Author Archives: Melanie Anne Phillips

Is Dramatica Software Binary?

The Dramatica theory book talks about Binary and Analog aspects of story. Binary means “two” and Analog means “unsegmented,” rather like a spectrum.

Although there are some places in the Dramatica software that deal with apparent binaries, there are none that deal with analog. Most aspects of the software fall between the two extremes.

For example, in the Dramatica structural chart, story points are divided into families of four similar story points called “Quads.” Therefore, any quad is dealing with the relationships among 4 items, not two as one would have in a binary system. And since each quad is “nested” within larger families made up of groups of quads, if you want to pick your Objective Story Problem in one of the lower quads as your first choice in story structuring, you are presented with 64 options!

In fact, the only seemingly binary questions in the software are the four Main Character Dynamic Questions (Resolve, Growth, Approach, Mental Sex) and the four Plot Dynamic questions (Driver, Limit, Outcome, Judgment).

Each of these eight questions presents a choice of only two items, such as Change or Steadfast. Surprisingly, these “binary” choices are actually closest to analog of anything in the software. Why? Because of the way they should be interpreted by the author.

Using our example of Change and Steadfast, it may look at first as if we are simply talking about whether the Main Character is different or the same, mentally and emotionally at the end of the story when compared to the beginning.

As an illustration of Change, suppose our Main Character was driven by “faith.” Well then a Change character would end up driven by “disbelief.” That is how the software works, and that is clearly binary. But in fact, not all characters actually jump all the way to the other side when they change. A character might lose some of his faith without actually becoming a disbeliever, moving from pious to agnostic. Is that not a change? Yes it is, yet the software says he is Steadfast because he is still on the “faith” side of the fence.

Immediately we can sense that there are many stories to tell about becoming less strongly fastened to a previously firmly held attitude or attribute. But the software will call it Steadfast, and that just doesn’t feel right.

Before I describe why the software does this, lets look at the other side of the coin. Suppose a character Changes by becoming a disbeliever, but it is only in regard to the particular situation of the story. In fact, it is quite clear that he sees this as an exception and will jump right back to being his same old self immediately after.

Well, such a character would not seem so much a Change character as a Steadfast character who made an exception. But the software simply calls this character “Change” and that is the end of it!

Okay, why does the software do this? Simply put, the Dramatica software engine is the MINIMUM implementation of the theory that doesn’t leave any holes in a structure. In other words, in a future version of the software you might find that each of the eight “essential questions” moves from a binary choice to a quad of choices.

Using our example, we would end up with a quad that would ask, “By the end of the story has your Main Character:

Changed

Remained Steadfast

Become less Steadfast.

Changed but only as an Exception.

In fact, an even later version of the software might also add:

Become more Steadfast

Changed, but only temporarily

Finally, the whole question might end up with also:

Will eventually Change

Will eventually come back to being Steadfast

Now we have two complete quads – One change quad, and one steadfast quad. Each of the eight available choices would create a different feel in the story.

So again, why doesn’t the software allow this? Because all kinds of additional formulas and algorithms would need to be worked out and added throughout the software to accommodate this degree of theory-sophistication.

If you offer two quads of Resolve, then you need two quads of each of the eight essential questions to maintain dynamic balance. (Note that creates sixteen quads of four dynamic items each, effectively creating yet another set of 64 items, but this time dynamic ones.)

What’s more, you would need to show in the software the DEGREE to which any item is “held.” This easily becomes a graphic interface nightmare. For example, a tightly held faith might be red in color, but a loosely held faith would be blue. And, if faith increased, it could have a “+13” or a “-8” attached to it as well.

The fact of the matter is, that to come up with a solid set of algorithms to describe the minimal structure which would fully surround a story to four solid years! It took another two on top of that to finish the programming and another two to bring the software to where it is today.

Version 3 added the Theme Browser and the Plot Progression windows (among other things). Have you ever wondered what the colors mean in the Theme Browser? Right now, they don’t mean anything. They’re not exactly random, but they don’t relate to anything theory-oriented. Someday, however, they will. And the fact that they are there now indicates the direction things will be going in the future.

Beyond all this, however, is a more central difficulty. The theory predicts that to be completely accurate, a model of story must have a view that deals with components (not just binaries, but simply meaning a network of interconnect story points) and also a seamless flow of force (not just analog, but more like the waves in a pond that flow out from a leaf that drops in the water.) If each story point is a leaf, then the waves in the dynamics of the story merge and combine to create an interference pattern, not unlike a hologram, where each story point exists because of the convergence of the ripples, and each ripple is generated because of the story point.

In short, “fuzzy logic” won’t hack it because the relationships aren’t fuzzy. They are very specific. And, for those who want to know where this kind of system comes from, it is simply a synchronous system analogous to the physical nature of the brain.

I won’t be going into much detail about that here, as it is WAY beyond the scope of the current subject, but I do want to point out that the reason stories actually work this way is NOT arbitrary. In fact, the reason story structure has taken the form and force that is has is simply that it mimics the way the brain functions, just as the mind does.

The structure and dynamics of the brain are NOT the mind, but the mind is “generated” by them and shares an analogous “structure” and dynamics, conceptually. When we communicate, then, we create a Story Mind which we twist and turn to create the dramatic tension that represents the forces at work in our own minds, which in turn draw on the physical system of memory and neural activity. All three systems look identical because all grow from the same seed.

Getting back to the REAL world…

For any quad, when one pair of items is seen as being separate (binary) the other two are seen as a spectrum. For example, in one quad in the structure, Dramatica has Faith, Disbelief, Conscience, and Temptation. If we decide to see Faith and Disbelief as two separate states of mind, then a character will Change or Remain Steadfast due to the shifting influences along the scale from Conscience to Temptation.

What is a scale of Conscience to Temptation? How about making a choice for the “greater good?” Is it okay to steal from a rich man to feed your starving family? How about stealing from a poor man to feed yourself? Or stealing from a middle-class man to make sure your children won’t risk being hungry?

One could turn the whole thing around and see Conscience and Temptation as binary, but then Faith and Disbelief would appear analog.

Conscience would then simply appear as doing what is right and Temptation as doing what is wrong. The scale between Faith and Disbelief would influence whether a character would Change or Remain Steadfast in Conscience or Temptation.

Examples of seeing Faith and Disbelief as a scale might be, one believes in God but to doubts the Bible. Perhaps a character has faith in a cruel god. In fact, a great number of people believe in God but not in heaven or hell. Faith and Disbelief are no longer binary, but are a scale along which situations can be pegged.

To wrap this all up, Dramatica: the theory is young. Dramatica: the software is even younger. Currently the software only presents the minimum implementation of the theory necessary to fashion a complete structure all the way around your story. But it is like scaffolding, not a solid enclosure. Future versions will add more sophistication, but creating the algorithms and programming to make that happen is time consuming and expensive.

Still, in defense of the software, it represents the first time in the history of human kind when such a thing as a functional model of story was possible at all! No other software can offer that model (it’s patented), and the model even as it currently exists, works accurately to fill in holes and move dramatics into alignment.

What does this mean to you, the author? Let me paraphrase Winston Churchill:

“Dramatica is the worst system in the world – except for all the others.”

From my point of view, when your instincts are right on DON’T go near the software. But when your instincts are amiss or your inspiration runs dry, use the software as a tool to plug, straighten, and fine-tune.

