 Drama: August 17, 2022 Issue [#11493] |
This week: Facts, Memoirs, and Drama Edited by: Joy  
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A memoir should have some uplifting quality, inspiring or illuminating, and that's what separates a life story that can influence other people.
Mitch Albom
It is easy to make stuff up - and easy to dig up information and repeat it or report it to others. But to find a real life story with real people in real life situations is quite difficult and time-consuming. Yet, the rewards are worth the effort.
Lee Gutkind
I always say that in any roomful of people, I could hive a novel out of any one person's family or life story.
Jojo Moyes
When you are doing a real life story, it requires a lot of sensitivity, a lot of responsibility.
Shefali Shah
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Hello, I am Joy , this week's drama editor. This issue is about writing real-life stories or using them effectively in fiction.
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Welcome to the Drama newsletter
Recently, I am finding myself reading more and more autobiographies, stories of real-events seasoned with a pinch of fiction, possibly historical, and other memory-based content. Surprisingly (to me), I detect much drama in the books of this nature.
I am not talking about reality journalism that may be cut and dried, but titles like Arthur and George by Julian Barnes, a real-life case in which Sir Arthur Conan Doyle finds himself playing detective, Without a Country by Ayşe Kulin which is a true story of neuropathologist professor and his family's migration from Germany when Hitler’s reign of terror began, War Diaries, 1939–1945 by Astrid Lindgren, and Midnight Calling: A Memoir of a Drug Smuggler's Daughter by Lynn Walker.
The books above are rather wide-spread and they attract world-wide interest. On the other hand, a complicated life of a seemingly simple protagonist in an everyday setting can arouse just as much interest as the well-known events, provided it is told with literary care. Plus, for us writers, such stories exist and abound in our communities and in our everyday lives. Thus, if we want to write a dramatic story based on a real-life, how do we go about gathering information?
You’ll be surprised how many people would be willing to give a little of themselves to budding and experienced writers. One way to go about it is of course to interview the person or persons, which may involve taking notes or using a recorder of some kind. Another way could be to find an action, such as someone complaining of the weather or their families or some portion of their lives and take it from there.
In either case or in any other way you can think of, you’ll need to go about writing their story by:
 Researching the story’s context: What is it about, economical, racial, political, etc., and would it arouse reader interest?
Casino (1995) – “directed by Martin Scorsese and starring Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci and Sharon Stone – was based on a true story.
The plot was inspired by the life of Frank “Lefty” Rosenthal who managed the Fremont, Hacienda, and Stardust casinos in Las Vegas for the Chicago mob back in the 1970s and 1980s.” From Casino.org
After making sure you have good access to the details of the story, find the most intriguing action or a chain of actions that will hold the narrative alive.
In the above movie Casino, all characters are based on real-life people and the actions in the movie are mostly real such as: One of them survived a car-bombing; a former Casino executive was hunted down and killed in his home in Costa Rica; two characters did have an affair and the girl died of an overdose; one character was killed alongside his brother and the pair were buried in a cornfield in Indiana.
Read into the characters. You have free rein here to tweak or not to tweak the characters to your liking. Keep in mind that they’ll make or break the story.
“I look and I see white everywhere: white walls, white floors, and a lot of white people…. The teachers are not aware that I have no idea of anything they are talking about. I do not want to listen to anyone, especially the teachers. They are giving homework and expecting me to do the problems on my own. I've never done homework in my life. I go to the bathroom, look in the mirror, and say, "This is not Mike Oher. I want to get out of this place." From the 2009 movie, The Blind Side
Find the details in all the scenes or imagine them or use settings similar to where the real action took place.
As an example: In the movie, American Factory (2019), American foremen visit a factory run by glass manufacturer Fuyao in China, and they are alarmed to see Chinese workers picking up glass shards without safety glasses or cut-resistant gloves.
Make sure you are delving into your characters’ emotional experiences, not so much into your own. Keep in mind that, in good stories, characters determine their own destiny.
As an example: conversation clip from
PROJECT X by Lachlan R.
RICK SHARPIRO
Oliver! How nice to see you. I see you've got a guy filming us through the window. Not sure why you'd risk incriminating yourself but c'est la vie.
OLIVER COOPER (whispering)
Let's steal this guy's gnome. It'd be good for...you know what never mind why. Let's just steal it.
Most importantly, find a point to your story. Why are you writing it? This, however, is mostly evident after you’ve written or planned a good portion of it.
While you write the story, “show” and “tell” both. That is, shift between the narrative’s summary and its drama; as drama highlights concrete details (show) but you can tell by emphasizing the abstract when you summarize here and there by shortening, enlarging, or lapsing time, using direct quotes, and huddling over the scenes.
Above all, try to tell the truth as you see it in the narrative you have chosen.
To wrap it up, your story may end up being complicated or simple, but make sure your characters and the emotional core of your story leave an unforgettable impression on your readers.
Until next time! 
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It's 1972, and young Michael has to come to terms with his helpless crush on a friend.
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They're out there. Poem of too many words and too many lines. (Don't take it seriously...)
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Thank you for reading our newsletters and providing us with questions and data. We editors depend on your ongoing interest and enthusiasm.
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This Issue's Question: Do you have any recommendations for a fact-based story or a memoir?
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This Issue's Tip: When writing the end scenes, make the character acts with more determination, even if he's a wishy washy one, and may have that final confrontation with the shadow or the problem. Otherwise, the ending of the story will fizzle into lifelessness.
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