Do you enjoy intrigue?

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Does drama turn you on or freak you out?

-- ann monroe (monroe@chorus.net), April 11, 2000

Answers

Depends on the drama and which character I'm playing in it. Drama can be exhilerating and even educational. A least it should give you something to talk about at parties later. I've certainly had plenty of drama in my life (plus some comedies high and low, a handful of five-star romances, a Western, a few British sex farces, and some animated short subjects before the main feature) and most of them have sparked my Intrigue switch in one fashion or another. Occasionally, though, the Author (who- or whatever that byline belongs to) has pulled a plot twist that's turned a comfortably adrenalin-pushing storyline into a dark Hitchcockian or Coen Brothers eekfest.

Only a few times have I been freaked out by personal drama, and in each case it's been because I was dealing with circumstances or a person's personality traits that I'd had no prior experience with. My skill set was insufficient for the plot being written. Therefore I didn't know how to best take authorship of the drama into my own hands toward some climax and denoument of my own crafting. No matter how it ended, I'd end up with new experience and therefore new skill sets and ways of preventing that particular drama from ever occurring again.

I know people who seem unable to live their lives without a daily dose of unpleasant (and unnecessary) drama. It's their default mold and I see them wasting too much of their lives and themselves on playing out the same roles in the same unfulfilling dramas again and again. Most of the time, their ongoing travails are because of their own inability to act as their own favorite author, their inability or unawareness to take control of the script. They tend to be generally unhappy supporting characters in their lives and sometimes it breaks my heart because they can be *good* people caught in their own bad scripts.

I know others, though -- and try to be one myself -- who see drama, good and bad, as interesting plot twists that can be crafted into often surprising new chapters or worthwhile moments of screen time. Drama = plot = character development. Keeps the story from being dull, doncha know.

Metaphor strained adequately, I remain yours in scriptwriting,

-- Mark (mbourne@sff.ne), April 12, 2000.


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