  Drama
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I have learned throughout my life as a composer chiefly through my mistakes and pursuits of false assumptions, not by my exposure to founts of wisdom and knowledge.
Igor Stravinsky
I daresay one profits more by the mistakes one makes off one's own bat than by doing the right thing on somebody's else advice. W. Somerset Maugham -- Of Human Bondage
Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.
Scott Adams -- [i}The Dilbert Principle
Hello, I am Joy , this week's drama editor, and using mistakes to create drama is our subject.
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Welcome to the Drama newsletter
Is there anyone among us who has never made a mistake? If there is, he or she is the only exception to the human condition. Our proclivity to making mistakes is what makes us human and fallible. At the same time, making mistakes is the key to progress. Mistakes give us an opportunity for truly new things, especially if we are not afraid of the processes of trial and error. As William James said, ""Without mistakes, how would we know what we have to work on?"
While mistakes inure us to risks and help us in many ways, they also create the drama in our lives. The literature we read is nothing but mostly the stories of mistakes the characters make. As a matter of fact, if you open any story or novel, you'll encounter many mistakes involving the characters.
In As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner, Addie, unhappy in her marriage, makes the mistake of having an affair that results in the birth of Jewel. Jewel, then, becomes an important character to the story, as all the characters in this book make a lot of mistakes, physical or emotional. Another example is King Lear who makes the mistake of trusting the wrong people and then regrets his actions that result in tragedy.
Let's look at a few types of mistakes a character or characters can make.
 One character makes a big mistake, the others try to correct it with varying results.
A character may go through an internal struggle, as he decides between making a mistake that would hurt someone important to him or obeying the society's rules.
A character makes a mistake, but is embarrassed for it or afraid of its consequences. So, he tries to hide it, and as a result, many complications come about.
Character A's mistake hurts Character B. Character A has made the mistake without meaning to and without catching on to the fact that he hurt Character B. Then Character A worries about or acts on Character B's unusual behavior.
Character A lives a charmed life on the outside, but on the inside, his life is full of discontent due to his and others' mistakes.
A character who is afraid of making mistakes loses the joy in his life.
A character makes the mistake of choosing the wrong person, idea, or thing, thus ruining a happy outcome.
A character is left with two choices; either will be a mistake.
A character beats himself up after making an intentional or unintentional mistake; then he goes to extremes to correct it.
A character makes mistakes on purpose to hurt others due to vengeance or any other emotion that grabs him.
In a document or a contract, a character omits a clause or the name of a person or enters a wrong name by mistake, which results in dramatic occurrences after his death.
When it comes to the writing craft:
Even if a character is dear to your heart, let him have a few flaws that will cause him to make mistakes. This will only present him as being human.
Most mistakes result from character traits. When you create a character, think about the kinds of mistakes a certain trait will enable the character to make.
Accidental or physical mistakes (car crash, dropping a family heirloom etc.) have less of an impact alone; however, the mistakes people make after the accidental ones may carry the story.
Don't cover up any mistakes in real life. If you see a mistake in anything in your life or in anyone around you, use it in your writing.
Until next time…keep writing.  |
Enjoy!
“The advertisements for the sheep ranch have already been sent to the newspaper for insertion, sir. By the time I caught the typo in the ranch's name, it was too late to stop the late edition.”
Everyone wanted to be friends with Ace Bailey. Many wanted to be more than friends with him. He was just that kind of guy. Cool, and somehow unapproachable...
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An attempt at clearing the vision from her sight was of no use; what she saw before her was as real as hard ground on which she stood...
Sliver bit his lips and shook his head. After a long sigh, he started telling the story. "This building used to be a hospital.
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It passed quickly when I wasn’t thinking about it and when I was thinking about time, it passed slowly. Then I made the mistake of complaining. Actually the mistake wasn’t complaining itself, the mistake was complaining to Roger.
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Stop falling and rise
Remember the times when you saw the light
You are made of all the days you’ve
been knocked down and found your way.
| |  | Resilient Soul (E)
For a friend. Are we the sum of our mistakes or are they only beacons on our way?
#1463272 by SWPoet  |
Ever since then, anytime some poor sap come up missin' 'round here or they find a dead person layin' in a ditch somewheres, they says it's the ghost of ol' Uriah Johnson come back from the dead to have his revenge.
"I was with her when Sly killed her." Only the harvest breeze stroked the air between them.
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The words surrounded him and filled his head as they rose and fell. His mother’s words handed down from a Navajo grandfather; words that brought the rain after the great flood, words that no hand had put to paper but were written on his heart.
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This town hasn’t changed in years. You notice the mannequin still hanging from the oak tree outside a house that hosted a haunted house when you were in grade school.
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#873897 by Not Available. |
Items submitted to this newsletter:
J. A. Buxton "While writing the Home of the trilogy, some reviewers have told me they could actually visualize the characters in those stories. I still am working on improving setting descriptions. Anyone have suggestions on how to improve my writing in this area?"
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Your Drama Newsletter Editors: PartyBee  esprit  Adriana Noir Joy
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Thank you for reading our newsletters and for supplying the editors with feedback.
If you come across an item (yours, someone else's, and especially a newbie's), which could be of interest to the general idea of the drama newsletter, please submit it. We'll do our best to include it in our newsletters.
This Issue’s Tip:
If you put a wise person inside your story, like Yoda in Star Wars, do not make him right all the time. Too much of a good thing can be terribly irritating, and such a wise person can make the other characters seem less.
"Ohhh. Great warrior.Wars not make one great. May the Force be with you."
Couldn't help myself.
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pammierose
Hi,
I am Pammierose and am still pretty much a newbie. I love reading your newsletter and learning as I go. There is a lot to learn and to be discovered on Writing.com.
If you want to read drama, read about the occurrences in my life right now:
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#1607148 by Not Available. |
As they say, "Truth is stranger than fiction.
Hugs,
Pammierose
Thanks for your input, Pammie Rose.
You are so right about Writing.com in that it offers a vast learning experience to all of us.
Milking our own lives is the first step in writing, and you are already doing it.
Thanks for the link, and I hope you'll get many reviews for it.
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diamond_hoop
I was glad to see that your first two "pointers" for writing science fiction focused on setting. While setting is important to most stories, it is particularly critical in science fiction -- one of the key allures. And I loved your reference to Tolkien. Excellent newsletter.
Thank you very much, Dave, for the feedback.
Yes, you are right. Both in the Fantasy genre and Science fiction, setting is the first attention-getting element.
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billwilcox
Really good stuff Joy. I've always loved Frank Herbert's writing.
Thanks Bill. 
Frank Herbert is one of my favorites, too.
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Winnie Kay 
Thanks, Joy - Your suggestions are a great way to get a story off the ground. Check out this highlighted item number for a good sci-fi read from a talented newbie. He has also written part 2 and part 3.
winnie
Thanks for the nice comments and the submission, Winnie.
I gave the link in the editors picks section.
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faithjourney
Thanks for featuring "Incursion" in the drama newsletter. I'm honored!
Sherri
Thank you, too, Sherri.
Your piece fit perfectly with that issue's theme.
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Drama: November 04, 2009 Issue [#3337]
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