Ghosts as Important Characters Editor: Joy-Happy 26th WdC! 
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All my house is peopled with ghosts... Some people call such 'ghosts' memories.
Henrietta Vaughan Palmer Stannard, The Magic Wheel 1901
Because, as we are told—a sad old joke, too—Ghosts, like the ladies, never speak till spoke to.
Thomas Ingoldsby, The Ghost 1837
Nature is a Haunted House – but Art – a House that tries to be haunted.
Emily Dickinson, 1876
...Lovers are
Like walking ghosts, they always haunt the spot
Of their misdeeds.
George H. Boker, Francesca da Rimini
I am fighting my fight with Ghosts both within me and without.
Henrik Ibsen, Ghosts 1881
Hello, I am Joy-Happy 26th WdC! , this week's drama editor. This issue is about ghosts with a dramatic purpose.
Thank you for reading our newsletters and for supplying the editors with feedback and encouragement.
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Welcome to the Drama newsletter
Hello, drama readers. I hope you like reading ghost stories and thinking about ghosts for your writing pieces.
The other day, I was talking to my son about how often and so easily Shakespeare used ghosts, and how his ghosts represented so many different ideas. Without these ghosts, as we both agreed upon, his plays would lose their central conflict. My son talked about the play Hamlet, since he had seen it on stage. As most people know, in Hamlet, the ghost of Hamlet's father reveals that he was murdered and demands revenge.
When it comes to ghosts and Shakespeare, then, in Julius Caesar, Caesar's ghost appears before Brutus before a battle, foreshadowing Brutus's defeat and death. Also, in Richard III and Macbeth, ghosts show up, exposing one thing or another.
This must be because ghosts, for a long time, have held a special place in drama because they exist between worlds. They are neither fully alive nor fully gone. So they become powerful symbols of memory, guilt, justice, and unfinished business. Any entrance of a ghost inside a play creates a sudden dramatic tension, almost always. These ghosts offer us, theater goers and readers alike, immediate mystery and expectation.
Ultimately, a ghost on stage is rarely present just to frighten the audience. Instead, the ghost often reveals truths that living characters refuse to face. Ghosts may be avengers, guides, comic figures, lovers, victims, or even the emotional center of a story.
Ghosts also serve as voices of the characters' consciences. They point to regrets even when the character tries to forget a betrayal, a crime, or a lost love. Here, the ghost gives a physical form to the character's memories. Unlike any other ordinary memory, a ghost as the character's memory can argue, accuse, comfort, or forgive. It makes the character to face what he or she would rather escape.
In many dramatic stories and plays, ghosts cannot rest if a wrong stays uncorrected. These ghosts show us that actions have consequences that extend beyond death. In a way they become the real justice-seekers.
Then, some dramatic ghosts are gentle with a purpose to heal rather than to haunt. They may encourage a grieving widow to move forward, reassure a frightened child, or offer wisdom earned through a lifetime now over and completed. A deceased loved one also may appear only to one character, suggesting that the "ghost" exists within that character's memory and not in what's supernatural.
Some long years ago, there was a show, The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, on television I used to watch. In the general story, a widow developed an unusual friendship with the ghost of a sea captain, which I think, eventually developed into love.
In addition, it comes to mind, Our Town, Thornton Wilder's Pulitzer-winning play. In this play, the third act takes place among the dead, who quietly observe the living and reflect on the value of ordinary life.
Mostly, unlike other supernatural beings, ghosts almost always have, with the living, some unfinished business. This is probably why they have a clear dramatic purpose, and this purpose makes them some of the most impressive and versatile characters in our storytelling.
I hope you find the dramatic ghosts as interesting, multipurpose, and multifaceted as my son and I do. Come to think of it, they are everywhere around us, in one form or another. 
Until next time! 
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 This Issue's Tip:
Ghosts represent humanity's oldest questions. What remains after death? Can the past ever truly disappear? Can forgiveness overcome guilt? By placing a ghost alongside the living, playwrights explore these mysteries in a tangible way. It is a good idea to ask these questions of our ghosts when we are writing a serious ghost story.
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Feedback for "Character Changes During the Story"
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Here are some of the answers to the question: Is there a story you have written or read, in which you were totally satisfied with the main character's change?
Thank you all, for your answers.
Mousethyme - HB Mom 
Kristen's changes during "Rage of Envy " Open in new Window. are more apparent from her flashbacks to present day, but I am more than satisfied that having the support of the boys would have helped her make the changes she did.
shadowfire  n my Trilogy Book of Life Series the three teen witches and ShadowFire never changed their characters since the girl Witches were Saints that had absolute pure souls and ShadowFire was a good man but had a broken soul.
I never mentioned Kendra in the series but she was also a witch that had a colorful past and dark soul that wasn't afraid to break the rules to put things right in the world. That is why I dedicated an entire book about her life that was a spin-off to the book of life series I wrote.
I loved her character, she was messy, reckless a queen in charge of her Queendom that wasn't afraid to make mistakes. She wasn't a pure soul like her younger teenage cousins, but she did have a pure heart. I wanted her in my story because she represents more what a realistic witch is than what the teen witch girls were. So, although my main characters did not change in my Trilogy, I did have one character that was completely different that goes to show you don't have to be perfect to be a witch like the teen girls were, you just had to be real!
Tannus know this is more of a children's book, but the character in Hatchet did a great job turning himself from helplessness into a survivalist.
Texas Bob 
I once read a story of a villain who became a good man. He got himself put in prison to keep from being murdered and in the interim became a protagonist. ( can't remember the name of that book, but it was a pleasant surprise.)
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Drama: July 15, 2026 Issue [#13842]
