What's up with girls and drama? As if my twenty-year-old daughter isn't dramatic enough, she's decided that the stage is where she belongs. So, off my family and I trudged to yet another theatrical experience at the community college this weekend. . . and boy howdy, what an experience it was.

You try explaining Anton Chekov's The Seagull to a 93 year old woman with dementia. Yeah. That was a rip-roaring conversation with my mother. Interesting, though, that even the twenty-somethings in the bunch didn't pick up on some of the themes or connect with the characters. They said it was too "artsy fartsy."

Which got me to thinking about writing as an art-form and opened up a whole can of wormy questions . . .

At what point does a writer take their story too far into the land of artistic expression and leave behind the masses who just want to be entertained by a fantastic tale? 

Whenever a reader's face suddenly freezes into a deer-in-the-headlights stare, that's a sign he doesn't have a clue what's going on. This is usually caused by the reader having no sense of connection with the characters.

Commonality is key. If a reader can't relate to the way the characters think and feel, then it doesn't really matter what the characters say or do, because the reader will check out. Or fling the book against the wall, leaving a nasty ding in the sheetrock. When a writer makes a main character think too far outside the norm, he's not going to connect with readers.

Is that a valid way to write? 

You bet. If you want to write in the philosophical twilight zone, go for it. Just don't expect the average reader to understand and/or like what you've put out. I realize that sounds an awful lot like "dumbing down" your writing, and in some respects it is, but here's a text message from Mrs. Reality: readers have way too many things going on in their lives to sit down and chew on a thick piece of literary existentialism.

What makes a piece artsy fartsy?

Besides lack of commonality, the story needs to progress in a logical sequence. Splattering words or scenes or characters all over the pages with no rhyme or reason is messy. Artsy, yes, but resonating in the reader's heart and soul, nope. Not gonna happen.

As for me, personally, I loved the production of The Seagull. The story was tragic, which I happen to have a sick and twisted affinity for, and one of the main characters was a writer who gave an accurate monologue on what it's really like to be an author, so I connected with him. As for my family, well, let's just say they would've been more likely to enjoy Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.