Do you use these 8 dramatic devices to lift your stories?

Telling a good story is much more than just organizing a series of related dramatic events that are climaxed. Skilled and successful fiction writers use a variety of dramatic devices to make their stories much more attractive and emotional for audiences. Following is a brief discussion of (arguably) the top eight dramatic techniques that all storytellers should be using in their stories. Essential to these dramatic devices is how the writer gives (or in one case doesn’t give) information or ideas to the audience to inspire specific thoughts and emotions in them.

Conflict

The most important principle in writing fiction is “The essence of drama is conflict.” A conflict (simply) is two people clashing over opposing goals. These goals are essentially ideas that motivate the character and that the writer reveals to us in a myriad of clever and dramatic ways. A story needs a central conflict to form the core of its plot and to underpin its structure. Everything in a story should logically flow from its central conflict. A central conflict most often should be focused on the back-and-forth escalating struggle between Character A and Character B. No one wants to watch a boxing match where the two opponents never engage to trade blows back and forth. Likewise, no viewer wants to watch a story where there is no long-term struggle between clearly motivated opposing characters. Goals, conflict, struggle, climax/resolution = story!

There must be conflict throughout the whole of a story, from the big ones against the protagonist’s main goal to those smaller one against his scene objectives. It is conflict more than anything that makes a story and seduces an audience. That may seem obvious but many writers too often forget this standard of good writing.

One vital type of conflict is internal conflict. Internal conflict is where a character is torn between two high values and must make hard choices between them, especially a big final choice in the climax of the story. Great dramas especially have big character dilemmas at their core. Some of the most intense dramas in literature with a lead character struggling with a high stakes self-conflict are Les Miserables (Jean Valjean), Atlas Shrugged (Dagny Taggart), Cyrano de Bergerac (Cyrano), The Lady From the Sea (Ellida Wangel), and Enemy of the People (Dr. Stockmann.) In film, classic dramas focused on characters with a compelling internal conflict include The Miracle Worker, In The Heat of the Night, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, and Saving Mr. Banks. In Les Miserables, as just one key example, throughout much of the novel its protagonist Jean Valjean is torn between his love for his own freedom and his desire to do justice for the oppressed of France. Throughout this intensely dramatic story the reader becomes fully engaged to see what choices Valjean will make and what their consequences will be.

Suspense

Good writers manipulate the emotions of an audience by the way they play their story events. Arguably, the key way writers manipulate an audience is through creating in them a feeling of suspense, that is, of fear, anticipation, and frustration. Audiences enjoy being held in suspense about the outcome of a major conflict or choice that they are witnessing in a story. To create suspense, writers play their conflicts and events so that the audience will ask big questions about them. Questions such as: What will happen next? Who will win? What will result from this awful choice? What will the character do when he learns this?

Every story needs (at least) one big suspense question that pulls the audience into the events because they have been manipulated to feel hungry to learn the outcome of the suspense question. The major way writers do this is to carefully develop a suspense line about the protagonist’s main goal and its biggest conflict/problem. Viewers will then anxiously watch the whole film to find out who wins or loses and how and why. For instance, the key suspense question in the film Die Hard is: Will John McClane rescue his wife to safety and thus reunite with her? In Saving Mr. Banks, it is: Will P. L. Travers change so she can accept Walt Disney’s offer to produce her Mary Poppins book as a film?

Mystery

Mystery works in the opposite way to suspense.

With suspense the audience is given some information about a high stakes conflict/choice in the story but doesn’t know the resolution of it but desires to learn it. In contrast, when a writer plays a mystery, he often gives the resolution but keeps hidden important information about its meaning or cause so the audience hungers to learn it. For example, Agatha Christie gives you the murder but not who the murderer is.

To create a mystery line, writers must set up an important mystery question in the minds of the audience and carefully work out what important story information the audience will and won’t be told (though some characters may know it). And then in the story the writer has to logically and dramatically (and often deceptively) reveal clues that the audience can use to solve the mystery. An audience will thus stay watching, yearning to receive more clues about the mystery so they can work it out themselves before a main character does or the author reveals it.

