…life was really like this?

This video put out by TNT is a fun piece of marketing which really runs with the idea that people need drama in their lives. Everything that happens there is all about “blockbuster film.” I just wonder what the civilians were thinking as they saw this spectacle unfolding before their eyes. The look on the faces of the people who pushed the button says it all – they are awe-struck, nervous, and downright thrilled by the eruption of drama that they have – all by pushing that one little button.

I get this feeling every time I read a great book. I love the thriller genre, and I am having a lot of fun exploring the pulp genre of the 1930s and 1940s. It’s that feeling of being taken away and dropped into dramatic situations that you get to experience through the protagonist’s eyes, and trying to find out what happens next. How does the protagonist get out of the very deep hole the author has dropped him into? That’s all part of the fun – and something that I want to make sure happens in any story I create.

I want you to be able to pick up my story and thrill to the challenges faced by the characters, and follow them as they try to get what they want despite everyone else in the story trying to stop them. I want you to lose yourself in the worlds that my characters inhabit, whether they’re in the shadows of our own world, or in places that no one could imagine. I want you to shudder as the villains try to find ways to bring their own form of drama to the story, and fight to keep from skipping ahead to make sure the protagonist is all right.

In short, I want to add drama.

Sure, videos like this are over the top, and books and movies that show events like this occurring almost never happen to people in real life. That’s why we want the thrills – even if they’re from the nice safe distance of the pages in our hands, or the screen before our eyes. That’s why we look for stories that add drama.