 Drama: June 24, 2015 Issue [#7055] |
  Drama
This week: Thrill and Drama in Writing about Sports Edited by: Joy  
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“If there's another thing that sportswriting teaches you, it is that there are no transcendent themes in life. In all cases things are here and they're over, and that has to be enough. The other view is a lie of literature and the liberal arts, which is why I did not succeed as a teacher, and another reason I put my novel away in the drawer and have not taken it out.”
Richard Ford, The Sportswriter
“I think it's the real world. The people we're writing about in professional sports, they're suffering and living and dying and loving and trying to make their way through life just as the brick layers and politicians are.”
Walter Wellesley Smith
“Guys do not have a genetic blueprint that allows them to understand or love sports.”
Lesley Visser
I wanted to be a sportswriter because I loved sports and I could not hit the curve ball, the jump shot, or the opposing ball carrier.
Dick Schaap
Hello, I am Joy , this week's drama editor. This issue is on capturing the drama in sports.
Thank you for reading our newsletters and for supplying the editors with feedback and encouragement. |
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Welcome to the Drama newsletter
The hope, the rivalry, the ambition, the sportsmanship, the audience…the games…How can a writer overlook sports as vehicles for good fiction or non-fiction stories?
In fact, at this time in Writing.com, the enthusiasm in our site’s own kind of cyber games have gripped some of us. If you thought of "Game of Thrones" which is drawing close to its end for this year, you guessed right. My excitement for G.O.T, our site’s yearly Olympic games, gave me the idea for this newsletter.
Where Olympism is concerned, as to striving for excellence, demonstrating respect and celebrating friendship, a new and improved way of life is created. Added to all that, the unexpected salted with a bit of craziness is just what any writer needs.
Succumbing to the same craziness, when Prometheus brought the spark of fire from the gods to the humankind, wasn’t he achieving perfection in some kind of a race? Wasn’t he boosting the illumination of mind and reason and the freedom for creative spirit? When we cheer our offspring in YMCA or other youth sports, aren’t we doing the same through encouraging our children?
The drama in sports not only replicates real life, it also provides a role model for better behavior and higher ideals. From that point of view, the writing about sports should reflect those ideals, too.
Some of the finest books in fiction with those ideals in mind are written about sports. What I can recall, right away, is Bernard Malamud’s The Natural, of which a movie was made. Of this genre, I am also familiar with My Losing Season by Pat Conroy, Bleachers and Playing for Pizza by John Grisham, The Boys of Summer by Roger Kahn, and a memoir Days of Grace by Arthur Ashe.
As touching and courageous the players' stories are, rules reign at the heart of sports. Athletes submit voluntarily to the rules and so should the writer writing about them. Thus, the first rule for the writer writing about any sport is to know the rules of that sport very well.
After the game rules, the second basic requirement is knowing all the interesting details of how the game took place at one specific time and the final score. The body of the story should basically cover how the game was played and how the characters in it acted and possibly felt. Added to this, on the side, are the human interest stories of both the athletes and the audience. Let’s face it; without good characterization, any story is anemic .
The ending in a non-fiction story usually offers quotes from the coaches and the players, or else, the interviews of and press conferences by them. In fiction, hinting at or showing the afterlife of the characters, their detailed behaviors, thoughts, and emotions can make the story a memorable one.
The field of writing sports stories is large and constantly increasing due to audience interest and the television’s encouragement. As writers, if we keep watch, we can find those stories very easily.
Until next time...
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 This Issue's Tip: The two basics of suspense are anticipation and dread. Asking oneself if a scene or a story has anticipation or dread in it, helps a writer to come up with exciting stories.
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Feedback for "Writing a Strong Inner Conflict"
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Joto-Kai 
I think this might have helped my "People of Glass." Sigrun rightfully thirsts for vengeance, but decency wins out. It should, she's going to grow up to be a paladin, one of Heaven's first responders.
The problem is that decency wins with overwhelming force. That is, she sees that the vengeance offered is ruthless and misplaced, and just refuses to partake. There's no lead in, no doubt, no foreshadowing that the path she's following is questionable (a terrible error with a character that actively reads the foreshadowing.)
I think I partly alleviated this in the current rewrite, but this is the thing that I was looking for.
Your character must be a moral person. Inner conflict shows up more often with decent human beings.
Thanks for the input. 
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TM 
This newsletter has given me good incite on conflicts in characters. It helped me to see it from a different perspective which I found very useful.
Glad you liked the newsletter. Thank you for the feedback.
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Quick-Quill 
"The Detective" [13+] by Quick-Quill
Here is one attempt at inner conflict. This is the MC on an old novel I'm re-drafting. I wrote this in the 80"s.(this has been edited as a character study) I have learned so much from my years on WDC its time to look at this work and see where it can be revived. reworded and edited. Maybe this will be the new novel for 2016
It helps sometimes to take another look at old work. Good luck with it.
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QueenOwl ~ A New Day Dawns 
Hi Joy:
Great write-up on the essential element of a story that hooks. Without conflict, there's no story. I can not sit down and pound the keyboard unless there is conflict I want to write about. It's what spurs me to write. And reaching a resolution gives me satisfaction.
Thanks for sharing.
Thanks for writing to me, Queen Owl, and I agree.
Only next to characterization, conflict is the backbone of fiction, very effective if it involves an inner turmoil as well.
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