Emotional Pattern Examples

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

'We're more reluctant to offer cues as to how the audience is supposed to react in different situations, which confuses certain people. It's not a question of not being willing to follow conventions . . .. It's just that there's nothing interesting to us about being as formulaic as a lot of Hollywood movies.'

-- Joel Coen

Here's the sequence of the Emotional Pattern that lurks under the Obligatory Scene of Lanford Wilson's THE FIFTH OF JULY -- one of those Serio-comedies that dominate today's stages . . .

The central character, Ken, doesn't have what he thinks he wants.
We feel emotionally negative about his situation because we'd like him to have what he does want.
It looks like he may get what he wants.
And because this is what he wants, we feel emotionally positive about his situation.
At the Climax it suddenly looks like he definitely won't get it.
This reversal makes us feel emotionally negative about his situation -- we feel badly for him.
And then . . . It all works out for him. And nearly everyone else.
Even better than we expected. And we feel extremely positive emotionally about the outcome.

To be only partly facetious about it, the pattern the playwright puts us through in something with a Happy Ending is a bit like this . . .

				    ^ glad
 
			^ happy 
		   ^ sad
 
				^ glum

Here's one of Old Bill's Emotional Patterns as we roll into the Obligatory Scene . . .

Desdemona sings The Willow Song.
There's a faint glimmer that everything may work out after all -- and we have a flicker of positive emotional feeling about the situation.
Othello strangles her. [At the Climax]
This is not good, emotionally or otherwise. We feel terrible.
Othello has remorse and suddenly believes Desdemona still lives!
We feel great about this, though with obvious misgivings.
Othello realizes his mistake: she's dead.
We feel really awful.

In plays with definitely Un-Happy Endings, it's that flash of positive emotion [hope] just before the final ax falls that does us in. In pure comedies, it's that flash of negative emotion [despair] just before everybody gets what they want that sends us gliding out of the theatre on Cloud 9.

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