Cheating Melodrama

When a character must react to a stimulus, in most cases, we prefer the reaction to be in proportion to the stimulus. A loud bang might make someone jump, but it will hardly ever make them jump up, pack their bags, and leave on the next flight to Belize. (When would that be a proportionate response? Maybe the loud bang is a gunshot, and our character is fleeing the crime.)

If the response is larger than the stimulus, we say that it's melodramatic rather than dramatic. Melodrama is all about exaggeration, spectacle, and sensationalism. Emotions are supersized. Readers perceive it as overwrought and unrealistic, and for that reason, the presence of melodrama can push a reader out of the story. 

There is one way to avoid that push, though. Use another character to point out the melodrama. "Oh, Mary, you're overreacting."  That way, the reader will identify with this reaction instead of with Mary's overreaction. Let's take a look at how this might unfold. Mary and Cynthia are enjoying a bite to eat before going to the theater. Mary is very enthusiastic about the play they're about to see. This has all been established before this bit of melodrama:

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"Hurry, Cynthia. Finish your coffee already. We're going to be late!"

Mary pushed her chair back just as a waiter walked behind her with a tray. He jostled the tray with skill, but a cup of tomato soup tipped and splashed across Mary's blouse. She stared at in in horror. White blouse. Red soup. Oh, God, and she'd paid a fortune for this shirt, and she'd saved it special for tonight.

"You asshole!" She shouted at the waiter. "Can't you see I'm trying to get up here?"

"I'm sorry, miss. Let me get you a towel."

"A towel? A towel? What am I going to do with a towel, wear it out of here?"

"And some club soda."

"You've ruined this entire night. You should get fired for this." Mary burst into tears and buried her hands in her face.

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Yeah, that doesn't work. The reactions are out of proportion to the actions. Most people reading this will think, "Get over it, Mary. It's just soup. Wash it up and move on." And in a routine edit, we would either

1- dim down Mary's reaction so that it's proportionate. The soup spill can still be a minor complication, but it's not a terminable offense, right? This is the easy fix, and the one we'll reach for in most cases. Or,

2 - beef up her motivation so that the reader understands it's not just the soup spill making her melt down. There are several ways this can be done, but most of them are complicated and will add a lot of narrative to the text. For example, maybe Mary won the tickets in one of those "Meet Your Favorite Actor" contests and has been a bundle of nerves for weeks. But that would require writing all that into the plot so that this reaction makes a little more sense in terms of proportion. Because it's a bigger revision, we don't often opt for this choice unless the bones are already in place.

The third option, mentioned above, is a little trickier to navigate but can allow you to make Mary a little cray cray over the soup without heavy revision to build up to this moment. Let Cynthia be the voice of the reader's reaction.

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"Hurry, Cynthia. Finish your coffee already. We're going to be late!"

"Please relax. Curtain's not for another half hour, and we're fifty yards from the theater door." Cynthia sipped her coffee slowly.

Too slowly. Mary couldn't wait another second. She pushed her chair back just as a waiter walked behind her with a tray. He jostled the tray with skill, but a cup of tomato soup tipped and splashed across Mary's blouse. She stared at in in horror. White blouse. Red soup. Oh, God, and she'd paid a fortune for this shirt, and she'd saved it special for tonight.

"You asshole!" She shouted at the waiter. "Can't you see I'm trying to get up here?"

"Mary!" Cynthia dropped her cup into the saucer with a clatter.

"I'm sorry, miss. Let me get you a towel."

"A towel? A towel? What am I going to do with a towel, wear it out of here?"

"For heaven's sake!" Cynthia blurted. "What's wrong with you! Leave that poor man alone."

"And some club soda," the waiter added.

"You've ruined this entire night," Mary said. "You should get fired for this." She burst into tears and buried her hands in her face.

"He is most certainly not going to get fired for this." Cynthia fumbled in her bag and pulled out a Tide pen. "Now take this into the ladies room and don't come out until you're -- well, not like this. You're embarrassing yourself."

----

Do you see how that works? Now there's an additional layer of conflict between Cynthia and Mary, and Cynthia is embodying the reader's objection to Mary's melodramatic response. This won't cure every melodramatic scene -- and there's a definite danger in switching reader identification away from the pov character, even temporarily -- but it's another trick to add to your editing toolkit.

Have you ever read a melodramatic scene that worked? What did the author do to make it work?

Theresa