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Have you ever experienced second-hand embarrassment? Good! Now you can do it to your readers!
This week's Drama Newsletter is all about the cringe, and how we can make excellent use of it.
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Have you ever read a book, or watched a movie or TV series that made you cringe in embarrassment at what a completely fictional character is going through? It’s a strange feeling, isn’t it? Sometimes, I can hardly bear to watch or read on. The best way I can describe it is along the lines of ohnonono she isn’t going to do that, is she? Don’t do it. Don’t do it! Argh, argh, argh she’s doing it! Nooooo! That kind of second-hand embarrassment is an interesting phenomenon. It’s certainly an excellent addition to a writer’s toolbox.
A couple of writers who make excellent use of it are Helen Fielding and Sophie Kinsella. In the sequel to the well-received Bridget Jones’s Diary – Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason – Bridget gets to interview Colin Firth. Being a huge fan of his portrayal of Mr. Darcy in the BBC adaptation of Pride and Prejudice (which is understandable... I mean, who isn’t?), she makes such a complete and utter mess of it that the paper decides to print the full transcript of the meeting. It is completely and utterly embarrassing, but it is also hilarious and my favourite scene in the Bridget Jones novels. Luckily for Bridget, there’s someone out there who gets herself into even worse situations than she does: Kinsella’s best-known character Rebecca Bloomwood, of her Shopaholic series, wanders from one disaster into another.
Why do I cringe when Bridget makes a fool of herself in front of Colin Firth, or when Becky comes up with increasingly ludicrous excuses in order to avoid her bank manager? As said, they’re all fictional, even this version of Firth. I can’t say that I have ever been in similar situations. I’ve never had to interview a celebrity. I’ve never had my own bank manager. I can remember what it is like to want the floor to open and swallow me whole, though. I guess we all can.
In the final year of high school I had to do a presentation in front of all my classmates. I was so nervous that I rushed through the entire thing and that was a problem, because I had a set amount of minutes that I had to fill. In a state of panic I couldn’t think of what to do, other than to go through the entire thing again. So, to the utterly amused bafflement of everyone else, that’s exactly what I did... That same year, well, back then we didn’t celebrate Halloween in the sense of kids going trick-or-treating, but we did have a Halloween-themed school dance. And apparently there comes a time in a girl’s life when ‘Halloween costume’ stops meaning something spooky and starts to mean ‘something appealing to boys’. I say apparently because nobody sent me that message and I turned up as a vampire/zombie-type-creature. To say that I stood out would be an understatement...
You never forget that feeling, do you? Even when you haven’t actively thought back to those moments for a good while, they’ll pop up in your dreams, just like those dreams about suddenly having to sit an exam, or being asked to sing in front of a crowd. Or that may just be me. Anyway, that’s what we can tap into. We don’t have to have gone through the exact same situation as our characters, but we know how it would feel and, more importantly, we know what feelings we’re triggering in our readers because they’ll have felt that way, too, at some point in time and they’re never going to forget it, either. We’re all connected through our cringe-worthy moments.
Which makes me wonder why we are so easily embarrassed. We all mess up. We all are less than graceful at times. We all do silly things. We know this, and yet we cringe, and cringe on other people’s behalf, and for what? Wouldn’t it be nice if we could simply accept that we are each of us far from perfect and that that’s okay? I believe it would be, but it’s easier said than done, isn’t it? We want to put our best foot forward and we feel the way that we feel.
At least that means that we can keep on writing about those awkward, embarrassing and plain humiliating moments, perhaps smiling a little as we know what we’re doing to our readers. Isn’t it fun being a writer? 
NaNoKit
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Drama: September 25, 2019 Issue [#9778]
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