 Drama: July 23, 2014 Issue [#6428] |
  Drama
This week: Haunted Characters Edited by: Joy  
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"I wear the chain I forged in life," replied the Ghost. "I made it link by link, and yard by yard; I girded it on of my own free will, and of my own free will I wore it. Is its pattern strange to you?"
Charles Dickens - A Christmas Carol
“Whenever I take up a newspaper I seem to see ghosts gliding between the lines. Ghosts must be all over the country, as thick as the sands of the sea.”
Henrik Ibsen
“Now I know what a ghost is. Unfinished business, that's what.”
Salman Rushdie
“The people you love become ghosts inside of you, and like this you keep them alive.”
Rob Montgomery
“I don't suppose you have to believe in ghosts to know that we are all haunted, all of us, by things we can see and feel and guess at, and many more things that we can't.”
Beth Gutcheon--More Than You Know
Hello, I am Joy , this week's drama editor. This issue is about the
ghosts that become the catalysts to cause a story to happen.
Your Drama Newsletter Editors: zwisis kittiara Joy
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
Have you ever written a story where a ghost becomes the catalyst to thrust a character into action? Many famous authors have, and quite successfully, because supernatural anything adds great drama to the content especially if the story starts in a seemingly normal everyday setting.
You will remember, in Dickens’ Christmas Carol, Ebenezer Scrooge being visited by his old partner Marley’s ghost and the ghosts of Christmas Past, Christmas Present, and Christmas Yet to Come. You will also recall Prince Hamlet’s father’s ghost urging Hamlet to revenge his death. “Pity me not, but lend thy serious hearing // To what I shall unfold,” and “So art thou to revenge, when thou shalt hear.” All these well-known ghosts have acted as catalysts to thrust a character into action.
If you wish to use a similar blueprint in starting your story, you will need to show, in your main character’s story, why he is getting a visit from a specific ghost and to establish the connection between your main character and the supernatural element or elements. Is there a personal connection? Does the ghost need to give information that only the main character is qualified to deliver? You will also need to emphasize the setting as to the location, especially if that location is predisposed to ghosts and hauntings.
In addition, there is the kind of haunting not by floating-in-white-sheets type of a ghost but by a shadow of the past, which may or may not be an actual ghost. This could be an event that has been haunting the character like an open wound as his source of psychological and moral weakness. In other words, the ghost in this case should equal the power of the past. Henrik Ibsen’s Ghosts illustrates such a case. In this play, a widow and other characters want to build and dedicate an orphanage to the memory of the deceased man of considerable good name. By the end of the play, we learn that the dead man was not a respectable person at all and other characters also have past transgressions of their own.
In such a plot situation, a solid backstory for a character not only can act as a catalyst but also it helps the development of a protagonist as a three-dimensional character whose feelings are validated because of his backstory.
Whether the ghosts are true ghosts or memories of oppression, guilt, or persecution haunting the characters, it is good practice to make lists of those ghosts or hauntings to boost the backstory before starting to write your story. All protagonists, antagonists, and secondary characters can surely use such attention.
Until next time...
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 This Issue's Tip: For your POV character or the storyteller, find a good trigger for him to tell the story. What motivates him? Is he directly linked to the action?
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Quick-Quill 
I'm a sucker for cliff hangers! I try to end a chapter with something that will cause the reader to start the next chapter and not close the book for the night. I think of all the books I read long into the night to find out what happens to the MC. I want to write stories like that.
Yes, you're right. Most any reader keeps on reading because something hooked him into the story and the cliffhanger makes him continue on his quest.
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BIG BAD WOLF is Merry 
I just finished reading the book "The Bellmaker" by Brian Jacques. In it, a cruel Fox Conqueror and his Rat Minions took over this kingdom, however, the rightful King's Otter Captain of the Guards, who'd been out of the castle during the takeover, manages to rescue the Queen and Prince, but they are being pursued. Thus, the Captain decides to delay the enemy, sacrificing life in the process - he's joined in this delay attempt by the Queen's dumb/mute Badger nursemaid, who had been abused by the Vermin horde, and was very protective of the Prince, willing to lay down her own life for him. The two seemingly perish beneath the mob of henchrats, but they end up showing up later on, almost as if they were a pair of wraiths, still set of freeing their friends, and ridding the land of the invaders.
That sounds like the setting is a forest. Your description of the story reminded me of George Orwell's Animal Farm.
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