Finally, not everyone should expect to or even try to learn the whole theory. Like Tai Chi, there is a level which is quick to grasp and easy to use. There are also many deeper levels of which even experts (including the theory creators!) are only now beginning to understand.

The key is to find the best level for you between understanding stories and writing them.

Z Patterns and the Theme Browser

A word on the difference between the arrangement of Variations in the Theme Browser and that in the Plot Sequence Report:

The Theme Browser is nothing more than the “neutral” structural chart stuck into the software. In contrast, the Plot Sequence Report verbally describes the structural chart once it has been “wound up” to create dramatic tension.

I hate to keep going back to the “Rubik’s Cube” analogy, but if you picture a Rubik’s cube as if is brand new, right out of the box, each side is a single color. All the yellow squares on one side, all the red on another. Things are orderly and balanced. This is how things are arranged in the Theme Browser and in that position it represents a complete lack of dramatic tension.

Now, twist up that cube a few times in different directions and the colors become mixed on each side. After several different twists, the patterns look more random or chaotic, even though they were created by a sequence of simple moves. This is the view illustrated by the position of the Appreciations (story points) as they show up listed on the Theme Browser.

Then there is the Plot Sequence Report. It describes the sequence of moves necessary to create that particular dramatic pattern of your story’s tension.

So if you are keeping score, we have three things:

1. The model of the Storyform at Rest (the structure as seen in the Theme Browser)

2. The model of the Storyform twisted up with dramatic tension (the position of the story points as they appear in the Theme Browser).

3. The sequence of exploration of the items in the structural chart (as indicated the Plot Sequence Report.

The discrepancy between the Browser and the PSR is this:

The Browser shows which “colors” on the cube ended up next to each other in arrangement at the end.

The PSR shows which “colors” on the cube were next to each other in sequence during the process.

So, use the Browser to see what pattern your story seems to make for the audience when it is over and they look back and appreciate the meaning of the dramatic predicament. Use the PSR to figure out how the Types and Variations show up as the story unfolds.

Part of the confusion is due to including the Signposts in the Theme Browser. The Signposts are the only “time oriented” story points shown there. Everything else relates to the story’s meaning when it is completely told. There was some discussion in the engineering stage that perhaps the Signposts shouldn’t be included there. That is why there is a separate selection necessary in the Theme Browser window to specifically request them.

When the Signposts show up there, it can erroneously seem that the Variations associated on the Browser chart with each Signpost are supposed to be explored when that Signpost is explored in the unfolding of the story. This is simply not true! In fact, including the sequential Signposts in with the structural items is like mixing apples and oranges.

The only way to find out which Variations go with which Types in the sequence of the story is through the Plot Sequence Report.

Similarly, for a while just before release of 3.0, we removed the Plot Sequence Report from the software. It was felt that with the Signposts and Journeys being more emphasized in this version, it might be confusing to talk about Types and the Variations through which they are explored. In the end, those who really liked the report successfully lobbied for it to be added back.

Story Structure is half logic and half feeling. That’s why we use both our minds and hearts as authors when figuring out what works and what to do next. Dramatica’s structure describes the logic of it and the sequence describes the feel. Dramatic tension is created when our logic and our feelings come up with different and incompatible answers. So, it is not surprising that when the Story Engine’s output in the structural Theme Browser is compared to that in the sequential Plot Sequence Report it creates and SHOULD create an APPARENT discrepancy. In fact, that discrepancy is what holds the message of your story.

The end product provides the meaning; the experience as the story unfolds provides the context. The discrepancy between the two is the dramatic tension.

We try to keep this discrepancy in the storyform and out of the mind of the author by having the structural output in one area and the sequential output in another. In the Theme Browser we may have made a mistake by mixing them. But, if you dig deep enough into Dramatica’s theory or software output, it will always be there, as it must, to fully describe the Story Mind you are asking your audience to inhabit.

In creating software tools that delve so deeply into the subtleties of the drama, we encroach on the threshold of a paradox. This is best explained by looking at the nature of light. Light can be seen as a particle or a wave depending upon the context. But it is always light. Story can be seen as a structure or a sequence, but it is always story.

Particles of light interact in spatial arrangement. Waves of light flow in temporal progressions. The Structure of a story is a spatial arrangement showing the interconnections among story points. The Sequence of a story is a temporal progression showing the order in which story points come into conjunction as they move past each other on the way to the final arrangement.

Both views must be accurate and each must reflect and support the other. Sequence must lead to Structure and Structure must reflect Sequence. Yet, both cannot be appreciated at the same time.

Normally, we keep those two approaches separate in the software. By virtue of including the Signposts in the Theme Browser, however, the paradox rises to the surface. The only reason for the Signposts being there is to give quick access to them if you want to build your Storyform by graphically picking the Signposts, or to use the Browser as a quick reference to the Signposts in your existing Storyform.

So, my feeling would be that when working with the Signposts in the Theme Browser you should ignore all the other story points and just focus on the Signposts by themselves. When working on the other story points in the Browser, ignore the Signposts. And, to get a feel for the way Types and Variations come into conjunction as the story unfolds, use the Plot Sequence Report and keep the Theme Broswer far from your mind.

Finally, to reiterate, Dramatica goes into such a degree of detail that trying to follow it faithfully runs into the law of diminishing returns. By the time you get into information such as that in the Plot Sequence Report, you are dealing with subtleties so nuanced that they might not even be noticed.

Western culture is much more concerned with the spatial arrangement of things than how it came to be that way (i.e. “The end justifies the means” – just look at all the violence “heroes” are “allowed” to inflict to right a wrong!) So, as long as all the story points end up in the right place at the end (e.g. the right item is the goal, the right item is the Issue or Range) then the audience is satisfied.

For purists, perfectionists, and structuralists, you can stick with the PSR order if you like. But if you want to diverge, it probably won’t have any measurable negative effect at all on how a Western audience receives your story.

In conclusion, just make sure you illustrate all the key story point appreciations in your story and that you at least work the Signposts and Journeys in there. (They are on such a large scale then kind of have to be in the right order). Do that much and then only worry about the PSR and the minor story points to the level of your own eye for detail.

P.S. You’ll note that Chris and I focus on different aspects of Dramatica. He concentrates on explaining the theory in terms of story, I concentrate on explaining the theory in terms of psychology. So, be forewarned (Forewarning of Conceptualizing) that my postings will tend toward the esoteric. For those interested in the psychology behind Dramatica (called Mental Relativity), I keep an extensive web site with scores of articles on the subject at storymind.com/mental_relativity/ These original essays delve into the workings of the human mind, based on what we learned from the Story Mind model, and cannot be found anywhere else.

If you’ve ever toyed with the idea of using Dramatica to analyze your friends, family or self, you might enjoy exploring there.

What Determines Plot Progression Sequences?

Rich asks:

The one thing that I am having trouble understanding is the plot rotations. Why does choosing the rotation in one Domain sometimes chose them in others and sometimes not? And what relation does one rotation have to the other?

Answer:

As many of you may have noticed, choosing items in the Plot Progression doesn’t work the same way for all four throughlines. Some seem to have much more impact, control, or power on the overall progression then others, and in fact, they do!

Now this immediately smacks of some inconsistency or inaccuracy in the software and/or theory. After all, why should one throughline be inherently more structurally “important” than another? Well, conceptually, one throughline is not more important than another, but in practice one MUST be more important than another.

