Beating Broadway: How to Create Stories for Musicals That Get Standing Ovations

by Steve Cuden

BEYOND THE MIDPOINT Coming out of the midpoint (and intermission), and proceeding through the second half of the second movement, ought to result in a slowly devolving sea of troubles that will, with time, come to a point in which all seems impossibly impassable. The hero’s situation will eventually turn grim. Both the hero and the audience will come to an understanding that the hero may not be able to prevail. The slippery slope becomes ever slipperier. All will begin to seem lost. It will be a deeply distressing period of time for the protagonist. This can result in a loss of job, love, marriage, family, status, faith, possessions, etc. Lives could be at stake. Whatever it is, it looms large in the protagonist’s life. Despite increasingly long odds against success, the hero continues trudging across the tundra that is the second half of the story’s second movement. The protagonist’s goal may be tantalizingly within sight—and yet it seems as far away as ever. He is not quite there yet. And then things get much worse as the hero heads toward what appears to be the end of the line for his quest—a cliff over sharp rocks and crocodiles. The end of the story’s second movement leads into potential catastrophe. As the old saw goes, “It’s always darkest before the dawn.”

PLOT POINT FIVE—THE BIG GLOOM Toward the end of the story’s second movement, things don’t look so good for your hero. It appears that he is at the end of the line before reaching his goal. This is one of the most powerful moments in the show. It appears that your protagonist is going to fail. There must be no doubt about this. He can’t possibly go on. He is going to crash and burn. Defeat is all but certain. As your protagonist reaches the lowest of his lows, the audience ought to sense that he cannot succeed in his quest. It’s all over.

In his influential book, Essentials of Screenwriting: The Art, Craft, and Business of Film and Television Writing, my old UCLA professor Richard Walter affectionately calls this moment “the big gloom,” which is the term I usually use, too. It is also called “the dark night of the soul” or the “all is lost moment,” or any number of other cheery things.

This low point almost always coincides with the end of the story’s second movement, and transitions into the third movement. Much like the transition from the point of no return into the story’s second movement, which occurs in the middle of a production’s designated Act One, the big gloom takes place midstream in a production’s Act Two. Remember, there is no Act Three in modern musicals. But there is always a third movement to the story, and the low point ought to lead right into it.

For the big gloom to work well, it is best if it is truly bleak and overwhelming for the hero. It doesn’t have to be depressing, but that can factor into the moment, too. It can last for as short a period as a single line of dialogue, or it can be a single lyric line of a song, or an entire song. Or it can last for the better part of a scene or more. Any way you writ...

PLOT POINT SIX—CLIMAX INTO RESOLUTION NOTE: THIS OCCURS WITHIN THE PRODUCTION’S “ACT TWO” Once the hero has reached the depths of despair during the big gloom he comes to yet another new understanding of what to do, or comes up with a workable solution (sometimes brilliant, sometimes not so much) that shows him the way out of his trouble. Lightning strikes, inspiration blooms, or a realization occurs, and the protagonist discovers some way in which maybe he can succeed after all. This can be a moment inspired by something from either outside or within the protagonist. But he should be the one to see the way to overcome his low point and get to his goal. No one but the protagonist should come up with the way out. This realization will lead him almost directly into the fray in order to face the final story challenge. He’s now so close to his goal he can taste victory.

Sometimes success follows and the hero obtains fame and fortune, or happiness, or the job he always wanted, or love finally comes his way. Yet sometimes he will achieve his goal only to pay the ultimate price in order to do so—up to and including sacrificing his own life. In many stories the hero succeeds in his quest only to ultimately lose it all. But in his success others may be able to go on with their lives. Whatever the solution is, like every other part of the story, it is always best when this is inevitable and the most ideal (or maybe the only) solution possible. And even better when it is utterly unexpected.

DECEIVE, DON’T CHEAT Audiences love to be deceived and surprised, but they do not like to feel cheated. This is an important concept: deceiving the audience is okay so long as the new path that the hero sets out on, or the solution that he employs, doesn’t come out of nowhere. It must clearly be the best solution for the problem, which could have even been masked up to that point. But if you cheat the audience by offering up a solution that has not been clearly set up as a part of the story, or is a...

Climaxes must be emotional in every way, difficult for the protagonist to endure and potentially life altering for him. In short, the climax must be a serious final challenge.

