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Printed from https://shop.writing.com/main/newsletters/action/archives/id/10028-Reaction-to-the-Drama.html
Drama: February 19, 2020 Issue [#10028]




 This week: Reaction to the Drama
  Edited by: Storm Machine Author IconMail Icon
                             More Newsletters By This Editor  Open in new Window.

Table of Contents

1. About this Newsletter
2. A Word from our Sponsor
3. Letter from the Editor
4. Editor's Picks
5. A Word from Writing.Com
6. Ask & Answer
7. Removal instructions

About This Newsletter

The greatest rules of dramatic writing are conflict, conflict, conflict. ~James Frey


Letter from the editor

One thing I never see in stories with drama is how very difficult it is to weather the drama. This carries our emotions long and hard into new directions, and it's exhausting. Yet we rarely see characters go hole up in their bedrooms and not let anyone come over because of devastating news. We do it all the time in person.

That holing up, and finding sanctuary, is a normal thing for people to do. It's something that all of us experience and it feels very real. Why, then, do we see characters taking up the banner and charging off to some new mission without holding that space of - hey, I'm beyond my limits. I'll do it in the morning - feeling?

It's important to remember that sometimes heroes refuse that first call. It takes them time to get there, and that's all right.

This is part of the emotional impact in your story. We try to gauge the highs and lows, the swells and the lulls, for what the reader can take. How often do you sit there with what the character can take?

I'm still figuring out how to decide whether or not it's worth understanding how to make do. In my personal life, I generally leave people alone when they bring too much drama my way (which is difficult, considering I have a pre-teen daughter). Because I handle her with her friends, I don't want it among my adult relationships.

But in my writer's life, there are characters that bring drama. There are characters that surround themselves with drama. Sometimes I worry in dropping the drama queens (or kings) around me that I'm creating a void I won't be able to write that part of life. It hasn't happened yet. I still have vivid memories of the drama. I still live it in the books that I read. And, there's always that daughter to bring me all the myriad struggles in her life.

What else? Why would it be so important to have that drama in writing, even if you hate it in real life? It brings what's real. People don't understand each other. They don't listen to each other. Sometimes they simply make assumptions and act on those assumptions without even contemplating that someone else could interpret it another way.

Remember that saying about be careful what you say to a writer- they'll use you in your novels? It's so true. Not in that I took the likeness, but I took my feelings of this interaction. I took my interpretation of the event. I took my understanding and applied it to a character, because that is what I know.

I read books about people who are different than me because I want to know more. I study languages because I want to understand what it is that gives us so many things that cannot be translated. I write because I've never known who I am without the stories, and drama is inherent in every story that is told.


Editor's Picks

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This item number is not valid.
#2213154 by Not Available.

 
STATIC
Freeze Frame  Open in new Window. (E)
An ice skating marathon where the judges get fooled.
#2213037 by Don Two Author IconMail Icon

 Invalid Item Open in new Window.
This item number is not valid.
#2212159 by Not Available.

 Oceans Open in new Window. (E)
"and between hitched breaths"
#2212664 by jabberwocky Author IconMail Icon

 Who would you lie to? Open in new Window. (E)
What would you do?
#2212014 by zatykhan Author IconMail Icon

 souls Open in new Window. (13+)
Finally the question of the ages is going to be answered...
#2211976 by warrior_fb Author IconMail Icon

 Invalid Item Open in new Window.
This item number is not valid.
#2211956 by Not Available.

 Not Doing Okay Open in new Window. (13+)
A disturbed man's inner thoughts from a room in a psychiatric hospital
#2211246 by Spencer James Author IconMail Icon

 Ocean: First View Open in new Window. (E)
A world of water
#2211316 by Lou-Here By His Grace Author IconMail Icon

 Shivers  Open in new Window. (E)
One morning at my house.
#2212469 by Don Two Author IconMail Icon

 The Elevator Open in new Window. (E)
You enter the elevator, and hear a suspicious sound.
#2210743 by Romy Author IconMail Icon

 
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Word from Writing.Com

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Ask & Answer

I've never edited a Drama newsletter before. Tell me how your characters react to the conflict and drama that you set them.

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