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We continue with the next three story enhancers that you can pepper your story with. As an exercise, with a pen and pad poised on my lap, I watch one or two television soap operas a day. I jot down the plot motivators and the story enhancers they use on every episode. As I watch, the point of my pen flies across my unlined pad! It's dizzying how those writers utilize every craft-writing tool at their disposal, over and over again.
And so can you!
- Material Well-Being:
Ah, how well dressed each character is, even if they are purported to be poor, down and out. Come to think of it, I haven't yet seen any on going episodes of dirt-poor characters and their trials and tribulations. Most characters portrayed on the tube seem to allude to what they do for a living, how they got there and what they do to hang on. So a fertile field to write about would be how one loses or gains economic wealth and how that happens. Notice how we are intrigued and glued to "Biography", "Celebrity True Story" and etcetera. They deal with the plot motivator of 'Ambition' mixed with a 'Material Well-Being' enhancer.
- Rescue:
This enhancer usually entails a search. Of one's self, of another. A quest for whatever, perhaps a stone with a sword sticking out of it, (Was that King Arthur's story?) How about the rescue of others? Rescue from catastrophe, natural, emotional or otherwise; or from themselves, suicides; or even from yourself. The possibilities are endless.
- Unnatural Affection:
Ah, now, this runs the gamut! It's defined as any form of passion, whether physical or emotional, or both, that steps out of the normal man-woman, adult-adult, non-blooded framework. One example is from the Greek sage, Sophacales, who tells his love story of Oedipus and his mother Locasta. Just check out recorded human history. Our history books are full of such human emotions as forbidden love, incest and etcetera. They are the fodder that makes up our daily television dramas.
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