Drama
What makes a great drama story?
A great drama book is a little bit like real life, only more exciting, more colorful and faster moving. Drama can be grounded in the real world, and many well-known works offer a large helping of social criticism along with a compelling story. If you enjoy the non-stop intrigue of soap operas or other types of serialized stories, you may also like reading in this genre. When you read a well-written drama, you’ll experience all the trials and tribulations alongside the main characters until the very end, whether or not everyone ends up living happily ever after.
5 things to look for when choosing a drama story
- Choose a book with a story that’ll keep you anticipating what will happen next. Drama is characterized by a sense of excitement. You should be eagerly turning the pages, even if it takes all night to get through them all. Who needs sleep when life is this action-packed?
- Look for a story that engages your mind as well as your emotions. An effective drama will usually make you think or motivate you to contemplate a moral or ethical dilemma in a new way.
- Think about what bothers you most about the world or an issue about which you’re passionate. There may be a writer in the drama genre or a playwright who feels the same way, and has written a story or play about it.
- Look for a richness and depth of dialogue that makes the characters seem to come to life from within the pages. Fully developed characters can seem as real as your friends (or enemies, for that matter).
- In addition to finding a story you care about and great dialogue, look for a hero or heroine that you can connect with, at least on a certain level. You should be committed to being by their side through every plot twist and turn
5 great books
The drama genre has been around for literally centuries. The ancient Greeks and Romans wrote and performed dramatic works. You may have read a few masterpieces from ancient times, as well as some comparatively newer works, such as
- Hamlet, 1601, by William Shakespeare (as well as many other Shakespearian dramas). Classic dramas have originated from many countries and for various purposes.
- In 1867, French writer Emile Zola penned Therese Raquin, a psychological study of the human condition.
- In 1879, Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen criticized the limited acceptable gender roles for women in his book The Doll’s House nearly 100 years before Betty Friedan and Simone de Beauvoir.
- In 1953, American playwright Henry Miller, offered a scathing symbolic indictment of McCarthyism in his book, The Crucible.
- The detrimental effects of substance abuse within a family are tackled in Eugene O’Neill in Long Day’s Journey Into Night back in 1956.