How to Find Your Objective in a Scene (and Make It Playable)

Your teacher stops the scene and asks the question you were hoping to avoid: “What do you want?” You know the answer is supposed to be simple. You say something like “to be happy” or “to tell him how I feel,” and you can see from their face that it isn’t the answer.

You may have been taught what an objective is. You may never have been taught how to write one that changes what they do on the next line. A vague objective is worse than none, because it gives you the feeling of having done the homework while leaving the scene exactly as flat as it was.

The short version: phrase the objective as something you want from the other person, make it something you can visibly win or lose in this scene, find what stands in the way, and then test it on its feet. If it doesn’t change how you say the lines, rewrite it. Below is how, with a scene from Ibsen’s A Doll’s House worked through step by step.

An objective is what you’re fighting for in this scene

The word comes from Stanislavski by way of his translator Elizabeth Hapgood, who rendered his Russian term as “objective” in An Actor Prepares; other translations use “task.” Whatever your class calls it, the idea comes down to one question: what is this person trying to get, right now, from the people in front of them? His magic if pairs well with it.

Casting director Michael Shurtleff put it as a fight. In his book Audition, one of his twelve guideposts is conflict: what are you fighting for? That phrasing is useful because it rules out wants that cost nothing. Nobody fights to “exist” or “be in the room.” They fight for a yes, a confession, forgiveness, a loan.

An objective is also scene-sized. Your character may have a want that drives the whole play, usually called the super-objective. The scene objective is the piece of that larger want your character is going after in these few pages. Hamlet may want to avenge his father across the play; in one scene he simply wants Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to admit they were sent for. Asking what a character wants, rather than what they are, is also what turns a stock bad guy into a person; see our guide on how to play a villain.

The test for a playable objective

A playable objective passes four checks. Run every draft through them before you rehearse.

1. It points at the other person. Write it as “I want you to...” If the sentence doesn’t need your scene partner, you will end up playing alone.
2. It can be won or lost in this scene. By the last line, you should be able to say whether you got it. “To be loved” can’t be checked. “To get him to say he’ll stay tonight” can.
3. It meets an obstacle. Something in the scene must be in your way: the other person’s own want, a secret, a rule, the clock. No obstacle, no scene.
4. It costs you something to lose. The higher the stakes, the harder you work, and the more there is to watch.

Uta Hagen built the same logic into her nine questions from Respect for Acting. The last three are “What do I want?”, “What is in my way?”, and “What do I do to get what I want?” The order matters. You only know what’s in your way once you know what you want, and you only know what to do once you know what’s in your way. Our guide to given circumstances covers the questions that come before the want.

Backstage has published a fill-in formula from Ryan R. Williams that does the same job: a playable verb, the person you’re playing it on, and the response you want from them. Any version works, as long as the other person is in the sentence and the result can be seen.

A worked example: Nora asks for money

Early in the first act of A Doll’s House, Nora’s husband Helmer asks what she wants for Christmas. Read it once for the story:

NORA: If you really want to give me something, you might—you might—

HELMER: Well, out with it!

NORA: You might give me money, Torvald. Only just as much as you can afford; and then one of these days I will buy something with it.

HELMER: But, Nora—

NORA: Oh, do! dear Torvald; please, please do! Then I will wrap it up in beautiful gilt paper and hang it on the Christmas tree. Wouldn’t that be fun?

HELMER: What are little people called that are always wasting money?

NORA: Spendthrifts—I know. Let us do as you suggest, Torvald, and then I shall have time to think what I am most in want of. That is a very sensible plan, isn’t it?

Henrik Ibsen, A Doll’s House, Act 1 (trans. R. Farquharson Sharp, public domain)

A first draft of Nora’s objective might be “to have a nice Christmas.” It fails every check. It doesn’t need Helmer, nobody wins or loses it in this exchange, and it’s in nobody’s way.

Now use what the script tells you. Later in the same act, Nora admits to her old friend Mrs. Linde that she secretly borrowed money years ago and has been paying it back in pieces, partly from money Helmer gives her for herself. So this request is not about presents. A better draft: “I want Torvald to hand me cash today, without asking what it’s for.”

Run the checks. It points at Helmer. It can be won or lost: either he gives her money in this scene or he doesn’t. The obstacle is clear on the page: Helmer thinks she wastes money, and he says so. And the stakes are high, because if he asks too many questions, her secret is in danger.

Watch what that does to the lines. “You might—you might—“ is no longer shyness; it’s Nora testing how to raise the subject. “Wouldn’t that be fun?” becomes a tactic: make the request sound like a game. When Helmer hints that she wastes money, she supplies the word herself (“Spendthrifts—I know”) and calls his plan sensible, even though the plan is hers. She gives up the argument to keep the money. That gap between what she says and what she wants is subtext, and our guide to playing subtext shows how to work with it.

