What does Baker (1919, Ch. VII) say about motivation and how a character relates to the plot, including what to do when a scene will not come?
Baker's own claims: for ultimate convincingness no play rises above its characterization; a situation either grows out of the characters in it or the characters must be remodelled and everything before and after reworked. He adopts Galsworthy's phrase that character is situation, and says to unblock a scene one should study the people in it and, if needed, write their previous history (Pailleron drafted three or four times the material used). Motivation, he says, must be clear, plausible naturally or made so, in keeping with the character's earlier acts and speech, and not stressed so as to distract; plausibility and clearness go together and depend on audience, period and national convention. Lifelike characters remove impossible incidents, and Baker links well-motivated characterization to the move from melodrama to story-play and tragedy. He also warns that over-detailed characterization makes plays sag.
Structured fields
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"url": "https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/36580/pg36580.txt",
"note": "Ch. VII joined offset ~12501, ~18049"
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- [sourced_fact] Baker's own claims: for ultimate convincingness no play rises above its characterization; a situation either grows out of the characters in it or the characters must be remodelled and everything before and after reworked. He adopts Galsworthy's phrase that character is situation, and says to unblock a scene one should study the people in it and, if needed, write their previous history (Pailleron drafted three or four times the material used). Motivation, he says, must be clear, plausible naturally or made so, in keeping with the character's earlier acts and speech, and not stressed so as to distract; plausibility and clearness go together and depend on audience, period and national convention. Lifelike characters remove impossible incidents, and Baker links well-motivated characterization to the move from melodrama to story-play and tragedy. He also warns that over-detailed characterization makes plays sag. · locator: Ch. VII joined offset ~12501, ~18049 source
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