Learning About Writing Fiction From Watching Opera
Dramatic principles transcend genre.
My sister turned me on to the New York Metropolitan Opera’s free nightly Livestream. When New York City sheltered in place, the Met offered its HD series of filmed operas to the public for free.
As of this writing, I’ve probably watched nine operas. Often while writing or editing posts for Medium. The tone of the opera often contrasts with what I’m writing. For example, I wrote a MuddyUm humor piece while a certain Scottish Duke murdered his way to the throne.
(Note: Thespians refer to Shakespeare’s version as “The Scottish Play.” It’s verifiably bad luck to speak the M-word out loud, though I can write Macbeth. I don’t know if this applies to opera, but based on horror stories, I am not taking any chances. Nor should you.)
There is much wisdom in opera that can enrich and inform fiction writers. So let’s begin.
Playing for high stakes.
Opera is nothing if not dramatic. Stakes, like soprano solos, are high. Life and death. Kill or be killed in the Scottish play about ruthless ambition and blood-stained guilt. In Bizet’s The Pearl Fishers, set by the Met in Sri Lanka during a tsunami, two men in love with the same woman fight for her and their lives as the waters destroy their village.
Even comedic stakes are high. Falstaff has to be taught a big enough lesson by the merry wives he flirts with, he won’t dare try again. Hence, he’s dumped in the river in a casket sized laundry basket. So it’s not the plotline that makes it a comedy, it’s the tone, the mood, the campiness. Plus, the fact that he lives to complain about it and go the bewitched woods at midnight to be humiliated again.
Even if the stakes seem low to us, they must be huge to the main character. If he doesn’t win his love, he will die or do himself in. He doesn’t have to say that in so many words, and probably shouldn’t. But let him feel it, and make us feel his pain and pathos.
Start big and build from there.
The operas I enjoyed had grand openings. They introduced their world with maximum stage magic. Battle scenes and moon-eerie woods, nymphs emerging from gaseous swamps, witches dancing and chanting.
It’s not just pageantry. Something big happens early on. A fight. A battle lost or won. A witch or wizard casts a spell. Best buddies conspire to test the loyalty of their loves. An angry god or goddess orders an impossible mission in exchange for protection.
In opera, the audience gets to catch up with the plot via lyrical or dramatic arias that repeat the main points predictably. If that happened in prose, we’d slam the book shut.
But the author still has to convey the information, just not in blatant exposition. It could be lobbed back and forth as ammo in a verbal duel. Or unearthed in carefully planted clues over the course of several scenes. Give the reader a detective job to do.
A word about music.
Good fiction shows without telling. Operas show and sing their stories. It’s all about music and voice. Fiction writing is also all about voice and music — the music of language. Not just what’s said, but how it’s said.
The syntax, the word choices, sentence length, the rhythm of the language — these are the notes and colors on a writer’s palette that can elevate a story with a familiar plot to breath-taking artistry. Readers forgive exposition that knocks their socks off in the telling.
Setting and costume serve story.
The artistic director of a play or opera sets the story in a specific place and time, which adds layers of mood, texture, and magic. Witches in the woods, in 1930s depression drab browns, with pocket lights in their pocketbooks casting eerie facial shadows, set the scene for Verdi’s Macbeth.
A Coney Island circus with real circus performers serving as chorus and stage crew presage the coming mischief in Mozart’s Così fan Tutte.
And a mega kitschy kitchen with 55 cupboards gearing up for rampage and spillage, cries out for the slapsticky comedia-inspired elements of the (Verdi) Falstaff production. One look and you know what you’re in for. Pure delight.
It all sounds over the top, doesn’t it? And yet it fits perfectly. On a stage, the lighting tells our eyes where to look. Yes, there’s other business going on, but we’re shown where to focus. Details are selected for us.
In our fictional words, we provide the spotlight with our descriptive prose. And by being sparing and precise with details.
Less is more, especially on the page. Not everything on the detective’s desk but something revelatory about who she is. Perhaps a photo of her kids next to unpaid bills past due. You decide based on your character and their story.
We may not need to see every animal in the barn, but how are the walls? Warped and weather-worn? How fresh does the hay smell?
In sci-fi and fantasy, you get to world-build. Have fun with it. But be gentle on your reader. Introduce a weapon or tool as it’s picked up to be used. And show us how it works in the working of it.
If it needs to be explained, don’t bore us. Create an emergency where two characters have to fight over how to fix it, or how to use it because the manual evaporated in the decomposition transition machine. Then have fun making it re-materialize when the battle is over, and all is won or lost. And that damned thing mocks them.
Give us a villain we love to hate, and a hero unequal to the task.
Opera is flashy and unapologetic in larger than life heroes and villains. The bad guys are not just bad, they’re evil incarnate.
These roles are sought and fought after. They showcase an actor or singer’s chops — often prized higher than romantic leads. Making villains larger than life, and smarter than your hero gives your hero some growing to do. It also fills out their character arc.
Many plot and character quandaries can be solved by enhancing the depravity of the villain. If he or she can be defeated too easily, readers want their money back. The blood, sweat, and tears invested in troubling your hero and discovering how she or he overcomes are well worth it.
Make minor characters earn their keep.
You’ve heard the term character actor. These take seemingly minor or secondary parts that give three-dimensionality to a story. Often they’re the comic relief. Or the hero, heroine, or villains’ sidekick.
In Così fan Tutte, Don Alfonso, a friend of the aforementioned best buddies and his sidekick Despina, show off their characters by creating mayhem. Then showcase their talents by untangling the mess they’ve made of the hero’s and heroine’s love lives.
So don’t let them just be spear holders. Let them hold vital information, secrets, clues to the solution. Let them steal scenes and stop shows. Give them as much color, witty dialogue, shtick, and action as you can.
Think Boo Radley in To Kill a Mockingbird. He seems tangential until he saves the kids from racist bullies at the end. Radar and Klinger in M*A*S*H. Clowns to be sure, but their antics heighten the theme of war’s absurdity and the heroism of the most cynical of medics.
Elizabeth in The Guernsey Potato Peel Pie and Literary Society. Barely a whisper, and more of a ghost, she’s the missing mother of a little girl raised by a village recently under German occupation. Her story frames the Channel Island landscape where Juliet falls in love with a local farmer, Dawsey, and his way of life.
So there you have it. Even if your story does not feel operatic in tone or scope, let these lessons play a bit in your fertile imagination. You may discover something that gives your story an additional layer of depth and/or meaning. Or, you may just decide to tune in and enjoy the free Livestream nightly opera. Either way, their or my intentions will have been Met.
Marilyn Flower writes political humor and satire to delight socially and spiritually conscious folks. She’s a regular columnist for the prison newsletter, Freedom Anywhere, where she writes about faith and prayer. Five of her short plays have been produced in San Francisco. Clowning and improvisation strengthen her resolve during these crazy times.