Creating drama

My workshop continues. This time I began by talking principles again. How principles comes before the forms. And never to trust any rules or models or such stuff as the golden standard, but only use such as the simple tools they are - and then know your principles of Drama. Yes, I say drama and I don't mean the same as in the video store, where everything serious and with emotions as centerpiece is filed under that definition. Drama is the definition
for the whole mega-genre, as opposed to the mega-genres of poetry, music, dance and epos (the novel&short-story). And the founding principle of drama is simply that drama deals with conflicts. This is the raison d'etre of the genre. Yes, all the other mega-genres also has some elements of conflict and deal with them. But for drama this is our main issue - and this is so because in our form we have characters acting in the here and now - which is the recipe for conflicts. The novel in comparison has the basic form (writing) where thoughts and reflections can be presented in its natural form (without necessarily being boring) and this gives us, the audience, a perspective outside the here and now. But in our genre, Drama, we deal in the moment, of what is happening right now in front of us. This is our main strength and this is why in film scripts or theatre plays using flashbacks can be very tricky - because the moment you loose the moment you loose the audience. After talking about the very basic principle for our genre I introduced the 4 act structure I mainly use, but I kept stressing that this is just one of many forms. One that I find useful, but one that I by no means swear to as the only one. I told the workshop participants that its useful to get acquainted with as many models as possible, to better understand that none of them is the only one, and to be able to pick and mix depending upon your needs for a specific project.
Then it was time to talk about the participants own projects. And this part of the workshop I can't really refer to in any level of detail, because what is being discussed is confidential and stays between me and the participants. But each participant tells the rest of us about their project, what's its about, where they are, what problems they experience and then I try and deal with it, give the best questions and suggestions I can come up with - and also very important are the questions from the other participants - as a part of the workshop experience is to become better at working in a group dynamic.