Dramatic versus Melodramatic

Tilly · Oct 2, 2006

I was rereading some scenes for my WIP that I'm editing, and some felt emotionally overwrought. In many cases I think it's just bad writing that needs sorting out, but at other times I can't put my finger on why something has tipped over the edge from an attempt at emotional authenticity to something eekier.

So, what makes something melodramatic? How do you avoid it?

PeeDee · Oct 2, 2006

The best way of avoiding it is to read your manuscript out loud. If, at any point, you're doing that overwrought speech that kids do when telling a story around a campfire, if at any point you're embarassed to be reading it out loud, then re-do it.

Simplistic, but it works well enough.

maestrowork · Oct 2, 2006

When did "melodrama" become a bad word?

PeeDee · Oct 2, 2006

When it became synonymous with overwrought, very badly done dramatic writing/acting. Which is a shame, it's a pretty word.

Tilly · Oct 2, 2006

:

ats the word:: nice word.

Yep, I meant melodrama in the sense Peedee described. I have no idea when it took on this meaning. Poor word.

NeuroFizz · Oct 2, 2006

Melodrama can easily turn purple. It is yet another tool of a writer, but he/she needs a whip and chair so it can be tamed. It also depends on the scene. It will work in some, even make the scene shine. In others, it will be very purple.

ChaosTitan · Oct 2, 2006

Tilly said:
So, what makes something melodramatic? How do you avoid it?

Have you seen your scenes played out on Days of Our Lives? If so, you've probably stepped into melodrama.

PeeDee · Oct 2, 2006

chaostitan said:
Have you seen your scenes played out on Days of Our Lives? If so, you've probably stepped into melodrama.

My wife watches that show every day (Lord knows why: I married an intelligent and wise woman who reads good books and comic books and is far smarter than I, and she watches that......)

It fascinates me. It's so bad, it's so repetitive. I would love to write something in soap opera form (once a day, I mean) that was actually well written an interesting. I've always wondered what I'd do with the format.

icerose · Oct 2, 2006

PeeDee said:
It fascinates me. It's so bad, it's so repetitive. I would love to write something in soap opera form (once a day, I mean) that was actually well written an interesting. I've always wondered what I'd do with the format.

Stick your characters in easily solvable situations using truth and love, and have them make the wrong ones.

As for writing well and interesting, cut the excess mushy crap, give them interesting snappy dialog and have your characters have brains. I find stories that turn the wrong way are when outside circumstances tear them apart from their actual goal and what seems like the right course of action back fires, rather than characters being blindly stupid and bumbling around life with obvious solutions slapping them in the face and them plugging their ears saying 'Lalala, I'm not listening." (I hate soap operas, can you tell?)

PeeDee · Oct 2, 2006

I meant more, I would love to use the soap opera format, but write a sci-fi show...or an "end of the world" show. Or tell a story backwards. Or something like that.

RedMolly · Oct 2, 2006

Melodrama contains any of the following ingredients:
* a dramatic pronouncement followed by a long pause (during which the music swells and the camera zooms in on the character's face)
* a mustache of twirlable length
* anyone objecting to something that's just happened with the word "No!"
* previously-undiscovered family relationships popping up at convenient moments ("My God, Kayviella, you're my dead sister's daughter's third cousin once removed... I can't marry you!")
* fight scenes punctuated by dialogue, unless it's the fencing scene in Princess Bride (that's pure art)... anyone who's been in a real fight can tell you there's not much opportunity for conversation
* an evil duke, count or baron (or duchess, countess or baroness)
* a fight in a bar...
* ...between the antagonist and protagonist...
* ...in which the protagonist decisively proves the Cause of the Right on the villain's body
* Kittens in Peril (a fantasy-novel trope for which I have a toally irrational fondness... no better way to show your protag's inner goodness by having him/her save a load of helpless mewling kittens)

PeeDee · Oct 2, 2006

RedMolly said:
* Kittens in Peril (a fantasy-novel trope for which I have a toally irrational fondness... no better way to show your protag's inner goodness by having him/her save a load of helpless mewling kittens)

Unless you're Terry Pratchett writing Going Postal, and handle it brilliantly.

LeeFlower · Oct 2, 2006

I think conversations in fights depend heavily on what kind of fight. If two people of roughly equal fighting skill and on roughly equal footing are trying to kill each other, I imagine they wouldn't be talking a lot. But I've participated in a lot of sport-type fights where there's constant chit-chat. When I'm sparring with a friend, we probably exchange more smart-mouthed comments than blows. In tournaments, there are plenty of people who talk straight through fights they already know they're going to win (or ones they already know they're going to lose).

Granted, that's very different from a real all-out brawl with someone who wants me very and thoroughly dead, but I wouldn't call talking through such a brawl melodramatic so much as simply unrealistic.

PeeDee · Oct 2, 2006

LeeFlower said:
Granted, that's very different from a real all-out brawl with someone who wants me very and thoroughly dead, but I wouldn't call talking through such a brawl melodramatic so much as simply unrealistic.