I know that sounds trite. Let me explain with a brief visualization, then describe how “plot rotation” works as a mechanism in the software.

First, the visualization:

Think of a globe of the world. Now, try to draw it on a flat piece of paper. You’ve all seen the different kinds of projection we end up. Some make Greenland HUGE, but the USA small. Others make the USA large, but split the map, as if you’ve flattened out the peel of an orange. In fact, there are many different projections of the globe, but each has a different kind of distortion, due to trying to project a 3 dimensional object onto a two dimensional surface.

The Dramatica Structure suffers the same problem. It is SUPPOSED to represent a model of the mind, as called for by the theory. The mind itself is a FOUR dimensional object. That fourth dimension is Time. To be accurate, time cannot be broken into a series of increments but must flow continuously and simultaneously throughout the model. The problem is, that a computer cannot create a truly unbroken “flow.”

In computer programming, every operation is a series of steps, be it a function or sequence of operations. As a result, to create a model of the four dimensional mind in a computer, you need to “project it” onto three dimensions, then “move” it through time in steps. That is not completely accurate, just as any projection of the globe is not completely accurate on a flat surface. Still, in this way, the first three dimensions are VERY close to accurate, but the fourth dimension is where you pick up the distortion.

In the software model of the Story Mind, this distortion will show up with the Plot Progression.

Now, as you might expect, there are three other projections of the Story Mind which might be created: One in which the distortion shows up in CHARACTER, one with a distorted THEME, and one with a distorted GENRE. Each has a different strength and a different weakness.

Ultimately, it is our hope to program the other three as well, so that authors have a choice of where to sweep the distortion under the carpet. Unfortunately, each requires the creation of a completely different model with its own unique algorithms. The original model took four years to build and two more to perfect. It was also VERY expensive, costing over one million dollars in R & D before the FIRST version of the software was released. As you may imagine, it will be many years before we can offer another projection of the Story Mind (especially being intellectually burned out by the mind-warping contortions of visualizing the first model!)

Okay, so this simple visualization gives an overview of the problem. It tells us why the distortion will show up in plot. But what is actually going on in the software that makes that distortion give more “power” to one throughline over the other?

The simple answer is that the same bias that makes Plot Progression distorted also favors the Main Character and Objective Story throughlines at the expense of the Obstacle Character and Subjective Story throughlines. As a result, more power is assigned to them, over the others.

Here’s where we have to get a bit more technical…

You may be familiar with my analogy of “winding up” the structure to create a storyform, as if the structure were a Rubik’s cube. This is a surprisingly accurate visualization. In the form you see the structure on the chart, it is neutral and at rest. In other words, there is no dramatic tension in the resting model. This is because all the quads are balanced and consistent in both the vertical and horizontal planes. This can be seen by nothing that on the chart, “Past” is to “Universe” as “Memory” is to “Mind” This shows that identical vertical distance in the creates identical semantic differences in meaning. Horizontally, “Being” is to “Becoming” as “Doing” is to “Obtaining.” This indicates that identical horizontal distances create identical differences in meaning. In other words, in the at rest model, identical vectors in the three dimensional matrix represent identical differences in meaning, so that the relationships among any story points plotted on the matrix can be determined by their semantic distance.

Sorry about that!

Now, on to the next technical information necessary for the answer to your question…

When the model is “twisted and turned” it moves items out of alignment, altering their relative semantic distances and creating a tension or distortion based on the degree of misalignment. This is what happens when you answer questions in the Dramatica software.

In fact, there are two kinds of wind-ups which occur. One is applied to the Main Character Domain and then ripples out over the entire structure. The other is applied to the Objective Story Domain and then ripples out.

The eight questions you answer about Main Character Dynamics and Plot Dynamics (Resolve, Growth, Approach, Mental Sex, Driver, Limit, Outcome, and Judgment) determine many things about those two wind-ups.

For example, because Time is not free flowing in the model as it would be in a real mind, one of the windups (Main or Objective) will be applied first to the neutral model, the other will then be applied to an already twisted model. Which comes first creates the feel in a story as to which is more “screwed up” – the Main Character or the world at large. In this way, the story develops a dynamic imperative indicating that a Main Character must change or must remain steadfast if success in the Objective Story is to be achieved.

The real question is, how does the mechanism of the wind-up actually work?

Okay, the wind-up in each of the two throughlines begins at the bottom and works its way up. Why? Because that way it screws more with time (the horizontal plane) than with space (the vertical plane) in keeping with a consistent projection or bias to the model overall. (The bias must remain consistent in both structure and dynamics or the distortion will drift and create apparently chaotic inaccuracies rather than limiting them to one area for the benefit of all the others.)

To wind up the very bottom quad of elements, the software must know the problem element for that throughline. That can either be chosen directly by the author, or the story engine will eventually work it out as a cross-reference of the effects of other choices.

Once the problem element is known, it becomes the pivot point or “seed” of the throughline’s wind-up. Now, on that first quad, there are two kinds of wind-ups which may be applied: “Flips” and “Rotates.”

A flip will swap the positions of two elements in a diagonal relationship, such as “Faith” and “Disbelief.” Why would this happen? In a real mind, when we have one of our elemental sensibilities rubbed raw by experience, one of two things happens – we become ultra sensitive to that topic when it comes up or we become insensitive to it (scab it over). A flip containing the problem element itself represents a scabbing over by moving the problem out of harms way. A flip along the other axis (between the other two elements not containing the problem element) represents an increased sensitivity by leaving the problem in place.

Of course, when one becomes overly sensitive to an item, the items around it become less sensitive to pinpoint the irritation and make it easier to avoid further injury. But, if one scabs over, then the surrounding items become more sensitive to make up for the loss and also as a sensitive perimeter that warns the mind something is approaching which might rip off the scab.

In contrast, one might “rotate” elements rather than “flip” them. Why? Because in our own minds, we sometimes don’t just become biased by experience to make things more or less sensitive, but we also move items up and down in the pecking order or sequence of consideration depending on their endlessly adjusting priority.

So, in a “rotate,” we move the items in a quad circularly, like a turning a knob. This also has two version, clockwise and counter-clockwise. This creates a different kind of tension determining whether or not the problem element is being moved up or down in priority.

Once we have flipped and rotated (twisted and turned) the first quad in the first throughline, we move up to the variation level (issue or range). The same kinds of dynamics are at work here too, but not necessarily the same arrangement as in the quad of elements below.

The upper quads have an additional aspect – they might “carry the children” or not. This means, when the variations flip and/or rotate, for example, do they drag their underlying elements along with them or leave them behind. Why? Because justifications (biases) can enter a real mind at any level and may or may not affect the levels above and below.

You can see this flipping and rotating at work in actual stories. To do this, find some dialog that deals with thematic issues. (“Witness” is a good example). Find a quad of variations that deals with those issues. Plot the sequential progression of the issues that occurs in the story. After plotting a number of different quads you’ll find sequential patterns that appear as “U” shapes, “Z” patterns, and “hairpins.” All these patterns can be created by the sequential application of flips and rotates to any quad.

Ultimately, you work your way up to the top level of the structure. Here, flipping and/or rotating moves the problem from an interior position (Mind, Psychology) to and exterior position (Universe, Physics) or vice versa. This is the model’s accurate description of the psychological process of “projection,” where one comes to feel that “I’m not the problem, it’s everybody else” when it really is the person or conversely, “I guess I’m the problem,” when is really is everybody else. Ironic that the psych term for that is “projection” – not unlike the projection maps we have been talking about.

