 Drama: February 05, 2013 Issue [#5472] |
  Drama
This week: Creating Drama in Fiction Edited by: Joy  
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The art of the dramatist is very like the art of the architect. A plot has to be built up just as a house is built--story after story; and no edifice has any chance of standing unless it has a broad foundation and a solid frame.
BRANDER MATTHEWS, The Principles of Playmaking
I really love idiot, enlightened characters - these characters who fail to engage with the drama of their immediate circumstances; they fail to be reactive and enrolled by drama as it happens around them.
CHUCK PALAHNIUK
Hello, I am Joy , this week's drama editor. This issue is about creating drama inside our stories.
Your Drama Newsletter Editors: zwisis NickiD89  kittiara Joy
A big welcome to our new drama editor  zwisis
Thank you for reading our newsletters and for supplying the editors with feedback and encouragement.
Note: In the editorial, I refer to third person singular as he, to also mean the female gender, because I don't like to use they or he/she.
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Welcome to the Drama newsletter
Reams of paper, numerous word files, feverish activity in searching for ideas, a viable premise, interesting characters…
Familiar, isn’t it? I bet you recognize the frenzy, because we all keep putting ourselves through that same wringer, and for what? For the sake of fiction, hoping what we come up with will show some mastery, or at least, it will entertain someone.
To meet our personal expectations of telling a good story and creating drama, we like to choose well the best information, and then, we use that information in exciting scenes. But what would that information contain?
Drama in fiction is created through:
 A powerful story premise
Unique characters drawn with enough details for carrying the premise on their shoulders and strong character motivation
A great conflict that leads to exciting action
Suspense.
Even or escalating pace that doesn’t allow the feeling of momentum to be lost
Let us take a look at the above five components more closely.
The premise is the most important item for drama because it serves as the seed idea or the conception of a story. When the premise is precise, the plot opens up to the writer.
Let us take a well known theme to create a premise from it: Great Love. A rather broad view of love, don’t you think? Let’s enhance it a bit. Let us say Great Love defies death. But how would that happen? What if one lover followed the other into the grave? One lover dies; the other kills himself after her. Why? Because their families were of different clans and they wouldn’t let their children marry. So the premise becomes this: Two lovers from two rival families, on the way to realizing their great love, find each other in death. If you recognized Romeo and Juliet here, you were right.
Unique primary characters that are very different from each other also create drama through their different traits and the different ways they act in a given situation. Let us not forget that desire and strong motivation is necessary for each of these characters; in other words, we must be clear about what each character does and why he does it.
The conflict may be universal, personal, or belonging to a small group. In any case, for the sake of drama, the two sides of the conflict have to cling to their opposing standpoints as if it were the last thing for them to do, so what is at stake for the two (or more) sides and the knowledge available to them for their attitudes can create suspense.
Suspense results from the fear or the expectancy of something happening or the anxiety due to withheld information either from the characters or from the reader. If the reader likes a character and sides with him, the fear of something nasty happening to him heightens the feeling of suspense. When vital information is delivered partly or when it is withheld also adds to the suspense of the story. Sometimes, the reader knows that information before the character and is excited or fearful for the character’s discovering it. At other times, the reader is left in the dark, until the character makes it known that he had that very important information all along.
Action creates drama. Measured pace, which is the momentum or the tempo of the action, adds even more drama. In most genre novels, pace quickens toward the end until the climax; then, it tapers down. By the same token, from midpoint to the climax, sentences and chapters may become shorter and more action-filled. This energizes the story and keeps the reader glued to the page.
Inserting drama inside a bland albeit revealing narrative can be a writer’s most successful tactic for enabling his fiction to excite, surprise, and delight the readers.
Until next time... 
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I was 20 years old and had been married for 30 days. 1st Place: What a Character Dec/2012
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