Republic of the Philippines

Department of Education
Region III Central Luzon
Division of Mabalacat City
BICAL SENIOR HIGH SCHOOL
Bical, Mabalacat City (P)

Name: _________________________ Grade & Section: ______________

CREATIVE WRITING
QUARTER 4, MODULE 1
Identify the Various Elements, Techniques, and Literary
Devices in Drama

After going through this lesson, you are expected to:

1. Identify the various elements, techniques, and literary devices in drama

Learning Task 1: What I Know

Directions: Read the statements carefully. Identify what is being defined in each number. Choose
the letter of the correct answer in the box. Write your answers on your answer sheet.

1. This refers to a person or individual in the drama that may have defined personal qualities
and/or histories.
2. This refers to the words used, the accent, tone, pattern of speech, and even the pauses in
speech, say a lot about the character and help reveal not just his personality, but also his social
status, past, and family background as given by the play. 3. This pertains to the message that the
play gives to the audience.
4. This pertains to the order of events occurring in a play, exposing the past or background of the
main and other characters, and the point of conflict, then proceeds to giving the central theme or
climax.
5. This refers to the time and place where a story is set is one of its important parts.
6. This includes what the character wears and how the character carries himself on stage. 7. This
includes the use of sounds and rhythm in dialogs as well as music compositions that are used in
the plays.
8. This deal with the scenes, costumes, and special effects used in it.
9. This defines how the play is presented to the audiences. The use and organization of stage
properties and the overall setting of a play.
10. These are often used to give hints of the future events in the story as these
complement the other elements of a scene and make it more effective.

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Learning Task 2: Arrange to Know

Directions: Arrange the jumbled letter to identify the words that are relevant to our topic.
Definitions will help you to determine the hidden words. Write your answers on your answer
sheet.

What is It

In this part of your journey, we provide something for you to deepen your understanding about the
various elements, techniques, and literary devices in drama.
Please continue reading with comprehension as you discover further knowledge that will
help you out in your quest on the remaining phases of this lesson.

What is Drama?
-Drama in literature refers to the performance of written dialogue and stage action. It’s a literary
genre that allows actors to act out a writer’s words directly to an audience.

- It is a composition in prose or verse presenting in dialogue or pantomime a story

involving conflict or contrast of character, especially one intended to be acted on the stage
- It is a mode of fictional representation through dialogue and performance. It is one of the
literary genres, which is an imitation of some action. Drama is also a type of a play written
for theater, television, radio, and film.

Different Types of Literary Drama

Comedies are usually humorous plays which uses clever wordplay or turns of phrase.

Farce is a comic dramatic work using buffoonery and horseplay and typically including crude
characterization and ludicrously improbable situations.

Melodrama is a dramatic work wherein the plot, which is typically sensational and designed
to appeal strongly to the emotions, takes precedence over detailed characterization.

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Melodramas typically concentrate on dialogue, which is often bombastic or excessively
sentimental, rather than action.

Musical drama is an opera in which the musical and dramatic elements are equally
important; the music is appropriate to the action. opera - a drama set to music; consists of
singing with orchestral accompaniment and an orchestral overture and interludes.

Tragedy is a genre of story in which a hero is brought down by his/her own flaws, usually
by ordinary human flaws – flaws like greed, over-ambition, or even an excess of love,
honor, or loyalty.

Tragicomedy is a literary genre that blends aspects of both tragic and comic forms. Most
often seen in dramatic literature, the term can describe either a tragic play which contains
enough comic elements to lighten the overall mood or a serious play with a happy ending

Elements of Drama
In literature, drama is the specific mode of fiction represented in performance. The story
progresses through interactions between its characters and ends with a message for the
audience.

The six Aristotelian elements of drama are the plot, character, thought, diction,
spectacle, and song.

Plot refers to the order of events occurring in a play make its plot. Essentially, the plot is
the story that the play narrates. The entertainment value of a play depends largely on the
sequence of events in the story.

