(Method 5)
One-Scene Play
One way to write a vignette is to think of it as a very short one-scene screenplay or stage play.
- QUESTION: What is the core characteristic of any play?
- ANSWER: Dramatic conflict; that is, a conflict arising from the irreconcilable desires of more than one character.
Conflict is Everything
Sometimes one of the characters is not even a human being and the conflict is between nature and an animal or a human being. Think of a cat climbing a tree and unable to make it down safely. Or think of Hemingway’s “The Old Man and The Sea.”
Other times the conflict is internal and can't be observed easily from outside. Or it's between several characters. But a conflict must be there in this kind of vignette writing.
Yet, it must be a conflict that we care about. It must be significant enough an issue to deserve our care and attention. Otherwise, we won’t feel moved by the conflict in question and the vignette will fall flat on its face.
For example, imagine a billionaire buying $10 worth of lottery tickets and not winning anything. Imagine this billionaire worrying and fussing about his “$10 lost.” This certainly is an internal "conflict" in the strictest sense of the term but why should we care about it?
On the other hand, think about a man accused of murder. He knows that it is his mother who committed the crime but if he reveals what he knows, he is sure they’ll arrest his mother and due to her medical condition, she’ll die in prison.
Now, will he give away his mother and tell the truth, or lie, save his mother, but rot in jail? That’s a conflict we can certainly all identify with and read with great interest to see “what happened next.”
Importance of a Dilemma
That brings us to the other principle of a good vignette that is built as one short scene of dramatic conflict: dilemma.
A DILEMMA is a situation in which we are faced with TWO equally undesirable alternatives for action, but we still have to make a choice and act.
That kind of excruciating psychic pressure is what energizes a dilemma. A vignette written with that kind of “nuclear energy plant” at its heart is one that hums alive and sweeps us away in its immediacy and urgency.
To sum up:
- Select one or more characters. Decide what they want.
- Decide why their desires constitute a “dramatic conflict.”
- Define the dilemma that lies in the heart of this conflict.
- Let the characters run loose and let them clash within the few hundred words allowed for your vignette. Let that clash bring us to the breathtaking edge of a high cliff and then perhaps take wings and transport us beyond an emotional horizon that we did not even know existed.
Exercises
Here are some Vignette-as-a-One-Scene-Play exercises:
- The MOMENT when a woman opens a door and is confronted with her lover pointing a gun at her crippled husband who is also the only person on earth who knows where her lost daughter is...
- The MOMENT when a man stumbles upon $5 million dollars in small bills stolen from a local bank and his lover needs a liver transplant to live, which also costs that much...
- A man loses his everything in a business gamble and decides to commit suicide. Just as he is about to throw himself off a bridge, at that MOMENT, he notices a commotion down below: a young girl is fighting an armed attacker for her dear life and crying out for help...
To learn other techniques for writing a great vignette and samples see