Melodrama is caused by sins of commission and omission. Sometimes writers create it by trying to milk the scene for more emotion than it has; sometimes they create it by accident from either not knowing how to craft the scene or how to portray character emotion.

The guidelines below are meant to help with both sorts of mistakes.

Make sure that all your major characters enter a scene with a scene goal. Put at least some of their goals in conflict. Don’t bring the ally in to just be punched. Ensure that the ally *wants* something from the scene.

Ensure that every character acts to full capacity. I.e. don’t make a character dumber, less competent, less knowledgable, more pathetic, less capable than it could reasonably be.

Don’t idealise the characters. Give virtues and flaws equal playtime.

Don’t let the character express an emotion until it absolutely must. In other words, wait until the character couldn’t bear *not* expressing the emotion. Emotions delivered late have more impact than early.

Ensure that each emotion she evinces is in reaction to an external stimulus. ‘The phone rang. “What!” she yelled into the mouthpiece’ is reaction to an external event; ‘Maybe her husband was having an affair! She crushed her biscuit to crumbs in one clenched fist’ is reaction to just her own idle thoughts.

In each scene express only one emotion at a time and give a character an emotion just once. Avoid loops. E.g. she can go from surprise to alarm to fear to relief to anger, but don’t make her go from surprise to relief to surprise to anger to relief to… 

Ensure that every line of dialogue contains conflict. If it doesn’t, take it out or narrate it.

Focus on the physical (objects and senses), not the metaphysical (relationships and what things mean). ‘the small dog with the wiry brown coat’ is physical; ‘her darling terrier’ is metaphysical.

Don’t name the emotion; describe the sensations and behaviours; reflect it in dialogue. (This is just ‘show don’t tell’ advice).

You can break any of these principles for good reason, but if you keep them by default then they should keep you a good way from any feeling of melodrama.

Hope this helps.

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