How to Avoid Melodrama In Your Writing | Writing Tips

hey everyone its shaylen and i'm here today with another rating video so today i wanted to talk about melodrama now before I start seeing you know I want to make it clear that this entire video is a sufferer when I was a new writer melodrama was my it was probably my greatest sin and indulgence as a new writer but that's the reason why I wanted to make this video because first of all it's something that I had to learn a lot about in terms of how to avoid it because it was one of my most epidemic writing problems and second of all I think it's probably one of the most common writing problems for new writers so I wanted to share some strategies that I've learned for how to spot melodrama and how to avoid it first of all what exactly is melodrama basically melodrama is when the emotions being presented are not supported or earned by the storytelling so the story is too emotional for what it is now because of this it actually loses its emotional complexity because it's kind of just over the top so instead of becoming impactful it just kind of becomes cringy or iral really it's very hard to find the balance between too subtle and to over when it comes to expressing emotions I find writers generally overcompensate based on their fears so I think there are a lot of new writers who are really scared of the writing being too melodramatic so then they withhold too much and it's boring and detached and then there are a lot of writers probably them I would guess the majority but I don't know I haven't done Studies on this or anything who are scared of the writing being bland and boring and not emotional and so they kind of hit that point way too hard and that was definitely me I always felt like I wasn't expressing the emotion that I was trying to express but actually I was expressing it way too much like if I was writing a scene where the main character was sad I would be like wow this isn't coming across and I would just hit the point so hard that it was actually it was coming across it was coming across a little a lot too much and so the first point that I wanted to mention probably the least concrete the least technical but maybe one of the most important is to trust yourself it might be a misconception that melodrama happens because the writer wants more emotion but I think it's generally the result of the writer thinking there is no emotion and not trusting their ability to convey emotion maybe I'm just I don't know projecting my own experience onto other writers but I always felt like I wasn't getting this across but really I was getting across way too much but because I felt like I wasn't getting it across I would be like I just pile it on way too much so the first thing is just trust yourself trust your skill and your ability to convey an emotion with a sentence rather than five paragraph and the other thing I wanted to say is to not really worry about this too much in your first draft can be a fine line between melodrama and intense emotion in certain scenes and if you're too caught up and not you're not going to be able to finish your draft it's like descriptions they're probably not gonna be all there they're probably gonna be wordy or not enough or too much on the first draft and that's fine emotion is the same you kind of just have to get it out and then come back to it later and get the balance later because it's going to be very very difficult to draft if this is all you're worrying about a lot of this is line level stuff and it's easy to edit so just get the story out and then come back and figure out this balance between emotion and melodrama in the editing phase alright so now let's get into some more concrete tips and ways to avoid melodrama number one language use and purple prose sometimes melodrama comes from using language that is more intense than is warrant this is basically what purple prose is it's over-the-top unearned poetry and it's pretty melodramatic but a lot of the time it can just be word choice some word choice is just very very loaded and very emotional number two mentioning souls now this might seem very specific like weirdly specific this is just something I've noticed souls are a very melodramatic concept because it's spiritual and lofty and it has melodramatic connotations I know when I look at my old writing like I'm talking reading from when I was like 15 and it was extremely melodramatic one of the things that I noticed recur is me mentioning souls in regards to emotion so I would say something like anger bubbled in my soul or I felt sadness in my soul I don't know if this isn't a direct quote from my writing but stuff like that I would you know talk about feeling things in your soul and it's just it's so melodramatic and just because the concept of a soul is in essence very melodramatic and emotional now one exception I just want to mention here you have some sort of system where the soul is actually not necessary concrete because obviously a soul is in concrete but you have some sort of system where souls are actually important to the system like magic involving the soul or whatever or some sort of religious practice then that's fine because it's out of an emotional context but I would avoid mentioning souls in relation to an emotional context number three pathetic fallacy so pathetic fallacy often refers to when the natural world mirrors the characters emotions so for example it's raining because I'm sad it's not actually raining right now it's sunny and I'm happy so