I dont' think you'd have time to talk, unrealistic or otherwise. it's been my experience that outside of the sparring ring, when there is a fight -- a back alley fight, for example -- it's frequently fast, vicious, dirty, and over in minutes.

I mean, there are big flashy show-off fights, but when someone wants you dead, then that's a fast and vicious thing.

MidnightMuse · Oct 2, 2006

Many years ago, when I was under the influence of a "writing friend" I was encouraged to have my male characters do way too much talking in regards to their "feelings".

BLECH!

Talk about melodrama to the extreme! I'm sickened by my own work from those days, and can't even bring myself to read it. That's when I know I've gone overboard. I cured it by dropping that person out of my circle of influence and catching a clue. And by paying painfully close attention to books I was reading to see how the authors handled character interaction.

As PeeDee put it - if you're embarassed to read it out loud or to someone, then it's probably overdone

maestrowork · Oct 2, 2006

That's what I mean... now "melodrama" has a bad connotation, makes us think of soap opera (and the evil twin comes back from death...), overwrought purpleness, exaggerated emotions, etc. There used to be a time when melodrama is a legit, classy kind of stories. Back in the 40s and 50s, a lot of classic movies were touted as "Best Melodrama of the Year." Now people look at melodrama as "badly written crap" and think of Joan Collins and Linda Evans getting into a catfight.

icerose · Oct 2, 2006

PeeDee said:
I meant more, I would love to use the soap opera format, but write a sci-fi show...or an "end of the world" show. Or tell a story backwards. Or something like that.

I have wanted to do that in a fantasy setting as well, but I think it would just be called a series rather than a soap opera because I'd hang the characters before I could get through the first season if they acted the way soap opera characters do.

Evaine · Oct 2, 2006

Ah! Conversations during swordfights!
The one in The Princess Bride was good, but far superior was the one in the original Prisoner of Zenda - Douglas Fairbanks Jr, Ronald Coleman.
"Where did you learn such rollerskating?"
"Coldstream Guards, old boy."
Melodrama can be fun.

LeeFlower · Oct 2, 2006

I'll take your word for it, PeeDee. I've never been in a 'real' fight, fast and vicious or otherwise (and good thing, too, because I'd get my butt kicked). It does seem to me that fictional fights drag on a lot longer than real ones would, though. Fights, even sparring and tourney rounds, only last longer than a minute or so if the fighters are both evenly-matched and quite good (unless they're pausing every shot to question their opponent's parentage, but most people (my friends aside) don't honestly do that). Even then, a minute's usually more than they need.

In a real fight where people are actually trying to do each other injury? Even if both fighters are brilliant, I'd think they'd wear out fairly quickly. I seriously doubt people could kick the crap out of each other for half an hour straight and still have fight left in them afterwards the way they do in movies.

Lyra Jean · Oct 2, 2006

RedMolly said:
* Kittens in Peril (a fantasy-novel trope for which I have a toally irrational fondness... no better way to show your protag's inner goodness by having him/her save a load of helpless mewling kittens)

It was also used in the movie Hellboy. Very funny.

blacbird · Oct 2, 2006

Evaine said:
Ah! Conversations during swordfights!
The one in The Princess Bride was good, but far superior was the one in the original Prisoner of Zenda - Douglas Fairbanks Jr, Ronald Coleman.
"Where did you learn such rollerskating?"
"Coldstream Guards, old boy."
Melodrama can be fun.

Yes, but when it's fun, it almost always has the quality of satire or parody (as in The Princess Bride). If you try to do it seriously, you're immediatelly hip-deep into melodrama of the most atrocious kind.

caw

Jamesaritchie · Oct 3, 2006

PeeDee said:
I dont' think you'd have time to talk, unrealistic or otherwise. it's been my experience that outside of the sparring ring, when there is a fight -- a back alley fight, for example -- it's frequently fast, vicious, dirty, and over in minutes.

I mean, there are big flashy show-off fights, but when someone wants you dead, then that's a fast and vicious thing.

I don't know about talking, but serious fights and brawls come in all forms, and there's nothing at all uncommon about nasty comments, lots and lots of cussing and name calling all the way through a back alley fight. Such brawls are often very noisy.

It usually depends on who is fighting, why they're fight, etc. Not a word was said during the most serious back alley fight I ever had, but I've seen and heard others where yelling, screaming, swearing, and accusations carried all the way through, and a couple where there was talk most of the way through the fight. At least until one guy was down and out.

maestrowork · Oct 3, 2006

Life can be rather melodramatic sometimes. So I don't mind some melodrama in my drama.

Anthony Ravenscroft · Oct 4, 2006

Oh, darn you all to Heck. I'm supposed to be writing....

Yep, back in the 1960s it wasn't uncommon to see TV Guide tage a film as "melodrama" with no pejorative intent.

The sometimes-correct Wikipedia says that melodrama is where plot & action are emphasised, rather than character as in drama. The Wiki also says that music is used thematically or to cue the audience as to what they should be feeling. Melodrama also uses stereotyped characters.

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