 Drama: October 23, 2013 Issue [#5958] |
  Drama
This week: Facing Your Dragons Edited by: NaNoKit  
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Confronting your deepest and darkest experiences is frightening, but it can help you write some of your best stories.
This week's Drama Newsletter is all about facing your dragons.
kittiara
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I remember the days when I wrote poetry. Lots of it. Terrible, angsty poems that reflected all the inner turmoil of my teenage years.
As I was an only child until the age of 15, and lived a ways away from my school and my friends, I spent a good amount of my time in my room with pen and paper. Alongside the poetry I had a big folder full of equally bad stories about celebrities I liked (an early form of fan fiction, I suppose), and they were full of drama, too. One thing is clear, looking back – I wasn't happy with my life and my writing reflected this.
It's no secret that writing can be therapeutic. When your mind is filled with problems and feelings that are difficult to confront, getting it all out can be helpful. What I have found, though, is that the deepest problems and deepest feelings tend to cling to you, unwilling to see the light of day. There is a barrier they refuse to pass through. Even in solitude, even if nobody will ever read your words, it's frightening to touch upon those issues. It feels safer to leave them undisturbed. Except that sometimes, if you don't poke the dragon, it simply grows bigger and fiercer, until, one day, a confrontation becomes inevitable.
As drama writers, we have to use emotion. We have to touch upon topics that hit close to home. Our own feelings and experiences provide our work with a sense of authenticity. You can write about heartbreak without ever having suffered it, but if you have, if you truly know what it feels like, it will show. I recently read a book with four child characters and part of the storyline involved the problems faced by parents – sometimes fun, sometimes not – and there were times when I paused and knew that I could never have come up with certain insights, because I am not a parent.
There are events in my past that I don't want to think about. I reckon that we all have some of those. Whenever I catch a glimpse of those memories, it feels like I am touching an exposed nerve, and I quickly distract myself to get away from them. This means that when I write a hard-hitting story – a story in which I could use those experiences, the potential to truly reach out to my readers - I have resources that remain untapped.
Delving into the darkness of one's mind is scary, because you don't know what you'll find. There is also the fear that once you break down those barriers, you might not be able to put them back in place, and that means that you'll have to confront your issues head on.
The thing is that if we do open the door to our deeper emotions even a tiny bit, we can create some of our best pieces. I've discovered this when I took part in a contest on this site a few months ago. My darkest work is the work my readers seem to like best. It is the hardest to write, and sometimes I'm rather disturbed at what spills out, but I do feel relieved and somewhat proud afterwards.
Perhaps, then, the answer is to not go for a tidal wave of feeling, like I did when I was that angsty teen. It may be better to not unleash the dragon all at once, but to approach it, step by step, until you reach a mutual understanding and a thorough knowledge of the other. Once you come to terms with the past, you can utilize it and write it up as what it is – experience. It may not always be the kind of experience you hoped for. It may even be that you'd rather wish you'd gone without the insights that you gained. The past can't be altered, though, and by sharing your wisdom either directly, in non-fiction, or indirectly through your characters, you may help others gain the courage to face their own dragons.
kittiara
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Here are some of the latest additions to the Drama genre:
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On a dare, a young man tries to impress a friend with a disastrous high-speed trip.
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And some contests that might be of interest:
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The Drama Newsletter Team welcomes any and all questions, suggestions, thoughts and feedback, so please don't hesitate to write in! 
Pepper  - Kittiara, We are kindred spirits. I am the second out of seven children in my family to graduate from high school and the first to go to college. What you have shared here is so true; I loved your crab bucket analogy. If others want to understand this phenomenon, I would suggest reading some of the works by renowned psychologist Ruby Payne. She has written extensively on what she calls generational poverty. Certainly, if writers are going to write about someone breaking through this barrier, they had better understand the psychology of the barriers.
Thanks for your compliment and congratulations on being the first in your family to go to college! Also, many thanks for the recommendation. I study politics, philosophy and economics, but psychology is a field that interests me as well, and as you could no doubt tell, generational poverty is something I'd like to explore further .
~~~
NickiD89  - Great NL, Kittiara! The crab bucket is a powerful metaphor that has stimulated my imagination. Story ideas are bubbling up! Thanks!
Thank you so much! I am glad that my newsletter provided you with some inspiration  .
~~~
Joy  - Excellent NL, Kitt.
Class struggle is a credible concept that we can use in our stories.
This NL actually gave me an incentive to include in my 2013 NaNo novel the idea of negative feelings due to class differences.
Thanks.
Thanks so much, Joy! And best of luck in NaNoWriMo! I'm still pondering on whether or not to take part this year. Hope you have a great time with it .
~~~
ZeeWulf - The bucket mentality really is a serious reflection upon ourselves; we do such a wonderful job of trying to pull each other down, discouraging one another and keeping one another from aspiring to greater than before. I've seen it with a friend, her mother trying to keep her from moving forward because it was 'foolish' and 'risky.' It led to the most miserable ten years of her life.
No, we need the stories of hope, that we can aspire to escaping mediocrity.
Thank you so much for writing in. I fully agree with you - you expressed the damage done by the crab bucket mentality so well. I hope your friend is doing better now. And yes, let there be more stories of hope!
~~~
Wishing you a week filled with inspiration,
The Drama Newsletter Team
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