Now, I could go on endlessly about this mechanism, but we now have enough to answer the questions: “Why does choosing the rotation in one Domain sometimes chose them in others and sometimes not? And what relation does one rotation have to the other? ”

The Dramatica software story engine actually predicts the best order for not only acts, but sequences, scenes, and events as well. Early on, we realized this information would amount to “micro-managing” the plot, so we “suppressed” it. It’s still in there on every storyform, but not presented in output. We did output it for a few sample storyforms, and it amounted to literally hundreds and hundreds of pages of progressions for every quad and “quad of quads” in the entire structure. Ultimately, we only kept the “act level” progressions, as they seemed truly useful without being overly binding.

The first two versions did not allow plot progression choices so the nature of the distortion was not apparent. But when we added it in version 3, it came right up to the surface. We actually considered not including that feature to avoid the sense that the software was not accurate, even though it was just the projection distortion described above. But, the desire to provide all possible useful tools prevailed, so we put it in with great trepidation.

I think we have seen why one throughline has more power than another, but what is the relationships among the four plot progressions? In the structure without plot progression, each throughline represents a different angle on the same issues. In one sense, they represent the I, You, We, and They points of view. In another sense, they represent Knowledge, Thought, Ability, and Desire in the Story Mind (more about this in another post sometime down the line).

Once “wound-up” they create structural differential or dramatic potential among them. In motion over time, they create resonance and dissonance (harmony and disharmony). Both the dramatic potential and the interference patterns of the flow must work in conjunction so that the space-sense and time-sense of the storyform serve to carry the same message. The trick is to make the “particle” and “wave” work together. Because the structural bias exists due to the projection of the mind on three dimensions, there must be an identical bias to the temporal progression.

Taken altogether, the Plot Progression simply does not allow certain sequences because, although possible, they cannot occur in this projection without interjecting inaccuracies BETWEEN the structure and the progression.

As it stands, every available progression consistent with the model’s necessary bias IS available, so that the progressive harmony and discord of the flow of the four throughlines creates an interference pattern in which the nodal points intersect with the story points in a synthesized four-dimensional space.

In other words, the plot progression of all four throughlines will wrap around each other as the story proceeds so that it creates the spatial meaning of the story in much the same way that the scanning lines on a TV screen work together to create the greater mosaic of the Big Picture.

Thanks for asking!

Domain Placement in Story Structure

Over the years, a lot of people have asked why Dramatica forces some of the throughlines into certain domains. Why can’t “anything go?”

Well, once again, the Dramatica theory allows for more versatility, but the software doesn’t – yet. Still, what the software does is probably what you want!

Software-wise, OS, MC, SS, and OC form a quad. OS is always opposite SS and MC is always opposite OC. So, When you plop down OS or SS on a domain, you know where the other one will be. And, if put MC or OC in a domain, you’ll know where the other is. Why does the software do this? Because it creates conflict.

Universe and Mind (two of the domains) are fixed states of things and share a similar nature. Physics and Psychology (the other two domains) are processes and thereby share a nature.

Therefore, “forcing” the MC and OC into opposite domains and forcing the OS and SS into the other two creates a structure-wide consistency. In short, it forces each of the two families MC & OC (people) and OS & SS (relationships) into the greatest conflict within each family.

Since Hollywood thrives on conflict (“where’s the conflict?!”) this arrangement serves very well for MOST of the stories actually written, purchased, and produced.

But, quads have more that one kind of relationship! To see what I mean, go to the Build Characters window in D Pro (or Movie Magic Dramatica). If you open that window full wide, you’ll see three different kinds of relationships listed on the right for every quad.

The family of two items in a diagonal relationship form a “Dynamic Pair.” Since there are two diagonals in each quad, there are two Dynamic Pairs.

The two items in a horizontal relationship form “Companion Pair,” and there are two of those as well.

Finally, two vertical items form a “Dependent Pair,” also being two in a quad.

Each of these relationships has a different nature. Also, one of the two pairs of each kind will be “positive” and the other “negative.”

1. Dynamic relationships are conflictual. Positive Dynamic relationships are like the “loyal opposition” where two sides butt heads, but synthesize a better solution because of the conflict. Negative Dynamic relationships occur when two sides butt heads until each is beaten into the ground.

2. Companion relationships involve the indirect impact one character has on another. Positive Companion relationships occur when there is beneficial “fall-out” or “spill-over” between the two sides. For example, a father might work at a factory where he can bring home scrap balsa wood which his son uses for making models. Negative companion relationships involve negative spill-over such as a room-mate who snores.

3. Dependent relationships describe the joint impact of the two sides. For example, positive Dependent relationships might bring Brain and Braun together so that they are stronger than the sum of their parts. A negative Dependent relationship might have a character saying, “I’m nothing without my other half.”

There’s also one other relationship which doesn’t show up in the software – the Associate relationship.

4. Associative deals with the relationship of the individual to the group. Rather than being consistently positive or negative, the two varieties of this kind of relationship may be either – but in any given relationship one variety will be positive and the other negative. The Component variety sees the items in a quad as individuals. The Collective variety
sees them as a group.

For example, two brothers might fight between themselves (Component), yet come to each others’ aid when threatened by a bully because they now see themselves as family (Collective).

Neither one is inherently positive or negative – it depends on context. That is why we, as a culture, have trouble with terms such as “the United States.” Well which are they, United or States?

Now these same kinds of relationships can also function between MC and OC or between OS and SS. In theory then, the Main Character and Obstacle Character might be in Dynamic, Companion, or Dependent relationships, and so might the Objective and Subjective stories.

But more than this, the each throughline will have the other kinds of relationships with the other throughlines. So the MC, for example, will have a Dynamic relationship with one of the other three throughlines, a Companion with another, and a Dependent with the third. Quite a lot of interrelationships going on in a single story!

As it stands in the software, those relationships already exist. They just aren’t referred to anywhere. If you plot the positions of the four throughlines in your story on the Dramatica structural chart (or look at them in the Theme Browser) you can see by the vertical, horizontal, and diagonal relationships how each throughline relates to the others. Again, a lot to explore in your story!

Still, you can’t yet make the MC and OC companions or dependents in the software. But shouldn’t it be easy enough to do? Shouldn’t it be easy to just allow the MC and OC to share any kind of available relationship?

Sure it’s easy, but there’s a catch. EVERYTHING – all story points are connected by the Story Engine. And, for the story to have consistency, all parts of the structure must favor ONE KIND OF RELATIONSHIP. So, you can’t just change the MC and OC rules, without changing them for everything else as well. And, you also have to rewrite the entire DYNAMIC part of the engine so that it can “flip” items (as discussed in an earlier post) on the horizontal or vertical axis of a quad, rather than on the diagonal.

To tell the truth, we simply haven’t had time to work out the algorithms that would drive such a system! But we will. Or someone else will. And then the software will expand in versatility yet again.

To get a feel for the size of the nut we will have to crack to get this working, try to imagine a gripping story which has no conflict at any level. It’s do-able, but tough. We’ll add that part of the theory to the software eventually.

In the meantime, when dealing with any quad, go beyond thinking about only the diagonal conflictual relationships and think about the horizontal companion ones and the vertical dependent ones as well. Even if there is not a lot of specific support for that in the software, a little bit of theory knowledge can go a long way to added nuance and depth to your work.

