how the story has affected them.
- In Medias Res
- When a play will begin with the intrusion or in the midst of the launch
- Stasis
- The world of the play is introduced. We learn about the setting, the characters, and the basic situation of the play
- Scenes Outside Of Time
- The dramatization of fantasies, dream sequences, hallucinations, etc.