Drama: Response

This afternoon, I've been having a bit of a cry.

Hooray! I feel like celebrating.

See, ever since Tony Jordan spoke at last year's SWF about how writing drama often reduces him to a mess of tears, snot and booze, I've been conscious that nothing I've written has provoked that kind of emotional response in me. It's not like I've since deliberately set about writing something that will have me blubbing like a newborn, but an emotionally-charged story just happens to have grown in my mind over the last few months.

I've spent the first three days of 2009 pouring it all into the 25-page first draft of a TV spec script. This afternoon was the big climax, and I did indeed find myself with something in my eye. Okay, several things. In both eyes. Especially when I realised that what I was writing was also something of a personal exorcism. Of course, repeatedly listening to Soul Asylym's Runaway Train and Everclear's Learning How To Smile didn't help. But it all felt tremendous, like a year's worth of therapy. Mental Spring cleaning.

I don't reckon that everything we write should turn us into emotional wrecks, or even be vaguely cathartic. But as Chemical Brothers pointed out with music, drama should trigger some kind of response. Perhaps if you know what you want your audience to feel, this makes the writing run all the more smoothly, with all the more focus and, ultimately, impact.

So come on - cards on the table. Who's had a bit of sob at their own work? And I don't mean when you re-read it, two weeks later, and realised it was nonsense.