Most stories have a beginning, middle and an end. However, your drama doesn’t have to
run in this linear order. Some work is non-linear in structure.

At the most basic level, there are five primary elements of plot: exposition, rising
action, climax, falling action, and resolution. This is also referred to as dramatic
structure, as it originated from plays.

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A linear plot consists of a series of events that have a clear beginning, middle and end.
The story unfolds in a chronological order, which means they are told in the order they
happened. The structure shown above is an example of a linear plot.

A nonlinear plots describe events out of chronological order. Present events may be
interrupted to describe past situations, or a story may start at the middle or end instead of
the beginning. In nonlinear plots, authors may employ different literary techniques to
tell their stories. Some common techniques include flashback, foreshadowing, subplots, and
parallel plots.

Characters refers a person or individual in the drama that may have defined personal
qualities and/or histories.

Most writers have an inherent understanding of how to categorize their characters based
on classic, “comic book-style” labels: heroes, villains, sidekicks, etc.

There are many ways to categorize main characters: protagonist or antagonist, dynamic or static
character, and round or flat characters. A character can also often fit into more than one category
or move through categories.

A protagonist is a main character who generates the action of a story and engages the reader's
interest and empathy. The protagonist is often the hero or heroine. An antagonist is a
character who opposes the protagonist.

A dynamic character is one who goes through some sort of change; they show character
development. A protagonist is usually a dynamic character.
A static character refers to those who do not change throughout the course of the story. They
serve to show contrast to dynamic ones, refusing to grow and remaining in one place or mentality.

A flat character refers to the two-dimensional in that they are relatively

uncomplicated and do not change throughout the course of a work. A round
character is complex and undergo development, sometimes sufficiently to
surprise the reader.

Thought or called to be the theme refers to its central idea. It can either be clearly stated
through dialog or action, or can be inferred after watching the entire performance. The
theme is the philosophy that forms the base of the story or a moral lesson that the characters
learn.

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Plays may often be written about an idea, but the playwright will probably focus more on
plot and character to get idea across, plays are seldom about an idea.

Some general themes in play are:

Diction is the language used to depart information, reveal characters, characterize, direct
attention, reveal themes and ideas, establish mood / tone, establish tempo / rhythm
appropriate to character.

Diction pertains to the words used, the accent, tone, pattern of speech, and even the
pauses in speech, say a lot about the character and help reveal not just his personality, but
also his social status, past, and family background as given by the play.

Monologues and soliloquies that are speeches given to oneself or to other characters
help put forward points that would have been difficult to express through dialogs.

There are various forms of dialogs which are:

Spectacle is the most immediate element which is appropriate and distinctive in a play.
This refers to the visual elements of a play: sets, costumes, special effects, etc. Spectacle is
everything that the audience sees as they watch the play.

Spectacle refers to the visual elements which leads to performance as this defines how the play is
presented to the audiences. The use and organization of stage properties and the overall setting of a
play.

Songs refers to the sound of the dialog, etc. musicality, rhythm, pace, etc. which helps
establish mood, characterize, lend variety, pleasurable.

This element includes the use of sounds and rhythm in dialogs as well as music
compositions that are used in the plays. The background score, the songs, and the sound
effects used should complement the situation and the characters in it. The right kind of
sound effects or music, if placed at the right points in the story, act as a great supplement

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to the high and low points in the play. The music and the lyrics should go well with the
play’s theme. If the scenes are accompanied by pieces of music, they become more
effective on the audiences.

The structure of the story comprises the way in which it is dramatized. How well the actors
play their roles and the story’s framework constitute the structure of drama. Direction is an
essential constituent of a play. A well-directed story is more effective. Stagecraft defines how
the play is presented to the audiences. The use and organization of stage properties and the
overall setting of a play are a part of stagecraft, which is a key element of drama.

Symbols are often used to give hints of the future events in the story. They complement the other
elements of a scene and make it more effective.

