The Trigger and the Heap
PURPOSES OF DIALOGUE, #2: Action v. Reaction
In a previous blog entry, I spoke about the five basic purposes of dialogue in fiction: To illustrate INTENTION, to facilitate ACTION v. REACTION, to illustrate RELATIONSHIPS, to show character VOICE, and to provide EXPOSITION. I explained the importance of Intentions, especially through sub-text. Related to intentions is the second purpose of dialogue, which I'll talk about now: showing ACTION V. REACTION between characters. The mechanism of ACTION v. REACTION (no response is still a reaction), creates a progressive dynamic in your story. This dynamic provides tension/conflict and illuminates the obstacles to characters' goals/intentions
To understand how the mechanism of Action v. Reaction functions to tell your fictional story, I borrow from a theory propounded by David Ball, a theater teacher and director. This theory is also called "the trigger and the heap." (As in Shooter, and Shot Dead).
David Ball is a dramaturge and director who wrote a book about dramatic text analysis called Backwards & Forwards. He claims that a well-made play can be analyzed as one would do a machine, with moving parts. A dramatic story begins with an Action (trigger) that results in a Reaction (heap). The heap then becomes the trigger for a new action, and so on.
This is basically the same model that Aristotle crafted 2500 years ago, with a well-made tragedy consisting of cause & effect happening over and over: a causal chain of events. (In Greek tragedy, as well as in formal debate, the word "agon" identified the key conflict taking place between the principals: the terms "protagonist" and "antagonist" draw upon that Latin root.)
The same principal applies to fiction. Of course, drama is limited: in plays or films this mechanism of action v. reaction can only be demonstrated through dialogue or action, whereas fiction writers may use description as well. However, dialogue iss till the "sweet spot" for dramatic moments in fiction, conveying feelings and intentions with powerful pathos.
We started this discourse on The Purposes of Dialogue by using Anna Karenina as our example of dramatic fiction, so let's stay with it. In Tolstoy's novel, Anna and her pursuer, Count Vronsky, have embarked on a passionate affair which must be kept secret, for Anna risks being disgraced and potentially losing her young son if her husband were to find out. She can hide her feelings at some level, but when she and Karenina attend a horse race where Vronsky and members of his regiment are racing their horses, disaster strikes. Vronsky rides his horse so aggressively (big symbolism there) that he causes the mare to stumble and fall, throwing him and breaking her back. From her seat in the stands Anna sees her lover thrown to the ground and moans out loud, then collapses with weeping, revealing her involvement with Vronsky to her husband and to all her acquaintances.
Vronsky's action -- mishandling the mare until she breaks -- is the trigger, causing Anna's disastrous reaction -- freaking out when she thinks he might be injured --(heap). Her reaction then becomes the trigger for Karenina's reaction, which is to be sufficiently mortified and alarmed by his wife's public display of concern for another man to scold her in the carriage on the way home, "you have behaved improperly, and I would wish it not to occur again." Anna barely hears him because she is intensely worried about her lover (heap). She is so distracted and dismayed that she responds to her husband with brutal honesty (trigger), telling him "I hear you, but I am thinking of him. I love him, I am his mistress; I can't bear you…"
Reading this, the reader hears, in those words, that Anna has sealed her own doom. If only she'd waited until they were home and she could withdraw long enough to compose herself! -- we think, coming to the end of this chapter. But it is not to be. She REACTED reflexively, emotionally, to Karenina's triggering words. And so the die is cast for Anna.
In a previous blog entry, I spoke about the five basic purposes of dialogue in fiction: To illustrate INTENTION, to facilitate ACTION v. REACTION, to illustrate RELATIONSHIPS, to show character VOICE, and to provide EXPOSITION. I explained the importance of Intentions, especially through sub-text. Related to intentions is the second purpose of dialogue, which I'll talk about now: showing ACTION V. REACTION between characters. The mechanism of ACTION v. REACTION (no response is still a reaction), creates a progressive dynamic in your story. This dynamic provides tension/conflict and illuminates the obstacles to characters' goals/intentions
To understand how the mechanism of Action v. Reaction functions to tell your fictional story, I borrow from a theory propounded by David Ball, a theater teacher and director. This theory is also called "the trigger and the heap." (As in Shooter, and Shot Dead).
David Ball is a dramaturge and director who wrote a book about dramatic text analysis called Backwards & Forwards. He claims that a well-made play can be analyzed as one would do a machine, with moving parts. A dramatic story begins with an Action (trigger) that results in a Reaction (heap). The heap then becomes the trigger for a new action, and so on.
This is basically the same model that Aristotle crafted 2500 years ago, with a well-made tragedy consisting of cause & effect happening over and over: a causal chain of events. (In Greek tragedy, as well as in formal debate, the word "agon" identified the key conflict taking place between the principals: the terms "protagonist" and "antagonist" draw upon that Latin root.)
The same principal applies to fiction. Of course, drama is limited: in plays or films this mechanism of action v. reaction can only be demonstrated through dialogue or action, whereas fiction writers may use description as well. However, dialogue iss till the "sweet spot" for dramatic moments in fiction, conveying feelings and intentions with powerful pathos.
We started this discourse on The Purposes of Dialogue by using Anna Karenina as our example of dramatic fiction, so let's stay with it. In Tolstoy's novel, Anna and her pursuer, Count Vronsky, have embarked on a passionate affair which must be kept secret, for Anna risks being disgraced and potentially losing her young son if her husband were to find out. She can hide her feelings at some level, but when she and Karenina attend a horse race where Vronsky and members of his regiment are racing their horses, disaster strikes. Vronsky rides his horse so aggressively (big symbolism there) that he causes the mare to stumble and fall, throwing him and breaking her back. From her seat in the stands Anna sees her lover thrown to the ground and moans out loud, then collapses with weeping, revealing her involvement with Vronsky to her husband and to all her acquaintances.
Vronsky's action -- mishandling the mare until she breaks -- is the trigger, causing Anna's disastrous reaction -- freaking out when she thinks he might be injured --(heap). Her reaction then becomes the trigger for Karenina's reaction, which is to be sufficiently mortified and alarmed by his wife's public display of concern for another man to scold her in the carriage on the way home, "you have behaved improperly, and I would wish it not to occur again." Anna barely hears him because she is intensely worried about her lover (heap). She is so distracted and dismayed that she responds to her husband with brutal honesty (trigger), telling him "I hear you, but I am thinking of him. I love him, I am his mistress; I can't bear you…"
Reading this, the reader hears, in those words, that Anna has sealed her own doom. If only she'd waited until they were home and she could withdraw long enough to compose herself! -- we think, coming to the end of this chapter. But it is not to be. She REACTED reflexively, emotionally, to Karenina's triggering words. And so the die is cast for Anna.
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