My writing is too melodramatic. How can I improve?

My writing is too melodramatic. How can I improve?

you're only ever good at writing what you're knowledgeable in
hence if you don't know what it is to be happy, how do you expect to improve

also

Fuck off with this pretentious pseud bullshit

give me something happy to read then if you think I'm full of shit you salty horsefucker

Melodrama can be good (Dickens, Dostoevsky, Shakespeare, Cervantes). A writer is essentially a performer, his story and narration are forms of performance. But melodrama doesn't work if it feels insincere and unbelievable.

"too melodramatic" is far too ambiguous and can mean many different things. You need to be much more specific.

For lack of a better word, my writing is whiny. How can I express sadness in a way that isn't over the top but tugs on the heart strings just right?

let's work on your work (or at least a sample) so we know what we're dealing with

Stop being a meme, Andrew.

Post a sample, I will critique

Imo there’s nothing wrong with melodrama but if you wish to be more subtle, I recommend reading Dubliners.

Kazuo Ishiguro

wtflol did OP just pussy out where tf is he

Andrew left because he's a little bitch!
And all his songs sound like Bradford Cox songs.

OP is afraid of being called a piece of shit lmaoooo

OP YOU CHICKENSHIT

try writing in third person about sad situations and let the sadness show through what is there instead of writing a whiny 1st person based on yourself

fuckin gay shit bro im out

numbers confirm you just gotta read more, Andrew!

i dont even know u bro
i'm just a
natural
as-stral
projectorrrr

You, the author, kind of have to be cold in some respects and place yourself outside the work. Tragedy is a good art form. I suppose many writers have expressed feelings that would have come off as whiny through any other expression through tragedy. But you don't feel a narrator or playwright's pity when you read it though - the writer's feelings just aren't there.
This post isn't really wrong though. Good writing is represent well what it's supposed to represent. People often suppose that knowledge about feelings is like knowledge about the outside world: you learn what they're like by description. But emotions are by nature internal and felt immediately. So when you are writing or thinking about an emotion, without representing to another or just yourself that emotion, which is to say feeling it, you aren't thinking about an emotion so much as a word. In writing it's not exactly necessary but nevertheless a generally good idea to have a wide emotional palette; that palette is developed by experience. Otherwise you don't represent a feeling when a character is sad or happy or whatever - you represent a word.

I'd embrace it. Go full melodramatic with a tinge of irony.

This. Show don't tell.

As an example, instead of:
>I feel so sad I'm drizzling rain
>my sweet longings have become naught but pain
do:
>I feel so sad I'm drizzling rain
>I remember her kissing me deeply and it is only pain

Instead of just saying "sweet longings" explain in more detail what specific incidents you are remembering.

Repeat as needed.

i gave ur mum some sweet longins if you know what i mean

There's an easy way to do this and a hard way.

Hard way:
Read works that have either very strong negative outlook or positive ones, and see what these authors do that you like. Essentially review these books and be as specific as possible. Do a few writing exercises and try to incorporate this.

Easy way: stop whining when writing, and instead designate the job to one or two characters. Go nuts with making them melodramatic, and if you want you can make it in an ironic or even satirical way.

don't write about yourself. seriously, it's the most indulgent thing possible, and comes across as whiny.
also, write what you know is literally the biggest meme in writing and the worst advice possible.

>write what you know is literally the biggest meme in writing and the worst advice possible.

I like you, user

write more

Why not try melodrama from the point of view of a melodramatic character
>Dostoevsky's Raskolnikov comes immediately to mind

>write what you know
i think it's valid advice because if you're smart and not a self-indulgent piece of shit, it basically means DO YOUR RESEARCH and GET OUTSIDE OF YOUR COMFORT ZONE before you write about something instead of writing about something you have no fucking idea about which comes across as worse imo

researching and getting out of your comfort zone is exactly pursuing what you don't know; i think you're interpreting the phrase strangely

>>tfw I am the parasite of this town
fuck why am I laughing this much

Dude, listen to the voices in your head who say everything's been said.

>that first example

Stop being whiny. You need to produce other things with your writing than using it for catharsis.

Choose a field where melodrama works, lile children's literature.

Raise the stakes for your story and its characters. Melodrama happens when the level of emotion doesn’t match the level of predicament. Give your character a more necessary need and a more devastating complication in their way. Also, stop using short cuts with your characters, just GIVING their feelings to the reader. Let the reader observe and conclude by how your characters respond to their obstacles.

If also you mean that your prose itself reads like middle school poetry, here’s an exercise to try: don’t use any metaphors from outside of the story. Say you just wrote a shitty sentence like, "Seeing her with Chad at the carnival was a dagger in his heart.” As hard as it seems sometimes, BELIEVE as a writer that not only is there a better metaphor to convey that same feeling without dumb cliches like daggers and bitter pills, but that you can do so by only referencing nouns that you’ve established in your story. Change the details if you have to, just always for the worse. If your protagonist is watching his crush holding Chad’s stuffed animal, on top of everything else, always is he just a few tickets too short.

Your example was laughable, but I think that's a very interesting rule on metaphors. Honestly, this post is the first good advice I've seen regarding writing in a while. Are you an author yourself?

Agreed, but we're all trying. God are we trying.