  Drama
This week: Edited by: Joy  
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"Drama is life with the dull bits cut out."
Alfred Hitchcock
Drama exists everywhere, and it often offers solid reasons for its existence by filling us with tension and excitement. Drama can be tragedy or comedy, and it can come in the shape of a play, movie, fiction, real life story, and poetry.
Let us look into some ways that may enhance the drama in our writing. |
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Welcome to the Drama newsletter
Today we are going to talk about the positives of turning our personal dramas to solid writing pieces.
Drama exists in each life. Even people who call their lives dull cannot dodge the drama in them. Whether we are aware of our everyday lives or not, if we ever feel exhausted, elated, or emotional at any time, there has to be some drama there.
Into every life, some rain must fall. What is more, in every life, there is some sunshine. Our awareness of these two facts, especially when they collide, helps us to pinpoint our dramas, because what happens to us are events, but what turns events into dramas is our assessments of them and the way we react to them.
We need our dramas to feel we are living. When any writing springs from our life, we are showing we have lived and we have kept the account of our dramas. In the words of the writer Chuck Palahniuk, "People don't want their lives fixed. Nobody wants their problems solved. Their dramas. Their distractions. Their stories resolved. Their messes cleaned up. Because what would they have left? Just the big scary unknown."
When we find ourselves in any traumatic, hectic, emotion-packed situation, we also feel a certain type of energy or sometimes a draining of energy. So why not use that energy or that energy-drain in our writing instead of staying angry, beating up on ourselves, or to the contrary, resorting to denial?
In a drama school in NYU, each student is asked to write a one-act play of his own life. Through this process, students gain insight and appreciation into the drama in their lives.
When we write in the context of the personal, we get more involved with our plot, and therefore, we may enhance our writing by subconsciously tapping into sources we may not be aware that we possess. This type of writing can start with free-flow writing, journaling, brainstorming ideas, lists, letter writing, and even advertisements and official petitions. Then, from these small beginnings, our writing will find the means to flow into brilliant fiction.
If a writer feels he is intimidated by his own life and does not want to exhibit his privacy to other eyes, he can always write in third person and he can rename the people and places in his life. Quite a few famous novelists write from their own experiences, from their own dramas, from their remembered roles, yet by renaming their characters. One such writer is Ernest Hemingway ( For Whom the Bell Tolls, A Movable Feast ), another is Pat Conroy ( The Great Santini, The Water is Wide).
In her latest memoirs, the novelist Isabel Allende refers to each life as a novel and says that each one of us is the protagonist of his own legend. In another section of the same book, she quotes her husband telling her that she has at least fifty different versions of the way they met. This shows a true dramatist's mind in action.
Writing from personal experience is putting down the heart and soul on paper without any fear of past hurts, hidden fantasies, dreams, or regrets. Once a writer can achieve this, he can also maneuver events, settings, characters, and plot twists to his liking, so what appears as fiction will feel real to his readers.
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Personal Experience Stories by WC writers:
Death of a friend, a cyber reality
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Lost in the mountains, found by a hero
The SoHo princess this writer cannot forget
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A day like any other, but it changed everything.
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When experiences touch the soul
Poetry
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Here is a new group for drama lovers.
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Have an opinion on what you've read here today? Then send the Editor feedback! Find an item that you think would be perfect for showcasing here? Submit it for consideration in the newsletter!
https://www.Writing.Com/go/nl_form
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For chatting and suggestions on drama and writing, you're welcome to:
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For those of us drama queens and kings, a forum to swap writing ideas and post questions
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Reader Input:
Lauriemariepea 
ooh! natalie goldberg! i read a few of her books several years ago, and my favorite of hers is still 'writing down the bones'. loads of practical tips and advice for developing writing habits, and her strongest point: inspiration. it's a classic!
thanks for a useful and interesting newsletter, joy. 
I thank you, Laurie.
Yes, Natalie Goldberg has influenced many writers and "Writing down the Bones" is an excellent book, one I have read many times over. I think "Old Friend from Far Away" is the continuation of the same thought, but in a much larger, expanded way.
chrisj
Awesome! I'm so happy that my short story was featured! It gives me motivation to write more and submit more to this site:)
So glad, Chris. We can achieve so much through continual writing.
bazilbob
Thank you for writing your newsletter about free-flow writing. You handled the subject with more depth and interest than I have ever encountered. Thanks again.
Thank you for suggesting the topic in the first place.
I feel free-flow has the ability to awaken the muse in many a writer.
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Drama: April 23, 2008 Issue [#2335]
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