As a story editor, when I work with new writers, I often find they tend to gloss over the painful parts of their novels. When a character gets cancer, two pages later, the character is dead. A woman has a child where the father has abandoned her. Three paragraphs later, the child is in law school. What’s wrong with this picture? No drama. In life we don’t want conflict or drama, but in stories we need it. It’s the oxygen of fiction. We need to be able to take a look at the darker side of ourselves, our characters.

I recently went on the "Oh Drama Show" (I was in the audience) at BET where they interviewed a young author with a book on "Macking." Why such a subject? Drama. 

Fiction is about both drama and conflict, but it is also about healing. Readers want to know how the character made it through losing a loved one or rearing a child without the help of an absent father. People often use books as bibliotherapy - a way to heal themselves through reading. 

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