How To Tell If Your Story’s Structure is Right

  A Writer Asks…

My question is: how do you know when you’ve got your story’s structure (storyform) right?

I Reply…

There is no right or wrong storyform. The Dramatica software makes sure that every storyform is a dramatically valid one. In fact, you could conceivably calculate out all the different storyforms that can be created (32,768) and print them out, and just arbitrarily pick one.

So, why is a storyform “right” for a particular story, but not another? It has to do with what you, as author, are trying to say to your audience. What is the story you have in mind? Which storyform accurately reflects that?

A storyform is just the skeleton or framework of a story, so it is often difficult to determine which one is “proper” for a story you have in mind. What you are thinking of already has a lot of the story telling done: characters, scenarios, plot devices. All of these are a combination of the underlying structure and the manner in which it is expressed by your creative style and inspirations.

So, how can we determine when we have arrived at the best storyform to act as a pattern for our story? By feel. You need to “feel” that the words that crop up as Story Goal, or Main Character Domain express what you have in mind, both logistically and emotionally, for your audience. To do this, you must truly understand what is meant by Main Character Domain, or any of the other dramatic “appreciations” provided by the Story Engine. Also, you must develop an empathy with the words that fill those appreciations, such as Universe, or Psychology.

Getting to know the terminology in Dramatica is the hardest part! The reason it is hard is that our language tends to create lots of words to deal with common concepts, and hardly any to deal with less up front notions. For a story to be complete, ALL essential considerations need to be addressed to prevent holes. So, in the areas in which our culture does not focus, there are few (and sometimes no existing) words to do the job. This means that there will be appreciations and the words that fill them that are easily understood, and a whole range of other terms that are progressively more obscure. But, to have a feel for which storyform is “right” requires becoming familiar with all of these terms. The more you are comfortable with, the stronger your sense of which storyform is best will be. Your choices in creating a storyform will become more precise and meaningful, and the end product will better reflect what you had in mind.

It seems like even the examples you give in the documentation could go other ways just by changing the verbs used in describing them. For example, the story I’m working on is a mystery. The characters are trying to decipher the clues that will help them discover the identity of the mystery person so they can help her. What I can’t decide is: are they concerned with doing (helping someone), obtaining (the answer to the clues), or learning (the identity)? And then I wonder if I’m in the wrong domain—solving a mystery is an external activity, but maybe the mystery itself is an external situation. Is there a general blueprint for mystery stories?

The “mystery” is a genre of story. Some genres describe settings, like “westerns”. Others describe character relationships, such as “buddy pictures”, or “love stories”. A mystery can either describe characters who are trying to figure something out, as in the old “Columbo” series, where the audience knew who the killer was from the very start, or they can be mysteries to the characters AND the audience, such as most Agatha Christie stories, or the Sherlock Holmes stories. A few mysteries have the characters knowing the score, but the audience being in the dark. The one combination that is NOT a mystery is when both characters and audience know the facts up front.

This difference in focus prevents there from being a single, typical “mystery” storyform. If the mystery part resides with the audience, then it comes from the storytelling, not the storyform. If the mystery is at least partly with the characters, then it becomes part of the storyform as well.

The “Types” you mentioned above, Learning, Understanding, Doing, and Obtaining, are all from the Physics “class” and describe activities. This does not make them any more appropriate to a mystery than any of the Types in the other three “classes”. For example, in the Universe Class are the Types, Past, Present, Progress, and Future. If one were writing a mystery about finding the killer of a school boy twenty years ago before he can repeat his crime on the twentieth anniversary, these types might best describe the chase.

In fact, all sixteen Types (four from each class) will show up in EVERY storyform. The difference is: from what point of view are they explored? The Main Character Domain will be the Class that contains the Types that best describe what the Main Character is involved in or concerned with. The Objective Story Domain will be the Class that contains the Types that best describe what ALL the characters of the story are jointly involved in or concerned with. So, in creating a storyform that is “right”, you will need to consider which set of Types you want your characters to explore, which are right for your Main Character, your Obstacle Character, and your Subjective Story.

Think about the kinds of things you want each of these four areas to explore, or examine. Think about the kinds of scenes that might be created that revolve around these Types of Concerns. That can go a long way to determining how to make your selections that will lead to a storyform that fits your desires as an author.

What Does Dramatica Mean by the Word “Illustrate”

  A Writer Asks…

I have just recently purchased Dramatica Pro and have a question I hope you can answer….

*Define your use of the word ILLUSTRATE in the various stages of story encoding

I Reply…

“Illustrate” means to come up a real world event or scenario that fulfills a dramatic function in your story.

The encoding stage of story creation has nothing to do with the actual writing that will become a part of a screenplay, novel, or whatever. It has everything to do with conceptualizing the specific implementation of an aspect of your story’s deep dramatic structure by fleshing out the raw idea into a tangible manifestation.

For example, if the goal of your story were to OBTAIN something, that describes the generic nature of the goal from a deep structure standpoint. This kind of information can help make other structural choices for our story, such as the kinds of requirements which might be needed to achieve a goal of OBTAINING, or perhaps help us choose the kind of character who might get caught up in such a goal.

Still, we can’t simply write a story in which we say, “The goal is to OBTAIN.” We must turn that raw structural concept into a real world item. For example, a goal of OBTAINING might be encoded or ILLUSTRATED as finding a treasure, obtaining someone’s love, obtaining a diploma – anything at all that is “obtaining” rather than, say, “becoming”. In this manner, the deep structure becomes the heart and soul of the symbols through which you tell your story. In other words, illustrating story points based on deep structure ensures that the audience will feel an overall sense and logic to what they are seeing. Simply, the story will hang together.

If we look at a storyform as a skeleton, encoding puts flesh and blood on it by ILLUSTRATING each bone and joint. The flesh is the nature of the structural appreciations, the blood is the nature of the dynamic appreciations, such as acts or scenes.

Still, this story/body is not in motion until we incorporate Storyweaving. Storyweaving is a lot like the meaning of exposition. It is the process of doling out your encoded deep structure to the audience. Here, the word “illustrate” takes on a different meaning. Now, instead of illustrating the structure, we have to illustrate the encoding!

For example, suppose the raw structural goal in your story is to Obtain. Further suppose that the goal to Obtain is encoded as Obtaining a treasure. Okay, now how do you tell that to your audience? Do you come right out and say it in the first scene? Do you trick the audience into thinking the goal is something else and then let them in on the secret? Do you illustrate the goal by bringing it up in several different scenes in a story, of is it more like Hitchcock’s McGuffin, getting the chase started and then never being heard of again until the end of the story? Making these choices is the process of storyweaving, and the choices you make are another form of “illustration”.

The Dangers of Micromanaging Your Story

  A Dramatica user wrote:

I love the theory. It works. I want it to help me figure out the ending to my pot-boiler.

To do that, I have to figure out more about the relationships between fatal flaw, the shift involved in the four-act variation-level plot sequences from the plot sequence reports, and the overall theme of the story (the three-act plot sequence variations).

Theme, character, and plot must play out in a precise order to integrate at a precise moment of enlightenment for the audience and Main Character, all with a maximum of dramatic tension and release. At least if I want a best seller!!

