#PennedPossibilities 1155: Do you enjoy musicals? If so, what’s your favorite one? Has it ever brought you inspiration for a story?
Not per se. I just watched The Sound of Magic, a musical mystery k-drama (👍🏼👍🏼), and I've seen productions of Cats, Wicked, and Phantom of the Opera, but I don't really understand the theatre form as a storytelling form. It seems vague and imprecise. Nor the musical form for that matter, as the storytelling aspect pressures the lyrics and the music in a way that can (but doesn't always) feel artificial.
I am a fan of a series that occasionally aired episodes where the characters broke out into song and dance, which worked sometimes and sometimes did not. Did it bring me inspiration for a story?
No.
However, the concept did gel into a scene I wrote in an otherwise hard-edged gritty drama thriller. (I know at least one follower will know to what I refer.) The POV character, after a hard day where nothing goes the way she wants, not only ends up walking home, she arrives late to her women-only boarding house only to find herself locked out since it is after curfew. Because of who she is, we know nobody can actually ever lock her out, but in a sequence that demonstrates her miserable mental state, she breaks out into song and dance on the lawn on the side of building, where the lyrics she sings address her internal struggle. Should she trust that she will work through her failures? Or should she give up the effort as prideful and meaningless, to take a dose of fuckitall. and simply running away—again. Her compulsion—singing and dancing mania is a real syndrome—makes her complete the song and dance choreography. She later after hopes nobody looked out their window or heard her. Whether it happened is up to the reader.
[Author retains copyright (c)2026 R.S.]
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