“Drama is life with the dull bits cut out.” ~ Alfred Hitchcock.
‘Drama’ is indeed derived from the Greek word for ‘Action.’
Drama in your story must be like your life, without the boring
parts–for example, you are waiting for the bus, which is boring and has
no point of tension, so in your work that part must be taken away and
not showed at all, unless something of drama extremely conducive to the
story is added. Then, of course, the essence of drama is crisis;
however, there is two kinds of crisis, “the hero crisis,” and “the natural crisis.” The hero crisis
is, for example, in “Mission Impossible” or “Batman,” where the hero
has great abilities, sometimes fantastical and superhuman, something
that you do not experience every day in your own life.
The natural crisis,
for example, in “Office space” or “Manchester by the sea,” where the
main character or characters have really normal lives like you and me,
but something happens in their normal lives which turns into drama and
tension, maybe a bit of chaos and lessons from the story’s character
development the audience can learn from.
So, when you are involved in your writing or somehow creative
endeavor, remember that drama must keep some kind of tension to grab the
audience’s attention, and this at all times; whether little tension or
beastly tension, and whether a roller coaster of tension, drama is all
tension, the action which absorbs the attention of the viewer or
reader. And I repeat the word ‘tension’ because this is a MUST DO in any creative endeavor.
Also, remember that you can pick between the two crisis to make tension
fit in your story and genre; this reasonable and wise choice will make
your story stand out and create reality, even if it is a fantastical
story–i.e., reality is about how well the details and the carrying out of the story is evoked in the mind of the viewer.
A great formula for explosive drama is this one: When it comes to
the situations or the plot of the story surrounding the protagonist– As
the protagonist in your story, for example, becomes less active and
more passive, less certain of his inner strength and positive purposes,
so it is the ambitions, the behaviors, the wickedness and intentions of
those who surround him who now have another characterization in your
story. The common compromise here is when the protagonist appears
undecided and emotionally deterred for the first three quarters of the
piece or art, but then that same protagonist is forced into a definitive
commitment in the final quart, a positive action. The protagonist goes
through all this hardships and struggles within himself so he can learn
strength and wisdom to conclude in a positive note–for
example, one of my favorites, as in Rocky, where he is a nobody and
really feels like a nobody, but at the end gets inner strength and great
love to finalize as a champion off the hard streets.
But more complex and hard to understand for the ‘Unsophisticated
audience’ is the drama where the completely passive, undecided and
purposeless protagonist does not have any major change of heart. There
is always danger of this kind of story not being too popular for the
masses; but, on the other hand, there is a depth here that the
avant-garde types or more ‘Sophisticated audience’ will admire as true
artistic innovation, mostly because it manages to avoid the obvious and
delves into the deeper, emotional issues of the human being, as in “The
mirror” (1975 Russian film) or “The seventh seal” (1957 film)–i.e.,
these films, are more philosophical in nature and try to delve into the
experience of being human, the beliefs, the judgments, the essence of
the mental and emotional conflict these movies, as well as books since
it is about all stories in any art form, invite a lot of questions; they
do not sermonize nor belittle any specific demographic but instead, it
just state different opinions and let’s the audience discuss its deeper
meaning and the meaning they will take away for themselves.
So whatever is your drama type, always remember tension and adapt the action to your story.
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