 Drama: April 13, 2016 Issue [#7588] |
  Drama
This week: The Quest Edited by: NaNoKit  
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Quest-based stories can be fun to write, and attract a wide audience. Just be careful to avoid clichés!
This week's Drama Newsletter is all about sending your characters on a journey.
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The search for the Holy Grail. The knight looking for a dragon (with a damsel or two along the way, perhaps). The One Ring, that needs to be destroyed. Quests make for powerful stories, that are bound to involve drama and character growth.
There are quests that involve long journeys through physical landscapes, and quests that involve long journeys through the landscape of the mind. Quests in worlds of the author's creation, and contemporary quests (for example, The Da Vinci Code).
Quests can be solitary endeavours, or be undertaken by a team. They can begin in an Inn, or your characters can land into them by accident, and quite against their will.
The opportunities are endless. They are also relatable, because even though most of us will never be sent on an epic adventure like Frodo, perhaps we all know what it's like to reach for something, search for something – whether it's that perfect job, or that perfect partner, or ourselves.
Quests, then, appeal to a wide variety of readers, who enjoy a wide variety of genres. This means that if you are interested in writing a story that involves a quest, you can potentially attract a large audience.
That doesn't mean that it's easy to write a story of this kind. If, for example, you want to write an epic fantasy quest, there are obstacles to overcome. You have to be weary of cliches. Will your group of characters include the grumpy dwarf, the light-footed elf, the beautiful healer? That has been done many times before. You might want to shake it up a bit.
Will your quest send your characters traveling a long distance? In a fantasy setting, that means a lot of walking, or riding of horses. There is the risk of all that traveling becoming boring – both for you to describe and for the reader to read. Make sure that there are plenty of scenes and adventures to break it up.
If your story takes place in a contemporary setting, and you want to send characters across a country, or a range of countries, it will take research to ensure that you get things right. If you want to write about Paris, or Rome, or New York , for example, and you have not been there and not done your research, people will notice!
Again, be cautious of cliches. Is your character going to be a courageous, highly intelligent man, with a beautiful younger woman tagging along who is unable to resist his attractions? You will have to find a way to make that original.
As in every story, your characters must experience personal growth. A quest would leave someone a changed person. They tend to involve at least some measure of hardship, and reflection, and insight into one's own being. If the quest is a success, that means that all of a sudden a great purpose falls away. If the quest is not a success, there can be a sense of devastation, and frustration at leaving something unfinished.
There will be obstacles to overcome. Your characters might be confronted with their deepest fears. There may be tragedy and loss. It may be life-affirming.
Whatever journey you send your characters and your readers on, feel it. When you do, chances are that they will feel it, too. That is what makes quests so appealing – they make you travel along a wide range of emotions.
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The Drama Newsletter welcomes any and all questions, suggestions, thoughts and feedback, so please don't hesitate to write in! 
Wishing you a week filled with inspiration,
The Drama Newsletter Team
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