DRAMA QUEEN

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