This week: Asking That Crucial “Why?” Edited by: Joy  
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“The essence of drama is that man cannot walk away from the consequences of his own deeds.”
Harold Hayes
“All the world’s a stage and most of us are desperately unrehearsed.”
Sean O’Casey
“Real life is messy, and drama is a shaped version of real life.”
Simon Beaufoy
“Never annoy an inspirational author or you will become the poison in her pen and the villain in every one of her books.”
Shannon L. Alder
Hello, I am Joy , this week's drama editor. This issue is about asking the question "why?" while writing your fiction.
Please, note that there are no rules in writing, but there are methods that work for most of us most of the time.
The ideas and suggestions in my articles and editorials have to do with those methods. You are always free to find your own way and alter the methods to your liking. |
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Welcome to the Drama newsletter
You already know that most stories start with a situation. That situation may be a quiet everyday life or a cliché problem, an old-hat, so to speak. It is you the author’s job to make this problem lead to something newer that makes your story’s reading worthwhile.
Most writers usually start with a what-if question, which is a good question at the onset and it becomes even a better one when you wish to introduce a new event or twist into the plot. There is another good question, however, that gives your story-in-the-making its depth and interest and even helps to develop its theme. That question is
“why.”
When you ask why, you may be nearing the heart of the story’s problem, the protagonist’s dilemma, or how the background of the story will have an effect on the plot.
Everyone and everything will serve your story and especially, the protagonist. Surely, you’ll need to know who the protagonist is before everything happens in the plot.
The most important why question here is: What does the protagonist want and why he or she wants it? If this want is a misbelief, why does it have such a stronghold on her psyche? In other words, even if the protagonist’s want changes together with the answer, that first “why” may take the plot at least as far as its midpoint. This is because every person sees the world through subjective lens.
In the novel, Ask Him Why, Catherine Ryan Hyde puts her finger on the story’s beginning problem by mentioning the silences among a family’s members. Then, why the silences happened and their results come later.
“Now, there are silences, and there are silences, especially in the house where we grew up…” Ruth says in the first chapter and later adds, “The thing I’ll always remember best about that time is not how quickly our family fell apart. The memorable bit was when I first looked back at how we’d convinced ourselves we’d ever been together in the first place. “
Can you sense the whys in these sections and how they might have affected the plot’s explanation? I’m sure the author had already asked all the why questions when she thought of this story before she went ahead and caused each family member to account for the events later.
The main reason for the why-questions has to do with the understanding of the characters’ inner struggles and desires, and especially their major internal elements such as deep-seated needs and defining misbeliefs that stand in their way. Thus, “Why does the character want such and such?” is a great question, as well as “Why is the character here, doing this?”
When you synchronize your brain with that of the protagonist or any other character, you end up inside their earliest memories. Those, when they have little to do with the story at hand, is for you to know as the scenes you write will capture the moments not only of the present situation in the story but also that of the past. Even when a character does something illogical, there has to have been a why.
It is a very good idea, therefore, to ask why at every step of the way while putting together any story for there’s a good reason for everything and a good story tells that real reason.
May all your whys end up with great results!
Until next time… 
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 This Issue's Tip: The ending isn't only about what happens plot-wise. It also is about what the main characters realize as they face themselves head-on.
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Drama: June 22, 2022 Issue [#11393]
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