The objective stays; the tactics change

That last move shows the difference between an objective and the ways you go after it. The objective (cash, no questions) holds for the whole exchange. What changes is the action on each line: hint, then charm, then agree, then flatter. When one tactic stops working, you switch, the way a person does in life when the first approach fails. Raising or lowering your status is another tactic worth trying.

Some directors work this out line by line in a process called actioning. Developed by Bill Gaskill and used by Max Stafford-Clark’s company Out of Joint, it gives each line a transitive verb, something you do to the other person: tempt, soothe, needle, disarm. Our guide to rehearsing a scene by yourself shows actioning in more detail.

Keep the two words apart in your notes. The objective goes at the top of the scene. The actions go in the margin, next to the lines. If you find yourself writing a new objective every few lines, you have probably written actions, and the scene has lost its spine.

When the objective should change

Sometimes it should. If something big happens mid-scene (a revelation, a slap, someone walks in), your character may want something new. That moment is a beat change. Mark it, write the new objective, and play the change as an event rather than letting one want blur into the next.

Five mistakes that make objectives useless

• Playing an emotion. “To be angry” is a state, not a want. Anger is what happens when you don’t get what you want. Play the want and let the feeling come or not.
• Writing about yourself. “To stay calm” or “to hide my feelings” keeps you busy with yourself. Turn it outward: “to make him believe I don’t care.”
• Choosing something you can’t lose. If your character gets what they want on the first line, you’ve misread the scene or set the bar too low.
• Quoting the text. “To tell her I’m leaving” just describes the dialogue. Ask what you want her to do once she knows: beg you to stay, let you go without a fight?
• Making it too big for the scene. “To be free” may be the super-objective. In a two-minute scene, what’s the step toward freedom you can take right now?

Shurtleff’s own warning is worth keeping in mind here: “Every scene you will ever act in begins in the middle.” Your character arrives already wanting something, so decide what that is before your first line, not after it.

How an objective helps you remember the lines

This part surprises actors. Psychologists Helga and Tony Noice studied how professional actors learn roles, and found that they seldom memorize by rote. Instead they work out what the character wants and why each line is said, a process the Noices called “active experiencing.” The lines stick because each one has a reason to come next.

You can feel this in the Nora exchange. Once you know she’s trying to get cash without questions, agreeing with “spendthrifts” is not a random line to memorize; it’s the only smart move left. The objective turns a list of words into a chain of choices, and a chain is easier to remember than a list.

It also helps you listen. Michael Caine, quoted in the same article, says of the next line: “You take it off the other actor’s face.” When you’re fighting for something from your partner, you have to watch their face to know whether you’re winning, and their reaction tells you what to say next.

A 20-minute routine for any new scene

Use this the first time you work on a scene, for class, a rehearsal, or a cold read.

1. Read the whole scene once for story. Don’t decide anything yet.
2. Write the facts the script gives you: who you are, where you are, what just happened, what your character knows that others don’t.
3. Draft the objective as “I want you to...” and run it through the four checks.
4. Underline the obstacle in the text: the line where the other person pushes back.
5. Mark where the tactics change and where (if anywhere) the objective itself changes.
6. Say the scene out loud, playing the objective. Notice which lines suddenly make sense and which still feel random.
7. Rewrite the objective if it didn’t change how you said anything, then run it again.

The goal is not the perfect sentence. It’s a choice strong enough to act on and loose enough to drop if your director or scene partner gives you something better. For short preparation windows, the same questions shrink into a thirty-second scan in our guide to cold reading for auditions.

Practice it out loud with a partner

An objective you’ve only written down is still a guess. You find out whether it works when someone reads the other part and you have to go after something from them, line after line. If no one’s around to read, Offbook can do that job.

Upload a script, pick your role, and realistic voices read every other character; Offbook listens while you say your lines and plays the next cue when you finish. Try the Nora scene from our public-domain play library, or a speech from our monologue collection, and play a different objective on each run. Rehearse on your laptop with the full script on a big screen, and listen to your scenes on your phone anywhere.

Questions actors ask

What’s the difference between an objective and a super-objective?

The objective is what your character wants in one scene. The super-objective is what they want across the whole play. Each scene objective should be a step toward, or a detour from, the super-objective.

Is an objective the same as an intention or a goal?

Mostly, yes. Different classes use different words for it. What matters is the shape: something you want from another person, that you can win or lose now.

What if my character doesn’t seem to want anything?

Look harder at the other people in the scene. A character who seems passive often wants to avoid something, and that can still be aimed at the other person: “I want you to drop the subject” or “I want you to leave before you ask.” Avoiding is still a fight.

Should I tell my scene partner my objective?

Usually not. Your partner should react to what you do, not to what they know you’re planning. Talk about the facts of the scene together, and keep your objective to yourself unless your director asks.

Do I need an objective for a monologue?

Yes. A monologue is still spoken to someone, even if that person is silent, absent, or the audience. Decide who you’re talking to and what you need them to do by the end.