Often the mystery questions the writer plays relate to What, Who, How and Why. When a writer manipulates a reader or viewer about vital information (ideas) they desire to learn, the specific emotion (and itch) these questions create is the one central to a mystery, curiosity. And a writer especially skilled at putting mystery questions into the minds of his audience sets up a mystery that seems impossible to solve. A mystery at this level can be more seductive and emotional to an audience than a big suspense question. Agatha Christie is especially brilliant at doing this. A more modern classic example is the intense mystery in the novel The Visitor by Lee Child. In film, in Saving Mr. Banks, we long to know what is the deepest reason why P. L. Travers is rejecting Walt Disney’s offer. In the climax of the film, Disney and the audience get the last clue to Travers’ motivation and can finally solve and understand the big mystery. And Disney can now succeed in his quest and the audience can have a strong emotional response to that and the resolution of the mystery.

Twists

A twist or surprise is a big change or development in a story that the audience was not expecting. Audiences love to be shocked and surprised. But not too often and always logically. That is, the surprise or twist has to be set up but not noticed by the audience. That is, the information was cleverly hidden. When a surprise is revealed, the information in its set up that was hidden will be remembered by the audience, who will now understand it in a different context that will make the twist believable. Twists knock the story and audience into new and exciting territories and are often employed at the end of sequences, acts, and chapters. But a twist shocks and grabs an audience for only a short time. Then suspense and mystery again need to take over the audience’s thoughts and emotions until the next twist or surprise.

A writer can vary the types of twists he uses, such as: The reveal of a betrayal or secret, the unexpected real meaning of something, a great loss or reversal, the exposing of someone’s identity, and poetic or ironic justice.

One popular and effective form of twist is the ironic twist. For example, in Ian Fleming’s classic Bond novel Moonraker, the Soviets supply the atom bomb that the villain Sir Hugo Drax wants to detonate over London, but after the heroics of Bond it is instead exploded over the escaping Soviet submarine with Drax in it and then its radioactive fallout drifts towards Russia. Drax is hoisted on his own petard!, which is poetic justice or ironic reversal.

Besides big twists, writers should also employ smaller surprises in their scenes, especially in their openings and climaxes. This is also important in comedies, where the climax of a joke often entails a twist.

Reversal

A reversal is a form of a twist/shock/surprise/reveal that involves a big change in the fortunes of the protagonist, most often the sudden reversing to the opposite pole from good fortune to bad. This change is most often against the expectations of the character and the hopes of the audience. A reversal of fortune deeply engages the audience and throws them into a new direction and feeling. The audience is now fearfully hoping and expecting that the character will dig deep into his self and with the new information he has learned will find a logical (but often surprising) solution to this new failure, change, or problem.

Aristotle believed that the biggest reversal, the crisis point of a story, is near the end of the plot and works best when preceded by some form of soul and life changing recognition by the character. This character has learned the truth of himself or some other character or situation and now has to struggle to accept and learn from this new insight. In a tragedy, this insight and reversal leads to the destruction of the character (See Oedipus). In a positive drama, the insight leads to the character’s growth and liberation that allows him to achieve victory. (See An Officer and a Gentleman or Tootsie.) Of course, a character in a narrative can and should experience smaller reversals during his story.

Dramatic Irony/Superior Position

Dramatic irony or superior position is when the audience is given story information that a character isn’t, so it sees great irony, humour and danger where this character does not. For instance, Hitchcock’s classic example of suspense, the ticking bomb under the seat of two unaware characters, is based on superior position. Because we the audience see the great danger of the ticking bomb and the characters don’t, we scream at them to look down! To run! We are gripped in suspense watching this terror play out, and for a long period of time. A shock lasts seconds. Audience suspense and fear created by watching a danger revealed to us by superior position can last many minutes, even hours. Superior position is a fundamental way Hitchcock played with our minds so effectively in his films.

Consider from The Godfather another example of suspense based on superior position, when we are let in on the plan of Michael Corleone to kill the crooked cop McCluskey (and the gangster Sollozo). We watch with tight breath to see how this plan revealed to us will play out when enacted against the dangerous cop who might uncover the secret and kill Michael.