pathetic fallacy but another form of pathetic fallacy is just personifying the natural world now personification isn't a bad literary device but personifying the natural world especially in excess can become quite melodramatic it's kind of similar to the soul thing where it gives the natural world this lofty spirituality number four would be no subtext so subtext is basically everything the characters aren't saying but what they're really saying when characters just say what they mean without subtext a lot of the time what they mean the thing they're withholding is that really dark deep emotional thing that they don't want to express and if they just say it out loud if there's no subtext whether in dialogue or in the characters narrative then it becomes quite melodramatic it also removes the subtlety and possibility for interpretation in your story but it's also about dramatic so it's best to have subtext an exception to this might be like very young characters or if your character is drunk or something obviously they're exceptions to this there's interpersonal conflict involved an adult human who has control of themselves will probably be speaking with some degree of subtext number five cliches now cliches especially even on the line level can be really melodramatic because they're just familiar I don't really know why they feel so I'm how dramatic to me but for some reason if I'm reading prose and there's a lot of cliches or familiar phrases it just makes it seem melodramatic to me even though there's nothing really inherently emotional about a familiar phrase I can't really explain this one it's just something that I find to be true number six forced suspense for suspense would be another I think example of a writer not trusting themselves they don't trust their ability to create suspense so they kind of tell you that their suspense I'm gonna give some very over-the-top examples of this when you end a chapter with like and we had no idea what was about to happen ending every chapter on this really forced line forced cliffhanger where you're really hitting the point way too hard it's suspenseful keep reading it's actually super melodramatic it's all so cringy it also kind of kills the suspense because it's telling instead of showing the suspense and I find that it's something that often happens at the end of scenes where the writer wants to like wrap things up but keep you reading so they kind of throw this like one-liner at you where it's like keep reading because this is suspenseful it's also melodramatic seven talking too much about abstract concepts this is going to relate to what we often say about show don't tell in terms of emotions but talking about abstract concepts like sadness anger love peace quite melodramatic similar to the soul thing even if it's not like the main character being like I am sad so it's not even a telling thing it's just having discussion of abstract concepts in the narrative rather than showing them through the character's world and how the character experiences the world even showing them through symbolism would probably be a stronger way than just having the character going a little side tangent about the nature of sadness occasionally you can earn these things especially in a novel where you are gonna have more leeway with melodrama at some points because you've earned or investment eight being off balance between telling and showing both too much showing and too much telling can - melodrama if you tell too much it's too over you know this is things like she was angry you know it's not interesting there's no emotional texture I think it's common for writers to be very aware of this show don't tell rule and so they go I need to show but they show way too hard if you show was too heavy a hand and you hit those points too hard then it's just overblown and so it's again that trusting like trust that you can convey emotion with a line with a subtle character gesture rather than going on this long tangent about emotion and having the character cry and all of this trust that you can convey things in subtle ways nine dreams I will admit I have a personal pet peeve in fiction where I really dislike dreams yes there are cases where you can use a dream and it makes sense but in most cases I feel like dreams are forced symbolism or very bad ways of conveying information a lot of the time where dreams are used in fiction it's used to show us something the characters feeling deep down through their subconscious through their dreams it ends up actually being this really weird extreme situation and it's not subtle at all I think it's often may be thought of as like a subtle technique where it's like oh I'm just gonna use dream symbolism and I'm not gonna actually show you what the character is feeling but it's quite evident through this dream about the main characters seen her brother standing on a cliff and then he disintegrates and she's standing among the ashes or something like that I don't know it's not actually that subtle at all it's like maybe pretty obvious but it's like meant to be subtle and so then it's kind of like really melodramatic I'm not a fan of dreams I know some people don't mind them they're a personal pet peeve of mine this is why I think they're melodramatic they're also not happening they're not real so as soon as I know something isn't real and like why do I care I don't tend for symbolism or heavy-handed symbolism now I like symbolism I'm a fan of symbolism I'm pro symbolism but I think symbolism can be rintah melodrama