What makes good drama?

[DANDAN_THE_DANDAN]

Drama is essentially one of the easiest ways to introduce a conflict anywhere in the story, however, fundamentally, it is one of the hardest to master.

I've been thinking about this for a while now since I want to improve my writing in drama.
Is it where characters act because of their emotions rather than their logic, but their emotions have to make sense otherwise the drama would feel forced?
Is it where the belief of one character builds up into actions which directly conflicts another character's beliefs?
Is it where a goal must be achieved however a character, or even the world, is against the succession of the goal?

My first point I took from Beastars, my second I took from A Silent Voice, my third I took from Your Name. From three different examples alone I am able to conjure up three separate definitions to outline the magic of character drama.

Is there any silver bullet, a blanket definition, that can be used as a guideline to better write a drama plot/subplot for any type of story?

What do you think?

 

[Tamerlane]

The quest of "what makes good drama?" Is too broad in my opinion. It encapsulates far too many aspects that vary from case to case and depends on what you do. The best advice is generalities, avoid plotholes and things that break your audience's immersion, explain the rules of the universe and what's at stake, have characters with faults and weaknesses and human wants and desires, etc.

They're very broad statements about story telling but they're ones that are near universal. Then again, the best dramas tend to ones heavily inspired by the greatest drama of all time-history. Because history is a story of great men and women and also the worst of us, all aspects human and nonhuman to our species and how brutal or kind we can be to one another. History tends to make for good inspiration because its as real of a source as you can draw from for conflict.

 

[w1nter_proxy]

Good conflict.
I'm also practicing my writing skills. So here's my tip when your drama story reachest the conflict point.

Here's a example of conflict point. Two characters arguing with one another. What I would do is to make sure these two characters have a good reason for fighting each other and not something lame like:
Character 1: Why did you lie to me!?
Character 2: I did it, to protect you.
This types of conflicts are very cliché, a lot of drama story uses this.
Moving on, I would make sure that these two character would understand each other during the conflict but also holding on that he's or her's reasoning still stands, example:
Character 1: And that's why, I hid it from you.
Character 2: But you hid it from me for too long!
And in the end of the conflict point. When they walk away from one another, there reason still stands.
There are a lot of drama story that uses this exmple:
When they walk away, it's always that one of them understands the other and fills guilty from making the other walk away.
What I would do is to let them walk away without felling guilty, then overtime spent far from each other, they would slowly understand. Then one day one of them or both of them would fully understand the other then they would return and end their conflict.

And that is how I would write a conflict point in drama story. I have writen many storys that follows this philosophy but never publishing them because I am embarrassed on my work, maybe in the future. Also tell me if how I handle conflict points needs improvement?

 

[DANDAN_THE_DANDAN]

@Tamerlane Yeah I guess you're right. Not sure how I can learn every second of history to find a good reference but I'll try if I think I need to.

@w1nter_proxy Good point. Although, I think complexity will add onto conflict. Maybe the secret is not yet revealed, maybe there are more than one stakes, maybe the character just doesn't understand everything.

In Beastars ep 4 (Spoilers up to that point)

Spoiler

we see MC dropping the sword and started punching the tiger on stage. The stake here is that they will ruin the performance in front of the new students, a stake that has been set up from the very beginning - that's one conflict.

Another conflict is that, earlier in the episode, tiger wanted to drink a vile of rabbit blood, that he apparantly got from a delinquent senior, as a doping for his performance. We see later that his is too nervous to even remember the blood until it's too late. MC went bananas because of yet another conflict. This time it's both inner as well as outer. In ep 1 we see MC trying to resist his carnivorous instincts to eat the rabbit girl, after which he manages to snap out of it although he scratched her and left a wound all over her arm. And then another scene later he doesn't want to see her cause he still feels bad but his drama club needs roses for the set and she happens to be the only member of the gardening club. Also, for some reason she "apparantly" can't remember where she got the scar; the show still haven't revealed the truth yet. And because of her previous relationships where every boy she hooked up with immedietely dumps her afterwards, she thought that he was here for sex and long story short he ran away and things between them are even more awkward. Nevertheless these experiences plagues his mind ever since. The rabbit blood really ticked him off and because of how offended he is now the tiger knows that something is up with him and a rabbit. If his secret is uncovered, the whole school will now know that he cannot control his carnivorous instincts, mind you this takes place very recently after the death of a fellow classmates lamb who was also in the drama club and was killed by some sort of carnivore. That, as well as the fact that he has relationships with a rumoured slut. This is conflict on top of conflict.