RESOLUTIONS The climax of the story must then lead to a satisfying resolution—which must be the result of being well set up throughout the story. Getting there through the climax ought to require that the hero overcome a final obstacle or two. Preferably these last hurdles will be by far the most challenging that the hero will have faced. The protagonist tries his darnedest to reach a resolution so that he may finally achieve his superobjective. As the story rises to a capitulation point—a climax—where all may come together, sometimes with happy results, sometimes not so much, the action (even if it is only emotional action) should reach a final boil. It is important that the hero arrives at the resolution of his goal by earning it. Achieving the goal cannot be easy, simple, or unearned. He can neither merely take it, nor have someone else hand it to him. That would feel unsatisfying. The audience must sense that the hero truly deserves whatever it is that he receives.

CATHARSIS After journeying through so much difficult terrain and overcoming so much struggle and strife, getting to the resolution ought to then result in catharsis for the audience. Audiences live for this moment. It is the main reason why we bother to get dressed, pay serious money, and spend a part of our lives watching a show. This is the big payoff that audiences crave. Do general audiences know this? No. But you must. Catharsis comes from a Greek word meaning an emotional purging or purification. To storytellers it simply means an emotional relief or release. After a buildup of tension over the majority of a well-made story, the audience will experience a sense of completeness because they finally have an answer to whether or not the protagonist has reached his goal. It is a relief to know when the protagonist’s struggle is over regardless of whether or not the outcome is positive or negative. To reiterate, many successful...

OVERCOMING THE PROTAGONIST’S FLAW If the protagonist’s flaw is well established in the earliest parts of the story (as it should be), it ought to be used for the hero to overcome or resolve his struggle. Stories in which the protagonist realizes that his flaw has held him back, and then overcomes that flaw, or uses it, to conquer his final obstacle, almost always wind up being remarkably satisfying to audiences. It is not necessary to call attention to the flaw in any way. It should just be there. So, if the protagonist’s flaw is arrogance, then he can use his arrogance to succeed. No need to point it out in dialogue or song, though you certainly can. It is common for climaxes in musicals to be shorter of duration than in a movie or play. Most musicals do not have movie-style action-oriented climaxes. Though some musical climaxes attempt to simulate physical action sequences, most climactic moments in musicals are emotional in nature. And because so much of a musical story’s emotions are handled via songs, it is quite common for a song to be sung as a show’s climax. Not infrequently these songs, which are sometimes called “eleven o’clock numbers,” address story, character, and e...

PLOT POINT SEVEN—NEW NORMAL The story world’s new normal happens after the hero has reached the resolution of his goal. Either he has achieved his desired superobjective or not. It is perfectly okay if he doesn’t achieve what he set out to do. But if he doesn’t, then preferably he should have learned something important about himself along the way. And so should we. Either way, it’s best when the hero has gained some insight into his own circumstance in life. These insights need not be a smack-you-over-the-head kind of thing. They can be subtle. Actually, it’s much more enjoyable for an audience if it is subtle or well woven into the story so that viewers come to an inherent understanding, not an overt one. It is important that the protagonist feel something has changed.

We all have goals in our lives, and so we are well equipped to relate to most every hero’s dilemma. This is one of the reasons audiences love well-drawn protagonists struggling through trying conflicts. We all understand what it’s like to have objectives and encounter major obstacles in our way. The hero does not have to achieve his goal in order to learn a lesson. Frequently, a character gets what he needs, not what he wants. Actually, it’s usually more satisfying when a protagonist has a strong want, goes after it, but winds up with what he really needs. A boy who wants the girl, but instead finds out the true meaning of life and love—and gets the girl, too—is almost always a preferred result.

As stated earlier, once the hero initially crosses the threshold (the point of no return) as he enters the story’s second movement, he can never go home again. The new normal can, in fact, return a character to the same physical location from which he started, but the journey will have changed him in some important, even fundamental way. He may be back at his original physical “home,” but any number of things will have changed since he left. This is the protagonist’s new normal. Audiences who find the hero’s arrival at such a new normal to be physically or psychologically revelatory about that character are likely to be the most satisfied.

At the end of The Music Man, Harold Hill is in love for real with Marian. His con has turned out to have actual value for the citizens of River City. And he’s a changed man.

It may be best to avoid delivering a resolution that is too neat or perfect.

