Okay playwrights, you have a handful of quirky and complex characters to work with. Shall we throw them all together and see what happens?
Day 9 – Write a Group Scene: Write a 10-minute scene using all six characters from your stock company. Use an appropriate central reflector [one pivotal idea, person, object, place, or event on which all the characters have an opinion] to anchor and focus the scene, reveal character and relationships, and generate conflict. Adapted from The Playwright’s Handbook, by Frank Pike and Thomas G. Dunn (Revised Edition, 1996).
In a scene with a lot of characters, it’s easy to lose focus. A central reflector is something that connects the characters to each other. It’s the thing they all have in common. Maybe one of your characters has a problem and everyone around him chimes in with some advice. Or maybe something provokes your characters into voicing their opinions on a politically charged issue. Maybe your central reflector is an object. Your characters found something rare. Is it real or fake? Maybe something important was lost and the characters are all trying to find it. Maybe all of your characters witness a startling event, like a car crash or a crime, or even something more mundane, like a toddler throwing a tantrum in a public place. How do they react? What do they say when its over?
If you would like to take another look at the formatting practices for scene writing, click here. I’m also going to put them under the “Resources” tab.