 Drama: March 07, 2018 Issue [#8785] |
  Drama
This week: Where to Begin to Fine-Tune Your Story Edited by: Joy  
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There is no rule on how to write. Sometimes it comes easily and perfectly; sometimes it’s like drilling rock and then blasting it out with charges.
Earnest Hemingway
We have to continually be jumping off cliffs and developing our wings on the way down.
Kurt Vonnegut
It is perfectly okay to write garbage—as long as you edit brilliantly.
C. J. Cherryh
If you are willing to do something that might not work, you’re closer to being an artist.
Seth Godin
There is simply no other way to write. It is a brutal act of faith. In writing, we must unleash a mess onto the page and then reach inward and grab hold of every last thread of trust, believing without sight that: “It will be beautiful. You’ll see. Just don’t walk away.”
Christin Taylor, The Blank Page: Making a Mess
Hello, I am Joy , this week's drama editor. In this issue are a few ideas on making our stories more readable after the first draft.
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Welcome to the Drama newsletter
Whether you keep--like me--everything you write or you keep--like some noted authors--only your best creations, you must have some story or a novel you want to do better by. Mine is my last NaNo novel, which I want to fix, but I need more time to think about what to do with it.
On this quest, the first question I am asking myself is: What am I afraid of?
Maybe I am afraid of hurting my main character, whom I have grown to love like a friend, by sending her into something fearful? That may be true because as it stands, during the story’s time, she has a pretty decent life as everything rotten has already happened to her in the backstory.
Now, how can I turn this too-common fear of mine into a positive? That is something I have to deal with, don’t I! It may just be that I concentrated too much on the nice(!) character of my protagonist rather than coming up with a better design to make her shine brighter.
Character worship isn't the only problem. There are other areas where we writers hold back. We are afraid of stronger twists and turns that inject awe into a story. This has to do with the dramatic tension, which depends on the strength of the antagonist’s force or the antagonistic force that gets in the way of the protagonist to survive his or her struggles with the conflict. To strengthen the dramatic tension, we need to keep the story’s problem or the conflict always in the forefront of our minds. This is rather a difficult thing to do during the first draft when we are letting it loose and almost free-flowing, especially in NaNo.
Another problem, as I see it, we try to make the destination of the protagonist or the end of the story a happy one, as they do in Hollywood. Some problems in real life and some conflicts in fiction need not have a happy ending but maybe an acceptable and meaningful one that agrees with the emotional and mental strength of the main character, the backstory, and the events in the story. Great novels and stories usually focus on the quality of the journey more than on its ending.
Then, an additional concept is the general feeling of the novel. By feeling, I don’t mean the emotionality of the characters or when the scenes or a piece of dialogue may create instant emotion in the readers. We may certainly keep those parts, although sparingly, as they do add to the excitement that readers may feel; however, the general feeling of a story is the one that is more refined and habituated with, and it permeates the entire piece, unlike those strong and sudden emotions.
Other weak segments in our stories may be the scenes. The question to ask for each scene has to be, “Is this scene complete in itself in the way that it progresses the story forward, rather than taking up space and repeating what is already said?” It is a good idea to cut out the scenes that repeat the action or dialogue and add nothing to the flow.
One other thing I can think of is in the area of believability. Even the fantasy and sci-fi stories need to be believable within the context that they are built. Off the top of my head, we cannot put mountains without a good explanation inside the setting of a planet that is totally covered with water, for example.
To wrap it up, I have to mention a good advice that Sandra Scofield gives in her new book, The Last Draft, in which she advises four drafts per novel, at least. She says your novel "has to have a strong purpose in the second draft." I hope we can all find that strong purpose and the time and energy to dig deeper into the specific aspects of our work for well-crafted, enjoyable stories.
If you have other ideas on how we can strengthen our stories, please send them to this newsletter so we may all benefit from them.
Until next time, and may all your stories sparkle! 
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 This Issue's Tip: If you wish to add an aspect to the story but not write a whole scene on it, you can embed it as a scene fragment in an expository section.
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Feedback for "Drama’s Role in Romantic Fiction"
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Legendary❤️Mask 
Thank you so much for the trinket it is really beautiful and to top it off a quote from my 5th cousin. This is really awesome. Oh, almost forgot I really found this newsletter very informative. Thank you for sharing it with us.
You're welcome.
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Quick-Quill 
Another great newsletter. POV seems to be a problem with many writers, myself included, where the writer tells the reader something that the main character wouldn't know. Switching to the thoughts or inward reactions from someone the writer hasn't established as a main POV. A store clerk's thoughts about a person, or thoughts of men in a bar when the female mc walks in the door. Another thing that bugs me is in the middle of a romantic scene, I read the minds of two characters. REALLY? pick one and go for it. Show the other person's reaction to the romance or sex being experienced by the MC. Sometimes women writing men's reactions is too bizarre.
Thank you, and I know what you mean. I strongly dislike floating POVs, too. In the romance genre, probably because they think of the two leads as being the same protagonist, they do jump from one head to another. Some romance-genre teachers say this is accepted practice; however, I don't like it one bit.
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Princess Megan Snow Rose 
Thank you for all your writing ideas on Drama and Romance. I appreciate you putting Padame Skywalker's Journal in your newsletter. I am so back into Star Wars. Love: Megan
Thanks, Megan, and I did enjoy the Journal.
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