Right off the bat you want to give the audience a sense that they are in safe, sure hands, that they have done well by buying a ticket and showing up. You don’t want anyone to wonder why he has bothered coming to the theater. Plus, this is the first moment of many to come in the story, and all those that come after it must follow in the footsteps of this first one. The whole story, its mood, tone, style, etc., is set up right at the top. The good news is that once you have someone in a seat, he wants you to succeed. He will be pulling for you to give him an entertaining, enlightening, uplifting, and emotional time. The problem for the show’s creators is that if you fail the audience at the top, then it is so much harder to gain their trust until you burrow much deeper into the story. If you don’t have them at the outset, it becomes far more challenging to bring them to your side. Therefore, having a killer opening image, action, movement, moment, song, etc., is a huge advantage.

CLOSING MOMENTS The same holds true for the way in which we leave the audience at the end. Why? Because how we conclude the story, those last images and sounds, if they are cool enough, profound enough, amazing enough, etc., will stay with the audience long after the show is over, maybe becoming imprinted forever in their memory banks. Turn your last images into lasting images.

In order to keep an audience on their toes, most writers will lead their protagonists toward various assumptions and conclusions, only to turn the tables and reveal that those assumptions and conclusions were invalid or untrue. Such moments are called “epiphanies.”

Sometimes epiphanies spur a character on. Sometimes such revelations cause a character to stop and reassess or alter his plans. Some epiphanies are true, some are false. And some epiphanies are experienced only by the audience without the character experiencing it at all. It is not uncommon to see at least two, sometimes more, of these in a big story like a full-length musical. These can turn out to be reversals or big twists, but they can also be simple true or false assumptions that refocus the characters or the story or both.

Epiphanies are an essential part of storytelling. A protagonist who comes to understand or realize something fundamental about his world, or discover something that can change the course of his journey, or find something that makes him believe he can succeed, or will never succeed, or reveals something that dynamically shifts his approach, or throws him off his game, or gives him what he believes to be an advantage, etc., has likely faced an epiphany. Epiphanies work best when they are bold, big, important, eye-opening, reenergizing, demoralizing, course altering, and so on.

Epiphanies help the audience to empathize with the protagonist. It helps the viewer to care about the hero because we have all been there, surprised to discover that something we thought was true is not so, or vice versa. As big as epiphanies can be for the characters, especially f...

Epiphanies can occur at almost any time in the course of a story. But in most cases it is best when they are laid out so that they don’t occur too closely together in the story. Although epiphanies can be positive or negative, the resulting discovery of the truth ought to be the opposite of the protagonist’s expectation and lead him in a new direction.

Try to place meaningful epiphanies somewhere between the point of no return and the midpoint, and then again somewhere between the midpoint and big gloom. This will help move along the large and often ungainly second movement of a story by keeping the protagonist, and in turn the audience, off balance and on their toes.

This holds true in all forms of drama, including comedy, tragedy, farce, and melodrama. No conflict means that nobody in the audience will give a plug nickel about the characters.

Mostly what audiences want is sex and violence in all their glorious forms—often expressed through bloodless moral or ethical lapses of judgment, poor choices, and crummy decisions. Sex and violence do not require pornography or blood-curdling horror effects to make an impact. Innuendo works equally as well as graphic words and pictures. Deep, heartfelt, grating angst can be just as violent as bloody battles. But put both emotional words and violent images together and you may raise the roof.

Conflict can be as simple as someone needing a quarter for a parking meter but having no change in his pocket. Or someone is locked out of a house when he must get inside. Or two people unable to decide which movie to see. Or folks on a first date not finding a moment just to be alone. There is no limit to the number of such potentially conflict-filled scenarios. UCLA Professor Richard Walter is fond of saying, “No village of the happy people!”

Heed this well: conflict in all its variations must ooze from every pore of your work. Audiences crave conflict. They abhor niceties and pleasantness. Conflict is the almighty altar at which we writers must all worship. Keep conflict high and your audiences will adore you.

Conflict equals Desire plus an Obstacle. Isn’t this beautifully simple? A character wants something, but something is in his way. That is everything you need to know. Of course, accomplishing this over and over again with characters and scenes that continue to drive a story forward is not so simple. It takes a certain amount of skill and a whole lot of work to fulfill this equation.

Another helpful formula to consider is: Conflict = a Goal, an Obstacle, and an Unwillingness to Compromise. That should be the mantra of the development of every story.

The best conflicts are those that are inevitable to the story; those moments that must be there, belong there, and work best for that moment. Ideally, no other beat, action, line of dialogue, or plot point could be better. What does that mean? To find success in telling your tale, conceive of your storyline so that it is the only way for the story to move forward and resolve. When a story’s outcome is inevitable it feels whole and complete, and not as if it could have spiraled away in a thousand different directions.