Oh and how did they get there in the first place? Well the tiger is supposed to play the role of one of three antagonists (the role MC is now forced to take because of lack of substitutes). The role of the protagonist is played by the red deer with a superiority complex, and he broke his leg so now the tiger has to take his place. How did this come to be? In the first episode he wants extra training on the stage despite explicit rules stating it's not allowed. He had set up MC to guard the situation and warn him if a teacher comes near. This is where MC couldn't suppress his carnivorous instincts for a split second and wounded the rabbit. Back to the red deer, he slipped and twisted the ankle although he is still able to walk. And guess what he did? If he went to the hospital the teachers will know that he is breaking the rules and so he hid it this entire time. In the third episode we learned that his superiority complex comes from the fact that he hates the fact that he is a herbivore and that carnivores are always on top of the food chain and so he wants to make a point that herbivores can be superior to carnivores. But really, he cares for everyone. We can see this by his great voice actor and amazing CG emotions within his face to deliver this incredibly subtle behaviour. Later on with the first day of the performance (the performance is set for two days because the new students come in both of those days) he barely manages to hold himself until the curtain just dropped and the new students didn't have to see him faint.

What's the resolution? Everyone doesn't like the actor for the new protagonist. The audience is a mixture of fans of the drama club mixed with the new students. They know that the red deer is not playing the protagonist and so is dissapointed. But then when MC fought the tiger on stage off-script, the fans of the drama club knew that something is going wrong. And what happens next? The red deer just barely manages to recover to be able to walk again and improvised the entire ending by making up how the tiger is a fake protagonist and bla bla bla and everyone cheered just cause they're happy to see the red deer playing the role again rather than the greatness of the story.

There are a lot that I skipped over as well so you have only been spoiled half of all the things up to ep 4.

So with this we have conflicts layered on top of conflicts. The "MC hurt rabbit" conflict and "rabbit misthought MC was there for sex" conflict builds up into "MC fights tiger" conflict which couldn't exist if "red deer practices against the rules" and "red deer has superiority complex" conflicts didn't exist and the latter of the previous two was built up even more upon the "herbivore was killed by carnivore" conflict in the prologue of the story.

Beastars is great. It took Zootopia's premise and cranked everything up to 11 with how down-to-earth everything is and how the story is taken with a very mature lens. I highly recommend it if you want a good fictional reference on how to write a good drama.

Maybe layering conflicts is a fundamental to good drama-writing?

 

[w1nter_proxy]

@DANDAN_THE_DANDAN
The main point of how I handle conflict in story's is that characters must have a good reason for the conflict.

Some drama story's handle it, like this:
"I'm just a bad person so I'm going to have a conflict with you"
"I don't understand a single thing you said so I'm going to continue my conflict with you"
"You have a really good point but I will continue my conflict with you, with my bad reason"

You can add how complicated the conflict is, you can add secrets that are not revealed yet, you can even add characters that still doesn't understand the conflict fully yet, you can add anything to improve the conflict. In the end just make sure the characters have a good reason for the conflict, not dumb one's.

 

[Tamerlane]

Well, you can have characters that have dumb reasons for conflicts if its established the characters are dumb themselves. In that case scenario, it's best to have an intelligent character call them out for their idiocy and either it goes over their head because they're too stupid or they don't care because they're too emotional. It's more about plausibility than anything else. @W1nter_proxy

 

[DANDAN_THE_DANDAN]

@Tamerlane I feel like that works best for the lovable idiot trope characters. Like, watching them struggle because they don't understand why their friends are mad at them and actually trying hard to improve at all the wrong things. Making the idiot loveable is the hardest part in writing tho but will make a great subplot in any type of genre.

 

[Tamerlane]

Lovable idiot or just idiot idiot. You could have it be satirical for people who's motives don't make sense necessarily. Or you can have it as a gag like how in the Phineas and Ferb Movie, Evil Doofensmirtz motives come down to

Spoiler

"When I was a kid I had a toy train, and then one day I lost it."

@DANDAN_THE_DANDAN

 

[DANDAN_THE_DANDAN]

@Tamerlane Oh my gosh was that actually why he's "evil"? Lol

 

[dabson]

I haven't read any other reply, so forgive me if I repeat what they're saying.

Drama, like all other aspects of story telling, needs to be logical. All the characters should be in the right in some way or they need to have reasons as to why they're being illogical. Whatever those reasons maybe, from their emotions to misconception, it needs to be built up organically. It can't go against how the character has been defined. If you decide not to have the characters have valid or invalid reasons for their actions, you can still make it work. As long as those don't break the boundaries of that the story sets. Also, drama requires you to make the audience invested in those characters to a great degree . There is so much more to go over, but remember logic comes first.



I just realized how much I butchered what I was trying to say.

In simple terms:
Characters need to follow their own internal logic.
The audience needs to be invested in n the characters in some way to be invested in the conflict.
Characters also need logical reasons to engage in the conflict
The conflict needs to be about something with meaning. It doesn't need to be intrinsically meaningful, though that does help. But the story valuing what's causing the conflict is what makes it meaningful.

 

[airmobius]

It should be used to further world or character building. South Park had a great quote that has stuck with me for some time.

Cartman: Good Kyle! That's good anger you're showing there, you see that? That's emotional character development based on what's happening in the storyline...not at all like Family Guy

 

[alexsandro22]

I can't say for sure but quite often the best drama is the result of the real situation. Sometimes you have to go through something serious to write something special