This week: Holiday Drama Edited by: Lilli 𧿠â More Newsletters By This Editor
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"Family is the theatre of the spiritual drama, the place where things happen, especially the things that matter."
~ G. K. Chesterton
"I don't think anyone has a normal family."
~ Edward Furlong
"Conflict is drama, and how people deal with conflict shows you the kind of people they are."
~ Stephen Moyer |
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So, you want to write a story filled with family drama - you know, to keep things real. Sure, we all enjoy the "feel good, warm, and fuzzy" stories, but sometimes we like to read about families that are as complicated, or even more so, than our own.
In that case, there are a few things to remember. A Family Drama is a genre focused on intense emotional dynamics, conflicts, and bonds within a family. These stories delve deeply into relationships between family members, often highlighting struggles, secrets, and personal growth. The goal is to evoke strong emotions in readers, exploring themes like love, forgiveness, loyalty, and resilience in the face of family challenges.
The Main Elements of a Family Drama include...
Intense Emotional Focus
Powerful emotions like love, grief, resentment, and forgiveness are central to the genre, deeply affecting the characters and readers.
Complex Family Relationships
Stories explore intricate dynamics between family members, including parental bonds, sibling rivalries, or generational conflicts.
Internal and External Conflict
Characters face personal struggles and conflicts within the family, often rooted in past wounds, secrets, or misunderstandings.
Realistic, Relatable Themes
Common themes include loss, betrayal, loyalty, redemption, and seeking healing or reconciliation.
Character Growth and Change
Characters typically undergo significant personal growth, often learning to understand themselves and others better as they face challenges.
Exploration of Social and Cultural Issues
Family dramas often tackle broader societal themes, such as mental health, addiction, identity, or economic hardship, which impact the family unit.
A Cathartic Resolution
While not always a âhappy ending,â these stories aim to provide emotional resolution, closure, or insight, leaving readers with something meaningful to reflect on.
Things to keep in mind...
Characterization is important.
Pay special attention to character development. Relationships should be empathetic, and characters should be fleshed out as much as possible.
Try not to skimp on detail. Be fully aware of your charactersâ backstories, what they want/ need, and the dynamics of their relationships to each other. Strong character descriptions will make the characters real and keep readers engaged and caring.
Consider the theme.
Are you planning to expound on the necessity of friendship, how loss affects life, or the sting of betrayal? This genre is used to entirely develop a theme and the story's subtext. What is all the fuss about? What is this drama highlighting?
Conflict, conflict, conflict
Relationships, especially familial relationships, are all about conflict. Conflict in a family drama helps us understand what the characters want, what is at heart between petty disagreements, and what needs to be healed or solved to go through their full character arc.
Don't be afraid to insert lots of emotion.
Dramas are, by their very nature, full of real human emotion. The very invention of the drama was meant to provoke emotion and provide an emotional release for the reader.
Making the characters' actions and behaviors believable and universally relatable is essential. If your characters donât act like real people, they will not elicit real feelings.
One of the best ways to do this is through the use of emotionâboth by giving the reader a view of the character's rich emotional interior life and by evoking an empathetic response or emotion in the reader.
Family dramas, especially those set during the holidays, have the potential to move your readers profoundly by exploring resonant and, often, uncomfortable themes in a way that provides closure rather than avoidance or repulsion.
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| | Drowning (18+) In a flooded UK, a desperate mother tries to find medicine for her son. #2326994 by Kvothe |
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