Lajos Egri’s The Art of Dramatic Writing took me on a deep dive of the theory behind the parts of the play. Before this book, I had not considered that the pieces of the play could be treated philosophically. Egri discusses the protagonists and antagonists, setting the scene and establishing normal before diving into deviations from early Greek plays up to the 1920’s or so.

One of the topics he hit that was a great lightbulb moment for me was proving the premise. The premise is set in the first scene or at least in the introduction of each character. A story always begins with normal and then asks “what if?” In the first scene, we get the premise of the play to understand the normal. This should set the base of each character. Further scenes introduce the what if, the encroachment of the strange into the normal, so that the characters themselves deal or fail to deal with the new normal. Then they bounce off of each other in completely logical (for them) manners, thus creating conflict.

The climax is not the crux of the play.

Just a reminder, in a typical 5 act play, we have some phrases like introduction, action, rising action, climax, denouement, and so forth. In our modern attention spans, the climax is the crux of the conflict. It’s the boss battle that determines the ultimate winner. If you’ve read my other pieces on conversation, the climax is where you expect the winning argument to prevail.

The most important scene (according to Egri) happens just before the climax. It’s the scene where the characters, true to their character, embark on the final, most logical chain of actions that will lead them to a terrible confrontation with the other characters and thus end the play. In order to prove the premise, you must have set the premise in the beginning.

Proving the premise determines the climax with inevitability. There is no other path. In a way, proving the premise as its own scene just prior to the climax is the climax of the emotional journey. To be really fair, if a character makes a different choice in this scene, it can determine a happy ending or a sad one. Even if the path of the careening plot appeared to be going in a different direction just before the final decision.

I’m great at hedging my bets. But if I want to make a single statement in a work of art, I must stand firm from the very first sentence.