This week: Poetry in Drama Edited by: Joy  
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“It appeared to be from behind us. We were all turned and listening to Barry as he was in the midst of a rant and had all our attentions. The gun shot seemed to come from the area of the foyer.”
Kathleen Lopez, Thirteen for Dinner
“Jake leaned on the horn, swearing loudly. Gina covered her eyes. Doc flung his arms around me, burying his face in my lap, and Dopey, to my great surprise, began to scream like a girl, very close to my ear....”
― Meg Cabot, Reunion
“The next thing I knew, I was falling. I dreamed I was being thrown into an open grave, but jerked awake and landed on a bed.”
Eric Jerome Dickey, Finding Gideon
“Out of the corner of her eye she thought she saw Jace shoot her a look of white rage - but when she glanced at him, he looked as he always did: easy, confident, slightly bored."
Cassandra Clare, City of Bones
Hello, I am Joy , this week's drama editor. This issue is about poetry and drama complementing each other.
Thank you for reading our newsletters and for supplying the editors with feedback and encouragement.
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Welcome to the Drama newsletter
Poetry has been my first love and I bet, the same goes for most of you. As a child, it came easier to me to write rhyming couplets and four-line poems and show them to my uncle for kudos from him. One day, he suggested that I make up a story and use my poetry in it, and in this way, he helped me expand my horizons, and very possibly, I saw, then, the art of literature in its totality. That was when I began to notice the beauty in poetic language and the enduring power of dramatic story-telling.
This beauty of language and drama is such an effective fusion, isn’t it! The way I see it, William Shakespeare has done this mixing of poetic beauty into the dramatic form, most perfectly and with finesse and timeless themes to last for centuries in our culture. He offers us his true mastery through his rich vocabulary and use of figurative language in metaphors, similes, personification, and other literary devices. His characters, from the tormented Hamlet to the manipulative Lady Macbeth, are multifaceted and psychologically complex, as all his characters struggle with timeless issues through poetic dialogue and dramatic conflict.
In the same vein, we can create drama in poetry or add poetry to a dramatic story using various techniques to evoke strong emotions, tension, conflict, or intensity in our readers. Some of the techniques of creating drama in poetry can be learned from viewing the works of experienced poets and writers. A few examples from poets and writers who have achieved this are:
 For Metaphors and Similes:
"The night was black as coal, and the moon a pale ghost"
Edgar Allan Poe, The Raven
For Personification
"She is as fierce as a lioness defending her cubs"
William Shakespeare, Macbeth
For Symbolism
"The wind whispered secrets through the trees"
Emily Dickinson, Nature is what we see
For Conflict and Contrasts
The red rose symbolizing love and passion in countless poems, including Robert Burns' A Red, Red Rose.
Also, in Robert Frost's Mending Wall, the dialogue between the speaker and his neighbor creates tension and conflict over the wall-building tradition.
For Strong Emotions and Imagined Scenarios
"Two roads diverged in a wood, and I took the one less traveled by" Robert Frost, The Road Not Taken
For Dramatic Monologue
"Rage, rage against the dying of the light"
Dylan Thomas, Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night
For Foreshadowing and Suspense
Robert Browning's My Last Duchess where the Duke reveals his dark character through a monologue.
For Irony and Paradox
"Something wicked this way comes."
William Shakespeare, Macbeth
For Narrative Structure and Unreliable Narrators
"Parting is such sweet sorrow"
William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet
For Sound and Rhythm
Samuel Taylor Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, where the mariner's account is both mysterious and unreliable.
For Change in Tone and Mood
The repetitive and haunting refrain "Nevermore" in Edgar Allan Poe's The Raven creates a sense of drama through its sound.
For Allusion to Mythology or History
T.S. Eliot's The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock starts with a tone of hesitation and evolves into one of existential crisis.
For sudden shifts or Turns (Volta)
W.B. Yeats' The Second Coming alludes to the biblical apocalypse, creating a sense of impending doom.
For Dialogue and Conversation
In a Petrarchan sonnet, the turn marks the dramatic shift in thought or emotion, such as in John Milton's On His Blindness
Then as we saw in the above examples, to infuse poetry into your dramatic storytelling, the first rule is to read a wide range of poets and examine their styles. This is because the sense of poetry in dramatic stories can elevate the emotional depth and resonance of your fiction, adding layers of meaning and beauty to your work.
Some of the tools for this end start with imagery and symbolism, through descriptions and rich poetic language. Then metaphors and similes can be helpful, too. For example, instead of saying "She was sad," you might say, ""Her heart was a stormy sea, its waves crashing against the shores of her soul." This may be overdoing it, but I am sure you understand what I mean.
Also, the varied sentence structures, long sentences combined with short ones, can point to the characters inner thoughts especially when these are combined with rhytm and sound. Above all, a central theme or motif can carry a fine load of emotional weight as it evolves throughout the story.
Above all, don't rush the process because crafting poetic prose often needs careful editing and revision.
Until next time! 
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This Issue's Tip: A confession poem or story: Confession poems and stories attract readers. So, why not try writing a poetic complaint from a child's point of view and juxtaposing it to that of an adult's that could be cast as a confession?
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Feedback for "Using Prompts for Dramatic Fiction"
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Beholden 
Good grief, a whole folder of mine (Short Stories 2023) included in your Editor's Picks! That'll absorb a person's free time - there are 41 stories in there at the moment and I'm still churning them out. But thank you very much for choosing them.
Just one thing I ask - try to pick out the good ones to read. And which are the good ones? Too many to mention, I'm afraid, too many to mention. ;)
Well, you've given us quite a few choices and that is commendable. Kudos! I read a few and I thought they were all good.
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StephBee 
Great tip on writing conflict. I find that internal conflict is much more poignant than external conflict, but sometimes it's that external conflict that gets the internal conflict brewing.
Thanks, Steph.
I agree internal conflict is more poignant and can cause some unexpected action, which may even surprise the person experiencing that conflict.
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Drama: October 11, 2023 Issue [#12201]
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