Single Location as a Pressure Cooker
Lock the cast in a single room and the room will do half the work. Why confinement is the hook, not a budget cut, with the works that prove it.
If you give characters an exit, they will use it. A story built upon a single location takes the exit away and watches what’s left build, bubble, and break.
That’s the whole mechanism, and the greats run on it, both intentionally and accidentally. 12 Angry Men turns an easy verdict into a war of attrition, pinning twelve jurors in a single room until they unanimously agree. Rear Window locks the audience into the apartment of a man unable to walk, so every scare must come to the window. No Exit follows three souls valeted to the same room in hell. None of these are confined because the budget ran out. (Although it’s definitely a benefit, but!) The box is the point.
Confinement, by nature, builds pressure. When people can’t leave, conflict can’t be deferred. Walking away is not an option. An outsider could join in and temporarily alleviate the pressure, but as long as everyone stays trapped, conflict will inevitably brew. And when the pressure reaches climax, it’s aired in that room, in front of everyone.
What the room does for you
- It removes the cheapest out. “That’s it. I’m leaving!” stops being available.
- It forces proximity. People who’d never share space, must. The wrong two characters will fight over a stall, a sink, a singular window.
- It’s a narrative clock. A tea kettle will eventually whistle, and a singular room establishes that the tension will become too much for the room to withstand.
- It turns set into character. Although a good set will always breathe, a singular room MUST have a personality. Whatever the cage is becomes a part of the drama.
My singular room, flipped
Potty Talk is two acts that never leave the men’s bathroom of a packed, ill-kept nightclub. Eight people, a bathroom attendant, and the club owner. One night, no locks. And if you’re reading correctly, you realize the bathroom is not the same as the previous pressure cookers. No locks mean literally no privacy, in a spot that’s built to be the most private place in which a person relieves themself. But without locks, the characters could leave at any time. The nightclub isn’t the pressure cooker either — they could still leave. No, the room is simply the spot everyone is constantly drawn to by each other and their respective trauma. The schtick of Potty Talk is to play off of one room, one set, but it’s the characters locking themselves inside, not the room itself. Which, as Potty Talk seeks to dissect the modern plights of masculinity, works in the structure’s favor. Doubly so: restricting yourself as a writer to a single set brings good challenge and breeds creativity to keep everyone in the same room. In short, this does not follow the previous examples I gave, but reaps the aforementioned benefits.
But I’ll still stress: if you’re stuck on something that feels diffused? Try sticking the characters in one room, with no exits. Even temporarily! Just to see what the story is really made of. Related: Schticks that Stick.