Literature: Drama and Fiction
Drama questions test how dialogue and stage direction together create tension; fiction questions test narrative craft - point of view, characterisation, setting and the ending. In both, the examiner wants analysis of how the text works, not a retelling of what happens.
Reading a one-act play
- Stage directions carry evidence: costume, light, pause, silence, a dropped object. Treat them as quotable material.
- Conflict usually escalates in three beats; the climax is the moment a character must choose.
- Dramatic irony: the audience knows what a character does not, and that gap is the source of tension.
- Dialogue does three jobs at once - supplies information, reveals character, advances conflict.
Reading short fiction
- Ask who narrates, and what that narrator cannot know.
- Characterisation: what a character does under pressure outweighs what the narrator says about them.
- Setting often carries the theme - a closed room, a border, a school.
- The last line usually turns the meaning; always quote it.
Worked example
Extract: 'MOTHER: You'll be late. (She holds out the umbrella. He does not take it.) SON: It's only water. (She puts it down slowly and turns away.)' Question: 'What do the stage directions reveal about the relationship? (2)' Reasoning: the umbrella is habitual care offered; 'does not take it' is refusal; 'puts it down slowly' is hurt contained rather than anger expressed. One mark for the action, one for the inference. Model: 'The offered umbrella shows the mother's habitual care, while the son's refusal and her slow, silent withdrawal show a tenderness she cannot voice and a distance he insists on.'
Traps that cost marks
- Describing the plot when asked about character or conflict.
- Skipping bracketed stage directions.
- Calling the writer the narrator.
- Writing 'the play is interesting' where analysis is required.