Drama
Queen
I am a writer and therefore
drama runs through my veins like a red tide on the ocean.
I used to think that mysteries
would be hard to write because I could never figure out ‘who done it.’ But now,
I see that murder mysterious are easy: someone is dead; someone is going to be
dead; someone is thinking about making someone dead. Drama. Built in. And
readers love it. Mysteries top the Amazon best seller charts every single
year.
Which is weird because social
media like Facebook is covered in anti-drama memes. “Get rid of the drama in
your life. Go on a cruise. Live in a moss-covered cave.”
It’s a crock. Human beings love
drama. Our games are full of it. Our entertainment drips with it. Our
literature is not literature without it—conflict, opposition, and goals
thwarted.
Drama is queen and I, for one,
embrace it. A story, even a children’s story, must contain elements of drama
and conflict or we are just humming in the dark. Grimm’s Fairy Tales were, in
their original forms, cautionary tales designed to warn children and their
parents about the inherent dangers in the dank, scary forests of our lives, and
we’re still telling the tales. Sure, we’ve watered them down some with
show tunes, but we could never imagine Snow White without the poisoned apple.
Drama gets a bad rap, and it
shouldn’t.
It’s why I love writing
dystopian fiction. The apocalypse drips with drama. And we love it. I love it.
Lights go out, electric fails, and we are thrust into the landscape of struggle
and survival. And we love it! Sex is a
big deal again. Food is a life and death struggle. Enemies abound. Drama. Cool.
I do have to laugh, though, when
I read the constant touting of all women in dystopian literature as strong,
kick-A women. I’m not sure that’s true or should be true. Isn’t it more
interesting to have a regular woman given to pedicures and migraines who becomes
a kick-A woman capable of skinning a cat and then boiling it?
Just a dramatic thought.
But there’s a downside. I am a
writer. My kids don’t call me for two days, and I’ve got them dead in a ditch.
It’s a professional hazard.
Oh, and by the way, I can
imagine skinning a cat. My great-grandmother refused to eat rabbit all her
days. Why? Because during the real apocalypse of the Great Depression butchers
in Chicago would skin cats, chop off their heads and feet, and sell them as
rabbit. My great-grandmother never got over it, and she was as kick-A as they
come.
On a Facebook page, followed by
writer types, the discussion faded into whether or not writers should kill off pets
in their stories or is that too offensive, too harsh for a modern readership? I
commented, “I write dystopian books. Bad things happen.”
Chew on that.
So, here we are—to drama or not
drama. In my opinion, kick-A women take drama, stick it in a blender, throw in
an egg, and then swallow it down like the ‘hair of the dog’ that bit them. Or
we read chick-lit, which can be fun too.
Linda (Life is Drama) Zern