if it's too heavy-handed like you know it's very obvious and not like awareness like it it's a symbol but it's not subtle it's obviously a symbol it's hit you hard or it's really forced and I think a lot of this happens when the main character is too aware of the symbolism but if the main character is aware of the symbolism you don't really need it like I don't really like it when main characters have some object and she's like and this locket represents my mommy issues because it holds the secrets of my family that I don't understand I don't know I'm just making it stuff up right now if the main character is aware that it's a symbol it's not really a symbol a symbol is one half of a metaphor but you just kill it being a metaphor by going oh yes this is the metaphor like you have to let symbolism speak for itself and be somewhat subtle or else it's very heavy-handed and melodramatic take a shot every time I you can use the word melodramatic in this video but don't actually I'm not encouraging you to actually do this please don't do anything I tell you the whole point of this video is like oh you should do what I tell you and I just said don't do anything I tell you I'm gonna move on to the next point now 11 I don't have 11 fingers moving is abusing Murphy's Law Murphy's Law is basically everything that could possibly go wrong goes wrong now obviously in fiction and in writing things are gonna go wrong that's the nature of conflict things might go wrong more often than they go wrong in real life however abusing Murphy's Law is like every single thing is bad like there's literally no light there's no hope every possible thing that could go wrong goes wrong so instead of having this like Evan flow of like success and defeat success and defeat success and defeat you just have two feet to feed to feed to feed to feed obviously you need conflict and things are going to go wrong but when you throw in random hardships that don't really play into the main plot that becomes quite an abuse of Murphy's Law it's like this is what the story is about oh here's some random bad coming in just to make things even worth this doesn't contribute 12 again I don't have 12 fingers 12 overly intense character reactions it's not just the reaction itself but it's how it's described like I always think of man I feel bad I'm just gonna roast poor person that is a friend of mine I was reading a story in workshop not a bad story but there was just this one moment and he was in like the first few pages where a main character breaks down and starts crying and the thing is like honestly realistic like this character who learns that her sister died like just learns that she died and immediately starts sobbing but because of the way it was described where it was like she fell there on a beach and she like fell back in the sand and was sobbing I couldn't really take it seriously as the reader I was like oh this is just really melodramatic right now describing this like fit out Brooke she's having you know if she was gonna cry maybe using less intense language or having her cry but not so like messily or even not having her cry and having a more subtle reaction that could still express how the hurt that she was feeling giving your characters appropriate reactions to things and then also describing them with the appropriate level of intensity the last thing I wanted to say in this video is to have genre awareness some genres though are going to be inherently way more melodramatic like why a as a category can be quite too melodramatic because teens are angsty melodrama is relatable to the youths obviously I'm not saying to purposely make your work melodramatic but you can have much more overt us with emotion in why a cuz why a primarily meant to be relatable to teens who have all of these feelings and are like I want to read about people who have these angsty feelings that I also have if you go John Ritter's onra like romance probably going to be much more melodramatic genre than like will be a really non melodramatic genre some ways I don't want to say like a mystery like crime but I don't know I don't read that so maybe that she is melodramatic no yours genre I don't know all the genres and what's appropriate and all of them but know your genre and what is kind of allowed and what the standard is and what people would be expecting because like if I gave you like a romance novel but the emotions where it's pared back as they are in a lot of literary fiction that I read but you're primarily a romance reader and that's what you want you'd probably be kind of disappointed you'd be like why is everyone so cool but then all so vice versa so that's everything I wanted to say on avoiding melodrama I myself big fan of melodrama back in the day let me tell you reading my old work is just so many emotions just so many of them so I hope that this video is helpful for anyone who struggles with this and their writing so thanks so much for watching if you have any questions you can always send me an ask on tumblr and I will see you in another video bye [Music] [Music]

Channel: ShaelinWrites

Views: 40,179

Rating: 4.9713802 out of 5

Keywords: writer, writing, author, novelist, creative writing, writetube, writetuber, writing advice, how to write a book, how to write a novel, writing vlog, creative writing degree, books, melodrama, how to avoid melodrama, how to avoid melodrama in your writing, authortube

Id: QkZMGQd7Scg

Length: 16min 15sec (975 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 02 2018