Techniques in Drama

In play, even if you’re a natural performer who can cry on command and
memorize lines, you’ll need to learn the following fundamental drama techniques
to really master the art of acting. The following are the techniques in drama.

Body, in drama character is conveyed through posture, gesture and facial expression. In
this way the audience can instantly identify with a character type or understand a situation
without a word being spoken.

Space, in drama, the positioning of objects and bodies on the stage and the relationship between
them are vital means of making meaning.

Grouping Levels, Pathways and Personal Space are all important aspects of space.

Voice pertains on how actors speak their lines instantly identify personality and emotion.
Volume, pitch, pausing intonation, pace and accent can all influence audience understanding
of a character and the tension of the scene.

Movement refers to the use of timing, direction and energy to build a

sustained sequence of movement can enhance understanding of character and
the meaning of the scene.

Literary Devices in Drama

To understand the literary devices in drama, Shakespeare used many literary devices
(and also many poetic devices), below are the most important ones, most central
to his work.

Allusion is a reference to a person, place, event, usually without explicit identification.

Allusions can be references to mythology, the bible, historical events, geography, legends, or
other literary works. Authors often use allusion to establish a tone, create an implied

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association, contrast two objects or people, make an unusual juxtaposition of references,
or bring the reader into a world of experience outside the limitations of the story itself.

Dramatic device is a convention used in drama as a substitution for reality that the
audience accepts as real although they know them to be false. These techniques
give the audience information they could not get from straightforward
presentation of action. plays.

Dramatic irony is a literary device by which the audience’s or reader’s understanding of

events or individuals in a work surpasses that of its characters.

Dramatic irony is a form of irony that is expressed through a work’s structure: an audience’s
awareness of the situation in which a work’s characters exist differs substantially from
that of the characters’, and the words and actions of the characters therefore take on a
different—often contradictory—meaning for the audience than they have for the work’s
characters.

Monologue is a long, uninterrupted speech that is spoken in the presence of other characters.
Unlike a soliloquy a monologue is heard by other characters

Soliloquy is a speech in which a character, who is usually alone on the stage, expresses his or
her thoughts aloud. It is a very useful device, as it allows the writer to convey a character’s
most intimate thoughts and feelings directly to the audience.

Symbolism expresses some profound ideas by using a word repeatedly in different

contexts. It expresses several interlocking themes in frequent use of words, places, characters,
or objects that mean something beyond what they are on a literal level.

Learning Task 3: Be in Quest for Drama

Directions: Look for the words in the puzzle that can be associated to the elements of drama. You
may also put the meanings of the words that you have found. Write your found words on your
answer sheet.

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Learning Task 4: Complete the Table
Directions: Complete the table. Supply the correct answers to complete the things to be
considered in the different techniques in drama. Write your answers on your answer
sheet.

Learning Task 5: React with the Literary Pieces

Directions: Give your interpretation on the following statements. Reminders the following
statement use allusion. Write your interpretation on your answer sheet.

1. Look, I’m no Mother Teresa. I’ve made my mistakes, but I’m trying.
___________________________________________________________________________

2. Come. Be the Cleopatra to my Mark Antony.

___________________________________________________________________________

3. As I walked through the graveyard, Beethoven’s “Symphony No. 9” played in my head.

___________________________________________________________________________

4. You don’t have to be William Shakespeare to write poetry.

___________________________________________________________________________

5. Well, I’m no Hercules, but I could open that jelly jar for you.
___________________________________________________________________________
Assessment

Writing Time!
Directions: With your learnings with the different elements, techniques and literary devices in
drama, do the outlining or planning of your story to be written. Do this on your answer sheet.

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I. Characters (Consider the kinds of characters)
II. Setting (Consider the elements of setting)
III. Plot (Identify the five parts of a plot)
IV. Theme, Tone, Subject, Motif
V. Conflict and Point of View
VI. Plot Device, Vision and Finale used in the story VII. Symbolism:
VIII. Diction:
IX. Spectacle: X. Song: