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Wednesday, July 6th, 2022 2:31 PM

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Drama subgenres

I see on the keywords tool that IMDB makes reference to a number of accepted drama subgenres, they are:

drama coming-of-age-drama
drama cop-drama
drama disaster-drama
drama docudrama-drama
drama domestic-drama
drama dramedy-drama
drama epic-drama
drama historical-drama
drama legal-drama
drama medical-drama
drama period-drama
drama political-drama
drama prison-drama
drama psychological-drama
drama soap-opera-drama
drama supernatural-drama
drama teen-drama
drama tragedy-drama

These are all fine, although I know of other terms that can be used that I may wish to add:

Healing drama (a term closely associated with psychological dramas and romantic fiction, where the characters undergoing psychological healing from trauma across the series or movie)

I'd also like to propose distinctions between a theme and a specific thing that happens within a narrative. So I looked up "friendship" as a keyword, and found lots of examples of settings that have in them, well, friendships (I'm going to use TV as my term of reference): The Walking Dead, ER, Riverdale, The 100 etc. These all have characters in them that become friends across the series. That's fine. But the shows aren't specifically about friendships., and have more relevant plot keywords to primarily describe them.

To contrast, consider Gilmore Girls, or My Brilliant Friend, or Hap and Leonard. These are shows specifically about the friendship between two or sometimes more (a small group of) characters. To distinguish them I would propose a "friendship drama" keyword, of which there are none currently. Would this even be accepted?

I would make the same argument for related concepts too: relationship drama, rural drama (or small town drama), college drama. I'd also propose a "personal drama" or "life drama" for settings that primarily follow a single character and how they develop. Would all of these things be accepted?

This conversation has been merged. Please refer the main conversation:

Introducing: Subgenre & Plot Timeframe Keywords

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