 Drama: October 30, 2019 Issue [#9828] |
This week: Boost the Excitement in Your Drama Edited by: NaNoNette  
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| Dear writers and readers of dramatic stories, I am NaNoNette and I will be your guest editor for this issue. |
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Boost the Excitement in Your Drama
How do you make short stories more dramatic?
 Drive your reader crazy by leaving a little bit to their imagination. Nothing is as tantalizing as a secret. However, do not tease too many secrets that then go unrevealed - that's just annoying. The idea is to keep the reader wondering instead of info dumping.
Aim to keep descriptions to the essentials and sentences easy to read. A short story could fall flat with too many long sentences that attempt to cram every last possible detail into it.
In a short story, you have only so much time, so many words to leave the reader hanging on by a thread, but let them guess and puzzle for a while with less obvious hints before you offer the main clues.
Start as late as possible in the story. Nobody cares if you character starts his day with a cup of coffee. Jump into your short story as close as possible to the climactic moment. This creates a story full of intense action with a succession of events that come at the reader at a good pace.
Think about what your characters want. Each character that shows up in your story, whether main protagonist or side character has to have something that they want. No need to tell the reader. Just you know it, and write your characters with that inner drive.
Dialogue is a good way to incorporate some of the misunderstandings, the friction between characters, or shed light on unmet desires.
Even if nobody dies, consider death as the inevitable outcome of life in your short story. Wonder, how death plays a role in your story and how your characters behave because of it. Again, no death scene needed, just ask yourself how it informs your characters actions.
And what about fate? Or the Hand of God? In a short story, as in all fiction, it's okay to write that lucky break or unlucky twist of fate. |
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I received these comments to my last Drama newsletter "There is a Bomb Under the Table!"
Quick-Quill  wrote: I love this NL. I wish you would have taken it a bit further. A man in a suit carrying a briefcase walks into an elevator. Many people enter and he sets the case down while he adjusts his tie. A second man exchanges the the case on the floor. The elevator doors open, the man picks up the case and walks out. He enters an office. The receptionist points him to a room down the hall. He enters the conference room with the case. There is a small red light blinking on the case. The man greets the group and a number of times, he starts to reach for his case, but someone hands him a pen and pad which the others have. After a time there is a break and the group gets coffee. The man leaves the room, someone accidentally knocks the case over. The light begins to blink faster. The man returns glances at the case and sets it up right. He asks to use a phone. There is one in the next room. He moves to the room and shuts the glass door.
The reader knows there is something wrong with the case. They have invested in the other members of the room. Who is the man with the case? Is he in on it or was it planted when he was on the elevator? Are his actions suspect because of our suspicions or is he innocent? Just a thought. I love this kind of prompt writing. The thought process along with the showing not telling aspect pushes the writer to observe.
Your example definitely cranked it up a notch.
Joy  wrote: The title of your NL made me smile, NaNoNette . What a wonderful way to illustrate what drama is!
Thank you so much for reading and leaving this nice comment. |
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