I replied:First of all, using Dramatica to that degree is micromanaging your story from a logistic approach. Best sellers are not created because they have a perfect structure, but because they grip the human heart

Audiences will not only forgive, but may not even care if a structure is flawed, as long as the story is gripping. How can you have a gripping story with a bad structure? An actor has to say his lines, but HOW he says them carries the passion. A writer drops exposition in a story, but HOW it comes out builds the intrigue. In short, the story structure is nothing more than the blueprint for a story, the plans for a sports car, but it is not the experience of standing in front of a Frank Lloyd Wright building or driving a Lotus.

If the porch is two inches to the left or the headlights aren’t quite focused on the road, the edifice or vehicle will not perform quite as well. But if it carries the fire of the hearth or the rhythm of the road, then it will captivate and excel nonetheless.

Of course there comes a point where some structural considerations are so huge that a blunder at that level will cause the building to fall or the car to crash. But that level is far above the degree of detail you are seeking to employ.

Still, it is true that Dramatica’s Story Engine can actually predict the order in which events ought to occur in scenes and which characters should be involved in those events. In fact, it DOES predict this. But, you can’t get that information out of the software because we suppressed it.

Why would we do such a thing? Because the level of detail it provides is so “fine” that it gets lost in the storytelling, just like quiet sounds used to get lost in the background noise of an old LP record. The more detailed your structure becomes, the more you are wasting your time – past a certain point.

We picked a “cut off point” for the degree of detail provided by Dramatica. How did we pick that point? By determining the greatest degree of detail we felt an author could explore in any area and still cram all the information into an average novel or feature movie. But, that detail could only be explored if enough storytelling attention were paid to it. Even at the level of detail provided, one could not pay extra attention to more than a few areas before the available “media real estate” is exhausted.

One could not possibly include all of the detail generated by Dramatica as it is, without created a 1200 page book or a mini-series. So, once we reached the “trilogy/television event” level of detail, we suppressed the rest as not only superfluous, but counter-productive. That much detail would just distract writers from the bigger picture, rob them of the passion, and make Dramatica even more complex than it already is.

As writers of fiction, we are usually not out to describe the mechanisms of life dispassionately in excruciating detail. We are out to express the passion of the human heart in bold strokes and subtle nuance. The problems we encounter occur when our author’s hearts meander and the logistic sense of our story is lost.

Stories must have a “heart line” and a “head line” because the audience has a heart and a mind. In a university, the priority is the mind, and the heart comes along for the ride. In fiction, the priority is the heart, and the mind has nothing more than veto power. Only if the head line is violated in such a gross manner that the mind pulls the heart out of the story is there a problem. But anything short of that is fine.

And in fact, the heart and the head often don’t see eye to eye. In such cases, the heart must take precedence. If there is every a choice between something that will make better structural sense at the expense of audience involvement or will captivate the audience but at the expense of the passion – choose the passion!!!

My vision of the Dramatica software is not as a checklist or series of check points which must be met. Rather, I see there being two primary camps of writers – the Structuralists who seek to work out all the details before they write, and the Inspriationists who seek to follow the muse, then find and refine the structure in the story they discovered along the way. And Dramatica is designed to help both.

As a Structuralist (which your comments lead me to assume you are, though I may be misreading) you will want the whole path laid out in front of you, and then to follow that path in your storytelling.

Again, you write how you are searching for an ending for your story, and say:

To do that, I have to figure out more about the relationships between fatal flaw, the shift involved in the four-act variation-level plot sequences from the plot sequence reports, and the overall theme of the story (the three-act plot sequence variations).

In my opinion, you are building you story like you would build an android, rather than hiring an actor.

Where’s the passion in how you describe what you need to conclude your story, what you have to “figure out?”

My suggestions? Step back a bit… Look at the beach, not the grains of sand. Does you story end in Success or Failure? Does the Main Character resolve his or her personal issues or not (Good or Bad)? Does your story brought to a climax by a Timelock or an Optionlock? Is your story driven (and concluded) by Action or Decision?

These basic dynamic questions provide the framework for the feel of the ending of your story and kinds of forces that will be at work. Knowing the signposts and journeys tell you exactly what kinds of subject matter will be dealt with in each of the four throughlines at the end of the story. Armed with that much information, the ending should be clear.

The one exception to this is if one is trying to write a plot-oriented story where the logistic interconnections among detailed plot events unfold a conspiracy or a mystery, for example. Sad to say in such a case Dramatica is pretty much useless.

A clever plot is a storytelling overlay of logistics on top of the underlying structure. It is not the structure itself. It does not even grow out of the structure, other than that the subject matter and points of view reflect the story points.

So, ending a story is easy in terms of the feel of the outcome by using the dynamics and signpost/journey system. But working out the conclusion of a plot from a storytelling standpoint is amazingly hard.

A good software program for doing such a thing is Plots Unlimited. It contains a database of thousands of plot pieces, ready made dramatic scenarios that can be stacked together like dominos to create a linear plot with twists, deceptions, red herrings, and surprising conclusions.

Its one limitation is that these pre-fab pieces don’t deal with the story’s structure, but only with the storytelling nature of plot, and is therefore limited to the number of pieces in the database.

In contrast, Dramatica can’t do that at all, because it is not a storytelling generator, but a structure generator. Dramatica will tell you the subject matter and how it will be seen, you might then use Plots Unlimited to select storytelling segments that reflect those structural imperatives.

I feel that a lot of the frustration that comes to Dramatica users is that they have a misconception about what Dramatica is supposed to be doing for them. They feel that they should end up with something like, “We find Joe in school. His teacher asks him for his homework and Joe says “My dog ate it.””

This is the kind of material you might get from Plots Unlimited, but since you piece the parts together, they may make sense logistically, yet create nothing meaningful structurally.

Dramatica will NOT provide that kind of output or guidance. Dramatica will tell you, “Main Character Signpost One: Learning. Main Character thematic conflict: Truth vs. Falsehood.”

Dramatica ensures that all mental considerations regarding the central issues of the story are full explored in the one context that will create a unified perspective on the issues by the end of the story. But, trying to squeeze the storytelling material out of the structure leads to getting lost in software and ultimately becoming frustrated.

For example, you use the term “fatal flaw” and want to discover its relationship to “the shift involved in the four-act variation-level plot sequences from the plot sequence reports, and the overall theme of the story (the three-act plot sequence variations). ”

“Fatal Flaw” isn’t a Dramatica term at all. There is the Main Character’s problem, there is the Main Character’s Critical Flaw, and several other dramatics that might be what you mean. But the real question is, how do you want the ending of your story to feel?

Logistically, Journey 3 in each of the four throughlines will tell you what is going on subject matter-wise in each of the four key forces that converge on the ending. The dynamics will tell you how the climax is forced and the feel of the outcome. The four Signposts will tell you what subject matter is touched on in each of the four throughlines in the denouement. ANYTHING that you write in the plot will work fine structurally, as long as it falls within those structural guidelines.

Then, if you want to bring your Main Character’s Critical flaw into play, you can drop it in anywhere you want. Have them overcome it and then be able to save the day. Or have them save the day and then discover that as a result, they have overcome their Critical Flaw. But Critical Flaw is not sequential at all.

Progressive Plot Appreciations are sequential (the signposts and journeys). The Plot Sequence report describes the order in which the Types are repeatedly cycled through as the story progresses, and what thematic shadings come into play. Anything else is a static story point which is true for the overall story and can be peppered in anywhere you want it. A good rule of thumb is to include each static story point at least once per act so that it can be appreciated in all the major different contexts of the story’s points of view.