The same holds true for conflict; it, too, should feel inevitable.

Great stories require great characters. That sounds simplistic, but it’s very difficult to achieve. Bottom line: dull, two-dimensional, cardboard characters do not make for memorable shows.

RELATABLE CHARACTERS In order to tell a great story, you must have relatable characters. Without relatable characters to follow, you have nothing more than scenery and furniture set against colorfully moody lighting. In the best stories, the characters drive the action, the plot, and the world. When characters are well developed, three dimensional, and after a real goal, then there is a good chance that we’ll care enough to invest our time and energy in the world that they inhabit.

Ultimately, we only care about characters that make us feel something. To achieve such depth of feelings requires developing characters in conflict with other characters and their environment. That is what generates audience empathy.

In his terrific book Making Movies, the great film director Sidney Lumet wrote, “In drama, the characters should determine the story. In melodrama the story determines the characters.” (31) In both cases you need strong characters. There’s nothing wrong with melodrama, but storytelling is usually more interesting, more satisfying, and more effective, when charact...

Place compelling characters inside of interesting situations, then force them to be repeatedly steeped in conflict for the entirety of the tale, and you very well may have a hit on your hands.

You can concoct the most brilliant, devious structure with lots of clever plotting and story movement, but without wonderfully intriguing, uniquely flawed, challenged, dynamic, downtrodden, upbeat, passionate, mean-spirited, crafty, idiotic, foolish, crazy, brilliant, sullen, dopey, manipulative, cantankerous, wildly hopeful, tragically lost characters for us to follow as they each attempt to achieve some must-have goal at the end of their appointed journey, you have little or nothing.

The overwhelming majority of popular dramatic works, not just musicals, feature one or maybe two prominent characters that the audience innately follows from early in the piece. Nobody ever tells the audience whose story they should follow. Therefore the story and its characters must be constructed in a way that the audience arrives at such an understanding on their own, naturally, without the author banging them over the head with it. Ideally the audience should never know that the process of protagonist identification is taking place. It should happen organically through smart storytelling.

NO MERCY FOR THE HERO

The protagonist must suffer all of the difficulties, indignities, troubles, pain, and conflict that the authors can heap on him. The more conflict that the protagonist endures the more the audience will love you, the writer. Why? Are writers all sadists? Well, I hope not, but audiences want to live through problems they don’t have to deal with firsthand. And that can be readily achieved by following the exploits of a protagonist.

As authors we must show no mercy toward our protagonists. We must knock them down early and often and keep them there. Writers should apply a metaphorical boot (though, in some tales, it can be the real thing) to the throat of the story’s protagonist from the first time he is seen, and that boot should be held firmly in place right to the bitter end of the story. Such abuse ought to be applied psychologically at least as much as physically.

Being hard on your protagonist is necessary in order to elicit empathy from the audience. With empathy comes caring, and this is what makes a character seem compelling to us. The audience needs to be concerned about the protagonist in order to root for him. This inevitably raises the level of intensity of both the emotion and the catharsis that must be reached by the end of the story.

Remember: show no mercy on your hero. Kick him even when he’s down.

Keeping the protagonist’s story front and center throughout as much of the show as possible is always advisable.

As stated earlier, it is vital that the protagonist develop an easily identifiable, clear objective fairly close to the outset of the story. Certainly, if he doesn’t have an obvious objective at the top of the story, he’d better have one as a result of encountering the inciting incident. From a storytelling perspective, it’s always a good thing if a hero’s “want” ultimately turns into receiving something more important—a vital “need,” perhaps one he did not initially know was of any value to him until he discovers it, usually quite late in the story.

Every protagonist needs a counteracting force against which he can battle toward his goal. Such a counteracting force, or character, is known as an antagonist.

An antagonist merely needs to be a character with an agenda that differs in a notable way from that of the protagonist, one who represents a serious impediment to the protagonist’s success. Such a forceful character must be a big-time roadblock or an opposing force. Mostly, an antagonist needs to have a goal that causes him to be in real conflict with the protagonist.

Ideally, the antagonist’s goal, or superobjective, ought to run counter to that of the protagonist—but it doesn’t have to. They may have identical goals, but as long as the antagonist makes it nearly impossible for the protagonist to achieve his goal, that’s good enough.