Our last play of the year is Non-Figurative Sculpture by Lisa Pasold. In this article I’ll talk a little about the play, the way in which it subsumes structure within character and why I think it is such an effective piece of writing (hint: it’s about dialogue and how to write expert level dialogue). Before that, however, make sure you click below and listen to the play! Spoilers await below the marker.
Non-Figurative Sculpture
Sneaks up on your, doesn’t it?
Right, listened to the play? Good, wasn’t it! What, you haven’t listened? STOP!!! Seriously. The rest of this post is spoilerific.
Lisa is a much subtler writer than I. This is not a particularly high bar to pass. But normally, when I edit or comment on someone’s work, I’m pretty good at picking out the line and form of the story, the character’s and their obstacles, and why it is or isn’t working. Lisa’s work is a mystery. I am enraptured, from the very first line, and what’s worse is I don’t know why.
Look, there are bloody rules to stories, right!?
I’ll try to explain what I mean. Here is a simple anatomy of a story. Someone has a life, but something is missing. They encounter a problem to which they are forced to respond. There first response, however, makes things worse: for reasons connected to whatever is missing from their life. Now, they either change, try again and succeed (comedy) or fail do change, fail, and die (tragedy).
Non-Figurative Sculpture starts with Annie’s beautiful line “I have to stop dating artists.” Why is this a great line? It’s the future tense and the negative, betraying the fact that Annie is not going to stop dating artists – that she’s probably said this exact same thing before. It’s a line filled with both longing and mystery, which is a great way to start a story.
Right then, says I, here is our protagonist (first line is usually a good giveaway – and a hot tip to us journeyman writers is to give the main character the first line; it makes things clearer for the audience.) She wants something, and something is missing. It’s a 25-page play so our inciting incident should be somewhere around page 3. Jolly good clockwork writing.
But we switch almost immediately to Colin’s story. And he’s lying. He’s lying delightfully, he’s possibly lying to himself: through distraction, through clever use of tense, and all the while tying it to the visual, Lisa gives us another character filled with longing. Great. So, we have two lovelorn characters in a creaky elevator. That means meet-cute in a broken-down elevator, right?
But the elevator only stops at the top of page 6. That’s more than a quarter of a way through our story, which is very late for an inciting incident. Also, the old “straight girl falls for her gay best friend” story is dangerous ground and, I think, not really Lisa’s style[i]. So, what’s going on? Was the inciting incident Colin’s arrival? That’s happened before the play starts and doesn’t feel like a challenge to whatever Annie is missing: Colin is firmly in her comfort zone. Similarly, when our lift finally breaks down, it feels more like comic relief than a real challenge.
Lisa Pasold is a great big cheat
And yet I’m engaged. I want to know what happened to Colin and I want to find out something more on Annie’s broken heart. Thence: the arrival of M.
M is the grumpy chap in the Wheelchair: as is entirely appropriate to someone who doesn’t intend to come back after that night, M never introduces himself. M is blocked by his wheelchair, Colin is blocked by his literal and figurative baggage, and Annie still needs to stop dating artists. The lift blockage is overcome, easily, at almost exactly the halfway point of the play. This would normally be the turning point of the story: the moment where the protagonist overcomes their weakness or sows the seeds for their ultimate failure. But mostly it’s just a broken lift that gets fixed.
It becomes clear from this point that the lift is a useful device to separate Annie and Colin and give each of them some time with M. Is that disappointing? No. M is immediately an engaging character, far from the grumpy antagonist we might have expected on his arrival, and just like Annie and Colin is carrying layers of hurt and mystery. Colin takes his opportunity to make a fool of himself talking about wheelchairs to someone in a wheelchair (as someone who spent six years using a chair, I particularly enjoyed this section.) But this process humanises both. And Annie’s conversation with M as he waits for the once again occupied lift is somehow heart-breaking from both sides: M’s reveal that he was never very important to Geri, Annie’s uncontrollable fascination with artists.
And then, the perfect last lines, taking us straight back to the beginning of the play:
ANNIE
Wait… But… Good-night!
(Sighs)
Colin. You realize he’s an artist
You don’t need explosions to cause a bang (tell nobody I said that, I will deny everything).
So, I guess this was a tragedy, right, because Annie didn’t overcome her need for artists, Colin won’t admit that it was Tom who dumped him, and M leaves heartbroken into the night? But why does any of this work? Where are the damned obstacles? I mean, this whole story is basically “a bunch of people go up and down in a lift and try to pretend they aren’t sad.” I’ve read many, many radio play scripts that have this sort of talky nothing much happens feel, and they’re almost universally rubbish. Us mortals should stick with an inciting incident at 10% and plenty of explosions.
But Non-Figurative Sculpture is not talky rubbish and does not need explosions[ii]. Its success is routed in the language, and the vivid characterisation. Us normal writers use big explosions as an external obstacle to symbolise the internal struggles that are the essence of drama. Lisa uses misdirection and wonderful language to keep us rooted in the internal. So, M’s drama is that he needs to get his sculpture out of his ex-girlfriends flat, but he is blocked, not by the lift (which is easily overcome), but by the neighbour/neighbour’s friends who insist on forcing him to discuss his feelings about it. Colin needs somewhere to stay, but his pride and pain about his failed relationship mean he must find a way to do so without saying why. Annie I’m not sure about. But I know the journey is there, because I feel it when she says, “You realize he’s an artist”?
How do us mortal writers learn from Lisa’s work?
Well, there’s some screenwriting book I read somewhere that said when you start out writing a scene – if you’re stuck – just have them say exactly what they need. That’s a good tip. Dialogue is action, and action is an expression of need.
But once you’ve laid this out, remember that people almost never say, or even know, what they need. Make friends with the conditional tense. Remember that description of a physical object or action is a thousand times more powerful than just saying how they feel. Have your characters evade with questions, change the subject, do anything they can to keep moving towards their need without exposing themselves. Because if there is one thing that this play reminds us, it is that we are all as fragile as M’s sculpture (and Colin’s poor feet). The powerful empathy created if you can successfully and realistically but indirectly display that fragility, grounded in an incident – a break up with a boyfriend, a midnight raid to recover your stuff, that vulnerability will have you listeners glued to their headphones.
If you want to read more of Lisa’s stuff, I highly recommend The Riparian, as well as her first novel Rats of Las Vegas. You can also check out her website here: https://www.lisapasold.com/
[i] Although if she did it, it would be great and I’d read it. Is many fan-boying getting too strong yet?
[ii] Heresy! EXPLOSIONS!!!