So, for example, you’d want your Main Character’s Critical Flaw to appear once in each act to “prove” that it doesn’t matter what the context, the Main Character is really and truly screwed up by this.

It is also a good rule of thumb to bring a story point into play (which is part of what we mean by “illustrate”) in the throughline to which it pertains. So, if you have a scene with the Main Character or even ABOUT the Main Character though he or she is not actually present, that is where you want to play the “Main Character Critical Flaw Card.”

Story points like “Goal” and “Forewarnings” apply to the whole story, so may easily be played in scenes pertaining to any of the four throughlines.

Well, I’d like to go on further with more specific information, but time grows short. This little note just took an hour an a half to write, and that is 90 minutes I won’t be able to spend on recording the material from my UCLA class on CD! Everything is a trade-off when you work for yourself!

In any event, and (as you say) with all due respect, I might suggest you step back from the details a bit, don’t try to find the Nth degree of interconnectivity among logistic structural considerations. Reconnect with the passion, take in the overview, don’t try to get Dramatica to suggest the storytelling aspects of your plot, and focus on the elements of the ending of your story that excite you about it as your own first and best audience, as every author truly is with his or her own work.

Does Dramatica Limit Your Story

Sometimes authors run into problems with Dramatica not because of what the software is actually doing, but because of what they THINK it is doing! Used properly, the software can offer a myriad of create opportunities. But used improperly, it can seem limiting and confining.

For example, a Dramatica user recently complained that the software was limiting his story by making choices for him.

He wrote:

When you make choices about the roles characters will play, the theory begins to make other choices for you from its possible storyforms, and certain choices become impossible.

My response:Thanks for the comment, but that is simply not true.

Neither the theory nor software makes other choices for you about anything in your story no matter what role you choose for your characters.

Try it out for yourself. Go to the Build Characters area, create a character. Give that character any role like Protagonist, Antagonist, or create a completely complex, non-archetypal character.

If you check throughout the software, you’ll find that absolutely nothing has been limited by your choices.

Go to any other character development area in the software. Assign any role. Nothing will be limited.

In fact, there is not a single programming connection anywhere in the software that will make any dramatic choices for you based on assigning a character role.

This is why I feel compelled to respond to some of the postings about Dramatica in this forum: to address complaints about the theory or software that describe things that aren’t even a part of the theory or software.

To go into more detail, in both theory and software you can also assign characters any name, create any background, any human or physical traits, and any storytelling role (like Doctor, Mercenary, or Joe’s Wife) and nothing will be chosen for you or limited in your story or in what roles are available for other characters.

So, I really don’t know how you have come to the conclusion that the Dramatica software makes choices for you when you assign a character role. I’m sure there is something the software that appeared to you as if this was happening. And, I’m sure your conclusion was based on an honest interpretation of whatever it was.

Therefore, the problem with the software in this particular regard is not in what it is actually doing, but what it appears to do, at least to some authors.

My job, then, is to find out what gave you the impression that Dramatica made choices based on assigning character roles and then correct the way the software presents itself so that mistake is no longer made.

To that purpose, I would appreciate it if you could (almost tech support style) list a specific instance in which you felt the software was making or limiting choices based on assigning character roles.

Then, perhaps I can find a way for the software to better present itself.Your next comment was:

In other words, to be analytical about it, many valid narratives (and every single one I have tried to form with Dramatica) fall outside the theoretical space of possible storyforms within Dramatica, just as most real numbers >fall outside the space of natural numbers.

Again, this really isn’t specific enough for me to determine the actual problem you were having as a Dramatica user. What valid narratives did you try to form with Dramatica that were not allowed?

I think if you can describe the problem more precisely, I can obtain a better understanding from you about where Dramatica is not connecting with some authors. Then, since the development of Dramatica is an ongoing project, we can improve the software tool and even revise the theory if necessary in order to make something more valuable to more authors.

While awaiting your reply, let me offer the following, which may help clarify things.

Dramatica DOES have a “Story Engine” which is designed to make suggestions about how to strengthen and make more complete the structure of your story.

The Story Engine does not insist that you follow its suggestions. The theory does not say the suggestions the only way to go.

In fact, you don’t even have to use the Story Engine to use Dramatica.

In my U.C.L.A. class I tell my students to ignore the Story Engine to begin with. Structure is dry, it is lifeless, it is the underlying logistic mechanism of a story. It is necessary for the story to make logistic sense but it will also kill your creativity faster than anything else.

We, as authors, don’t come to stories because we want to write a great structure. Rather, we want to move our audience, to excite them, to excite ourselves in the process of sharing our vision. The best way to kill that enthusiasm is to put structure first.

In Dramatica, you can begin by ignoring structure, work on your ideas with guidance, but no limits. Only when you have fully expressed those things that excited you about the story in the first place should you seek the structure in the story.

There are several places do that in the software. One of my favorites is the Story Points window:

The Story Points window lists scores of key dramatic points that can be used in most any story such as: Goal, Consequence, whether the story ends in Success or Failure, the nature of the Main Character’s personal drive, the thematic conflict or issues of the overall story.

If you begin in the Story Points window, you won’t even get suggestions from the Story Engine. Instead, you can look at all those story points as dramatic elements you may wish to include in your story.

There is a place for you to fill in whatever information you want to write about each of the story points. So, you might write in the space next to Goal, “The Goal of the story is to retrieve the stolen diamonds.” Or, you might write, “The Goal is for Joe to find true love.”

What you write is up to you – no limitations. And you can fill in only those story points in which your interested, ignoring the rest.

Are there other valid story points beside those which Dramatica lists? Of course! And there is no reason in the software why you can’t develop those as well. Since some of the listed story points are unique to Dramatica, they can perhaps trigger an inspiration by offering a different tack.

I tell my students to first fill in information about every story point for which they already have something in mind. Then, by the very process of getting those thoughts down in an organized list, new ideas come up when all those original ideas are seen in one place, side by side.

This often gives an author a new inspiration for another story point in the list that can help bring richness to a story. But the key is to ignore any story points that don’t speak to you and to look over all the ones you have filled-in to cross-reference your own creative work for new inspiration.

Now that you have “de-briefed” yourself about all of the ideas that are attracting you to your story, it can be useful to see what kind of a structure you are creating, and also perhaps to find some missing parts in the overall logistic mechanism of your story.

If, and only if, you want that kind of help, then you fire up the Story Engine and ask it for some suggestions.

For me, the best way to do this is to go into the Dramatica Query System. The Query System is nothing more than a number of different lists of questions about the structure of your story.

Each question is a single screen, and there are HUNDREDS of questions because Dramatica looks at stories in great depth.

You don’t have to answer all of the questions. You don’t even have to answer any of the questions. In fact, if you don’t want suggestions at all, just skip the Story Engine and go directly to the Scene or Chapter area (available as one of the Query System Lists).

There, you can create as many scenes or chapter as you like with the click of a button. Each scene becomes a separate window that is like a high-tech 3×5 card. There is a top part to the window where you describe how the scene unfolds and a bottom part where you can refer to your notes. What notes are these? The ones you created in Story Points, and in other places where you describe what you have in mind.

