 Drama: August 13, 2008 Issue [#2540] |
  Drama
This week: Edited by: Joy  
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"If Attila the Hun were alive today, he'd be a drama critic."
Edward Albee
Drama exists everywhere,and its existence often fills 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.
Hello, this is Joy , this week's drama editor.
In this issue, we are going to explore the subject of creating the kind of characters our readers can warm up to.
“Making the reader like or dislike the character is generally half the battle.”
Barnaby Conrad
" "You can't stay in your corner of the forest, waiting for others to come to you; you have to go to them sometimes."
Winnie the Pooh
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Welcome to the Drama Newsletter
The characters a writer creates decide the success of his story. Stick figures, dummies, and one-sided characters can succeed only to a degree if the rest of the story elements are perfect. After all, cartoons and comic books are loved by the masses; however, even in cartoon figures, we see quite a few loved or hated characteristics that the masses can relate to.
In more serious fiction, on the subject of characters, it is usually recommended that a protagonist be likable enough to make the readers side with him. A story will be a success, if the main character attracts the reader’s interest, understanding, empathy, or awe, because the character has a quirk or mystery about him or he is highly capable of something fascinating that can create drama. A main character will be identified with, if the reader will feel sorry for him, if he will be happy with him, and if he will applaud his morality and other qualities.
This doesn’t mean, however, that the protagonist has to be written as a faultless do-gooder. On the contrary, readers do not identify with candy-coated, polite, perfectly generous, kind, and moral people, because as human beings go, none of us can be that wonderful. Even Pollyanna was impulsive and nosy, despite her optimism, and when she found out she might not walk again, she became terribly upset and pessimistic. Quite a clash with her former stance, don't you think?
If you decide to draw a sweet, well-intentioned, fixer-upper type of a character, it is a good idea to give him or her some serious character flaws. As a matter of fact, the-more-impeccable-a-character, the-more-serious-the-flaw trick works very well since it can create greater internal conflict for the drama of the story.
If you design a character who has fewer flaws than most, at least, give him a nasty desire or a goal. That goal or desire need not be overtly sinister, or the protagonist need not realize what he wants is wrong, but the writer can let the reader know something terrible lurks behind that goal. Letting the reader know what the character does not know is a writing tool called dramatic irony. For example, Shakespeare’s King Lear, a decent man, puts his trust in the wrong people. The readers know about this, but the king finds out the truth tragically, at the end of the play.
Subsequently, making your main character likable doesn’t mean that you cannot portray a sinful or sinister person as your main character. If you choose to do this, you’ll need to make this character likable or seem fascinating to the reader in some way, by giving a flaw or a positive side to his wickedness. Oscar Wilde’s Dorian Grey has beauty and naiveté. Ann Rice’s Lestat has abilities like telepathy, superhuman strength, and resilience, and once in a rare while, he shows some altruistic tendencies. In Silence of the Lambs, the feared Hannibal Lecter, the antagonist in this case, became likable to the audience when he felt something, something resembling love, for Clarisse and helped her to find the person she was searching.
Then, the behavior of the characters is important. As main characters, passive, wimpy people do not forward the plot; plus, they bore the readers. A character who only reacts to events may not prove to be a good protagonist, let alone an antagonist. Main characters need to be active in order to create situations, tension, and conflict and to seem exciting to the readers.
In addition, the main characters need their individuality. If the characters all sound the same when they talk and make the same gestures and motions, they will be a problem for the story. To avoid this, the characters need to act as separate individuals with separate values, points of view, beliefs, and attitudes. If you examine any of the Koontz novels, you will find the characters to be delightfully unique with their own diction and personalities and in the ways they interact with the other characters.
One point to be wary of comes while creating secondary characters. A writer may usually create a secondary character without realizing that the secondary character is the mirror image of the protagonist. This can take away from the effectiveness of the main character. On the other hand, a second character that contrasts the protagonist, called a foil, can make the protagonist shine.
It is important for the writer to focus on the bonding of the readers with his characters. After all, readers warm up to characters that help them grow as human beings.
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"Many times I have asked myself what can I DO with a character while I speak in terms of endearment or fears of ignorance for them."
"I admit, I was infatuated. I wanted him to be "the one", and I fell in love with the idea of him."
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"After all, how many times had he said, “If only I could go back and start over, knowing everything that I know now...”
"Fred kept line tight the best he could and the fish went under once more running, changing directions, fighting, turning, jumping... now ninety feet away. "
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"The images, vivid and disconcerting, are becoming less and less frequent, but even as their regularity decreases, their intensity increases and the soldier begins to sweat."
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A soldier, fresh from the war, attempts to move on with his life.
#881987 by Thomas  |
"Ahna frowned. The riddle was the person’s way of being mysterious she supposed."
"Roy could barely see the dim outline of a shadow in the woods. Then something rustled in the trees behind him."
"He was small for his age, barely over three feet. The other boys in the orphanage gave him a hard time, calling him a squirt."
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SHERRI GIBSON 
You're right about drama, Joy. Some of the best dramatic stories I've read have been about nature and historical events. Great newsletter!
I would also like to thank you for posting one of my items here.
Thanks, Sherri. 
Yes, nature captures the imagination. I think, since history is hindsight, all events may seem dramatic in hindsight. 
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Mavis Moog
Thank you for a brilliantly researched and written newsletter.
Tragedy means goat song? How fascinating. The expression, "it's not over till the fat lady sings," needs to be revised .
Thank you, too, Mavis, for the feedback.
I remember being in a goat farm once. The way they sang, Bbblleeeaaaatttt all over the place, you'd think the sky was falling. No wonder, the ancients took it as tragic. 
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