Making Dramatic Stories Interesting

[LymeThyme]

Hello all! Currently I am the creator of the dialogue-less, drama comic: Speechless

The story I have planned is a sad one, yet I worry that it stays that way for too long. I know how annoying it can be when there is nothing but tragedy and angst in a story, and I do have a turning point planned. But I'm concerned that my readers would lose interest before it even gets there.

I would like some ideas on how to keep a sad story compelling/interesting. Some things I could implement to make the journey emotional, and not a typical angsty drag.

This question also applies to drama in general, how to properly walk the line of drama without slipping into melodrama.

[mayday]

Hmmm... I think as long as the plot continues to progress through that sadness and it's not just them angsting over one thing while nothing gets done for a long time, it's tolerable for me

[keii4ii]

One of my favorite movies, The Pianist, is a sad movie and gets darker and darker for most of its duration until near the end (before it gets sad again). One of the reasons it worked is because things were constantly changing. Another reason is that the character had a pretty clear, if basic, motive: to stay alive. (In some sad stories, you start wondering, "why does the character even bother anymore?" which sometimes devolves into "why do I even bother anymore with this story?") By the time that motive becomes weak, a major change occurs in the story, driving it forward.

I've dropped sad stories not because they were constantly sad, but because I was NOT learning anything new from the sadness. It was the same thing regurgitated in slightly different scenes. e.g. "character A is bullied and has no friends." I was basically seeing multiple scenes of being bullied and lonely, but there weren't any significant differences between the scenes to justify the repetition. By the time I got through Bullying Scene 4 or so, I hadn't learned anything interesting about the character that I didn't know in Scene 1. That story wasn't moving forward; it was pacing back and forth, or possibly even walking in place.

[AnnaLandin]

The one thing that is absolutely crucial in dramatic stories - in all stories, honestly, but especially in those - is to make us care about the character. Makes us want to see the character through the sad times. Which isn't an easy task, but it is a necessary one.

A few things to consider:

Don't do the same thing over and over.
If, for example, your character gets bullied by someone who embarrasses them in front of a crowd of people on page two, don't have it happen again on page 30, and page 65, and page 100. Don't stay in an angsty stasis, running over the same thing over and over again; have them change and develop.

Vary intensity
In between your moments of angst and threat (by "threat" I mean something happening that hinders your character or hurts them in some way), have moments of calm. Have moments of attempted recovery. And also vary the intensity of the angst. Sometimes a bad day is just small things going wrong - you spilled your coffee all over yourself this morning, got splashed by a car driving through a puddle, ended up late for work, your computer isn't working, that thing you wanted to buy is out of stock, etc., - and sometimes a bad day means, as per @keii4ii's example, that the Nazis want to kill you.

Build up towards bigger things, but have moments of lower intensity between. It's like music: you don't make good music by constantly blaring the same note at the highest possible volume.

Give your characters moments of triumph
They don't have to be big ones, but do give your characters moments when things go right. Give them something they feel good about, and something to look forward to. It will also give your readers a solid reason to think that hey, at some point, things might work out for this person.

Develop your character's personality
Who is this person that all these bad things are happening to? They can't just be a target for angst. They can't just be a doll wandering through scenes of sadness and crying on cue. I need to know who they are, and how they're changed by their experiences. I can't sympathise or empathise with a tear-soaked cardboard cutout - I need a person, not some waterlogged paper-product.

[mariusthered]

i often have sad plots but i run more than one story line at a a time so i can intersect them, this way the sad story is still interesting but the other story holds drama.

[El_Psy_Congroo]

Pretty much what's already been said.

You want your readers to empathize with your character so they have to know them as a full person, not by whats happened to them. When you like a character and something bad happens to them, that strikes a deep chord.

A basic example would be killing a character off. Think about what about a character (in anything) makes you either go "meh, whatever. Probably saw that coming." or "OMG NO NO NO NO NO I REFUSE TO BELIEVE THIS. I QUIT. STOP." I'm not saying kill your characters just to get this effect, but use this to figure out what people like about a character to get so worked up about things that happen to them.

A lot of the time, I find its good contrast. In a lot of dark stories I read, there's occasional (sometimes dark) humor. And its usually really really funny. You need to open the valve like this from time to time. It will keep things from feeling stale. Also, if you show the reader there are times of happiness for the character, making life worth living, the tragedy will have all the more impact.

[tomatobird]

I read somewhere in some guide to plotting that you should plan the story based on what the ending is going to be–if the ending is intended to be a happy one, give the characters a "false loss" in the middle before giving them their victory. In converse, if the story is meant to be sad, give them a "false victory" in the middle. It keeps it dynamic and imo sad endings are much sadder when it feels like things cOULD have gone very well, only to have it lost.

[Kamikaze]

I suggest taking a few moments and finding ways to add a LITTLE humor in. I'm not saying make dumb jokes or anything like that. Usually in sad media you find a little bit of humor, not so much because they want to make the audience laugh, but because we as humans, even in our darkest hours, often use humor as a way of coping.

For example. During WWI the trench warfare in Europe was INSANE and troops were surrounded by death and devastation everywhere they went. Brothers in arms not only died from gunfire or shell explosions, but from exposure, disease, noxious gases, starvation, lack of water, gangrene or (one of the worst ways according to many written accounts) through stepping into the wrong muddy puddle and getting stuck. That meant you couldn't run or move when shellfire came along. Many people died slow, painful deaths because of mud. These conditions where atrocious, but men lived in them, worked in them and kept going through it all by keeping themselves laughing. In one report a battalion was forced into a corner, and soldiers were being blown apart every day. Literally, BLOWN apart. In order to keep sandbags and walls that protected them structurally sound, the soldiers had to start using the bodies of their fallen as filler. The men were totally demoralized about this, until one day some goof ball saw a deadmans hand sticking outside of the wall at an angle. The guy high fived it, and it became a huge joke. They started using it as a means of good luck, and once it decayed away, a new arm was put in the place of honor where men could high five it everytime they passed. This...frankly MORBID sense of humor was what kept those men sane.

In really awful situations people often turn to humor as a means of coping, and in psychology it's seen as a great sign that someone is actually on the mend from a traumatic experience if they can laugh. Keep that in mind when your characters go through awful stuff. If they can still laugh, and your readers can laugh you're doing your job right <3

[hushicho]

I have to say that a bit of contrasting can go a long way to making the experience more enjoyable. When the story is relentlessly intense and there's no real respite, it can work for a short time, but waiting between updates is a less-than-ideal situation. Due to the differences between media format and storytelling, I suggest a little relief peppered throughout; one can take oneself a bit less seriously, and speaking realistically as Kamikaze did: humor is how people get through tough situations. In a bleak stretch, even the slightest bit of brightness seems all the brighter and more important.

Honestly one of my very favorite works, Twin Peaks, contrasts a bright and cheerful veneer and moments of surreal humor and lightness with profound darkness and horror that seems accessible and very, very real, very down to earth. Because of that, it's one of the only things I've ever experienced that legitimately frightens me. I find it absolutely haunting, but I wouldn't be able to endure it if it were only just one tragedy, one terrible thing after another. The moments of humor and lightness gave some relief that made it endurable, as well as provided a real feeling of authenticity that only added to the horror's effectiveness.

Humorless angst parades usually come off as seeming artificial or even sophomoric at times, and that's in large part because many writers are hesitant to include any humor or lightness whatsoever when they're trying to be very "serious business" -- but the truth is that a little humor or lightness, or at least not taking oneself too terribly seriously, goes a long way to making something feel much more real and have a far greater impact, more times than not.

Just my two bits. Hope it helps!