Dramatic irony can also create great poignancy and humour. For example, it can be employed in a love story where we know a male character loves a woman, but she doesn’t know it. In The Mark of Zorro, for instance, we enjoy the poignancy of the scenes between Zorro and Lolita, who he is secretly in love with. Or, regarding comedic effect, in the same film we are amused by the sly digs and games of Don Diego Vega against the villains who do not know that this playacting fop is actually their dangerous enemy Zorro. But we do!

The core of dramatic irony is who is given information and who is not.

Deception

One of the best and least used dramatic devices is deception. Deception is when one character hides important information from another. Deception can take various forms. It can be a disguise, lie, secret, con, cheat, or hidden betrayal, for example. Note that deception often involves dramatic irony, where the audience and often a character knows the truth but other characters do not. Knowing the deception, the audience enjoys all the consequent irony, danger, and humour. And the audience can be in great suspense as to when and how the deceived will learn of the deception. To study classic examples of deception and its dramatic power watch Zorro, Superman, Batman, The Scarlet Pimpernel, Les Miserables, and Notorious. Deception is an excellent way to add layers to your characters, story, and scenes. Consider what the Batman, Superman, and Zorro stories would be like if these costumed heroes did not have secret identities.

Implication

The most sophisticated dramatic technique is implication. And one of the most powerful. Implication (and suggestion) are when a storyteller writes his information in a subtle way and doesn’t state the explicit meaning of the words or action. Instead, the meaning is implied in the words and actions and by their context. Here are two brief examples of suggestion (actions) and implication (words):

First action. Consider the early scene in Lawrence of Arabia where Lawrence extinguishes a burning match with his fingers without expressing pain. The context of the story helps make this action more dramatic than any words could: Lawrence, who is yet to go on his great adventure, is showing us: I’m a little bit mad (“barmy”) and I can endure great pain to do great things. This idea shocks and excites us and makes us want to see if this strange but seemingly brilliant man can succeed in a great quest. The audience was not told these ideas but had to induce them from the actions.

And dialog. Consider the climax of the classic (1958) film Separate Tables written by a master of implication, Terence Rattigan. In a retirement hotel during the climax of the story, spinster Sybil is eating breakfast with her domineering elderly mother, who we have seen during the film bullying and oppressing her daughter. After the mother tells Sybil to leave the dining room with her, the daughter replies with these simple words: “No, Mummy. I’m going to stay here in the dining room, and finish my breakfast.”

Because during the film we have been shown so well the essential nature of the relationship between daughter and mother, we understand that these words are the very first time Sybil has disagreed with her evil mother and that they are her liberation from her. Understanding this meaning of Sybil’s words, we feel great emotion. We feel stronger emotions because these words were so implicit that we had to be complicit with them to work out their exact meaning and thus are more intimately involved in the drama and emotionally responsive to it. As a dramatic principle, when an audience is more mentally involved in a story, it is more emotionally moved by it. All good storytellers use implication! And again, it works from how information or ideas are given to an audience to influence its mind and hence its emotions.

If you are not considering using all the above dramatic devices (and others) in your stories, then you are not doing your full job as a writer. Storytelling is not just the What but also the How. This How entails putting ideas into the minds of your audience to manipulate their thinking and emotions. That is vital to how writers make their audience feel. We don’t experience literature or films to be bored. We experience them to think and feel strongly. One hallmark of good creatives is that they imaginatively use dramatic devices. If you do that, then your story will be more seductive and emotional. And more popular as well as more attractive to investors, actors, and producers.

“Scott McConnell is an excellent Script Editor.” Snorri Þórisson, CEO Pegasus Pictures 

About Scott McConnell The Story Guy & His Story Services

Scott McConnell started in the film and TV business in Los Angeles performing script analysis for Samuel Goldwyn, Sundance, Hallmark, Nu Image, Roger Corman, among others. He ended his producing work in Los Angeles as a showrunner. Scott is now a writer and story consultant, lecturer, and mentor. He supports writers, producers, and directors, as well as production and publishing companies, to develop and improve all forms of stories, but especially scripts and novels. Besides developing and editing individual stories, Scott offers a Mentorship Program, where he supports creatives to write a story from concept to first draft, while teaching them a writing process of all the key stages of crafting a story. To discuss your story or screenwriting class needs write to Scott at [email protected]

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