Emotional Patterns

THE PLAYWRITING SEMINARS > STRUCTURE > SHAPE > DIAGRAM > CLIMAX > OBLIGATORY > PATTERNS >

'Translating and adapting classical plays is a great way to learn craft . . .. Most new plays, by and large, are dramaturgically quite simple and, I think, similar. This has something to do with the need to write only two and three characters, and so . . . the way of crafting the scenes and the structure of the play, is pretty much set by this. But if you want, as I did, to write scenes with six or eight or nine people, suddenly it's a very different exercise.'

-- Richard Nelson

Old Bill was a great fan of Emotional Patterns. So were Sophocles and Molière. And anyone else who filled their pockets from playwriting in the good old days. These things work like a charm -- literally -- on audiences. But despite that fact, most contemporary playwrights have either lost touch with this device or just lost interest.

Emotional Patterns manipulate our emotional response to the story's sequence of events. This manipulation heightens audience response by deliberately alternating positive and negative events, particularly during the Obligatory Scene and Resolution.

The technique sounds more complicated than it is. The goal is simply to present a sequence of events that puts the audience through an emotional roller coaster. Remember the Hollywood cliché -- Nobody gets very excited if boy meets girl and just gradually makes progress until he gets the girl at the end. So Lotus Land discovered the formula Old Bill always knew . . .

Boy doesn't have a girl.
We feel sad [for his sorry state].
Boy meets girl.
We feel happy.
Boy loses girl.
We feel glum.
Boy gets girl.
We feel . . .
[Nobody ever said Hollywood wasn't sexist.]

This -- not surprisingly -- is the simple-headed version. Here's the real thing . . .

Emotional Pattern Diagram & Examples

Where have all these things gone today? They've gone to Hollywood. And you'll often see them at your local cineplex, forced onto the Obligatory Scenes of films that don't even need them.

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