So, you can select any of what you have already written in Story Points and elsewhere and have those words appear in the Notes area of each scene card. You can add as many or as few story points to each card’s notes as you like. In this way, for each scene you can draw on your own creative ideas and bring them into play as each scene develops.

The notes become kind of a shopping list or wish list of the story points you might like to address in that scene. You might use them all in the scene description you write in the top part of the window, or you might only use some of them. In fact, if you just want a particular scene to be for entertainment only, you don’t have to include any story points if you don’t want.

You can arrange and re-arrange the “cards” in any order and they automatically re-number themselves, keeping the drudgery out of the process.

When you have completely designed the flow and unfolding of your story on the cards, you can print out a report that puts all of your scene descriptions in order as an outline of your entire story. And, you can export that report to any wordprocessor or script formatter.

Now, that whole process, from first creative idea to finished outline doesn’t involve the Story Engine at all. Dramatica makes no suggestions and limits nothing. The software used that way is nothing more than a series of utilities that help an author organize his or her material and tries to inspire them with lists of potential story points.

Up to this point, Dramatica is not unlike Collaborator, and is far less suggestive than Plots Unlimited.

I think it is clear so far that Dramatica does not insist you follow any cult-like dogma nor does it go out of its way to limit your choices or options or impose any kind of approach to story on an author at all.

But, if you WANT to get some structural suggestions, then and ONLY then, do you fire up the Story Engine. The Story Engine is what makes Dramatica different from any other software tool for writers – BUT, you don’t have to use it!!! It is an addition to the utilities, not the only thing the software does.

To get the structural suggestions, go to the Query System again. Open up the question list with the complete list of all the structural questions.

Now, DON’T go through the list in order. The order of the questions in arbitrary, and the story points at the top are probably not the ones of most interest to you in this story.

Instead, scroll down the list and find the story point that is most important to you in this story. How do you know which one that is? Look over all that you have written in the Story Points window already. Read your own words without even bothering to look at what story point they pertain to. See which subject matter is most exciting to you in what you’ve already developed. Then, look over to the side of the story points window to see which structural story point those words happen to pertain to. It might be your Goal, or your Main Character’s drive, for example.

Whatever that story point turns out to be, you find that story point in the list of structural questions in the Query System. That should be the first question you ask the Story Engine about regarding the underlying structure. Why? Because it is most important to you and because the structure is wide open at this point and there are no limitations.

With whichever story point you begin, you will be presented with a little list different kinds of subject matter. So, if you started with Goal as the most important story point to you, you might have already written in Story Points “The Goal is to retrieve the stolen diamonds.” Now, you refer to your words and compare them to the lists of kinds of subject matter. You pick the item or items that best describes the underlying structural significance of what you have already written.

Why do you do this? Because as you make choices about the kinds of subject matter with which you are dealing in your story, you are also telling the Story Engine that other kinds of subject matter are NOT in your story.

The Story Engine is not limiting your choices, it is asking you to MAKE choices.

As you continue to make choices by going through the second most important story point, the third, and so on, eventually you’ll come to a story point question in which none of the remaining choices sound like what you have already creatively written about that story point.

This is not Dramatica trying to limit you to only those choices. In fact, it is the primary reason the Story Engine was created.

When none of the available choices match what you already creatively wrote, the Story Engine is telling you that it “believes” this particular story point is thematically inconsistent with what you’ve already told it about earlier story points.

So, do you have to change what you wrote to follow what Dramatica says? Of course not. It’s just a suggestion.

You have a choice. You might look at what the Story Engine suggested and say, “Hey, that makes more sense.” And then you might rewrite how you intended to put that story point into play in your story.

But, you might just as well say, “Hey, that doesn’t make any sense at all,” and leave things just as they are. Dramatica won’t “force” you to change your words. It just offered you a suggestion, like any good writing partner. But it’s your story, do what feels right to you!

The third possibility is that you might say, “Hey, Dramatica’s suggestions make better sense, but they don’t inspire me. If I write it to have a stronger structure, I’m sure it will come out dry. But the way I originally had it was very exciting to me, even though I can now see that it isn’t as strong as it could be structurally. Still, if I write it the way I originally wanted, I’ll be so enthusiastic that it will really come to life and the minor detriment to the structure will be more than compensated for by the added energy.”

You see, structure helps a story make sense. But audiences don’t primarily go to movies or read fictions to only increase their intellectual understanding. Rather, the audience wants to be made to feel, to be provided with emotional experiences that excite and move them. The experience doesn’t come from the structure, but from the way you tell your story. And if you aren’t writing about what is important to you, you won’t likely write with enough energy to involve your audience.

In my opinion, it is far better to have a flawed structure (as long as it is not SO flawed that it drags the audience out of the experience) than it is to have limp, dry storytelling.

So, the purpose of the Story Engine is not to force you to toe-the-line with perfect structure. Rather, it is designed to bring flaws in the structure to your attention so you can decide for yourself whether to fix the structure or go with your own inspiration.

To conclude, I personally think that most of the flak Dramatica receives is because authors think we are trying to tell them they HAVE to adhere to a structure or that the Story Engine’s suggestions are the only valid ones.

I wish they wouldn’t do that!

Dramatica is special because it is the first and only software product for writers to be able to offer those kinds of suggestions. The technology behind the Story Engine is so revolutionary that is has received a patent.

But:1. The software has MUCH more to offer than the Story Engine.

2. You don’t have to even use the Story Engine for Dramatica to be a really useful tool.3. The Story Engine just makes suggestions to help alert you to potential weaknesses in your structure.4. What you do about those suggestions is completely up to you.

A Tale is a Statement

Dramatica Unplugged

Class One: Introduction

1.2 A Tale is a Statement

Imagine the very first storyteller, maybe a caveman sitting around a campfire. Perhaps the very first communication was not really a story but just a physical need, like this caveman was hungry so he rubbed his stomach and he pointed at his mouth, and he said ‘ah-hah’. In addition to making an idiot of himself, he also might have communicated. He might have let the other cavemen around the campfire know that he was hungry, and why, because they would look at him and they look themselves; they’ve got two arms, he’s got two arms, and he looks like they look and they see him doing things physically and they think to themselves, ‘if I did those things, what would that mean to me?’, and they ‘decode’ his ‘encoding’, his symbolism, and they say, ‘well if I was doing that it would mean that I was hungry’ and they get his message, because there is a basic underlying similarity between the two.

Later on, we will talk about how the Story Mind works because all of us have the same basic operating system; it’s just our experiences that are different.  And because we have the same operating system it forms a carrier wave so that when we communicate and see in the Story Mind anything that’s the same as the operating system we can pull that out and get the information that was attached to that carrier wave which is the storytelling, the message.

Now this caveman communicates that way. After awhile he gets a little more sophisticated he is able to do such things as describe a linear series of experiences. Perhaps he wants to describe how to get to a place where there are berries or how to avoid a place where there are bears. Well he might say (with hand gestures) that he went down by the river and then he went over the hill and then he found these berries perhaps it took him several days to go from one place to another. Some sign language is complex; some is a lot easier to understand but it’s usually based on a representation of visual things that you find in the real world.

Eventually he is able to string a number of points together rather than just making a single point like pointing to his mouth and saying ‘ah-hah’. So, if he puts together a line of logic, that says ‘this happened and then this happened and then this happened’ and there are no breaks in it and there are no pieces missing, in that case, he has created what we call in Dramatica a “Tale”. That’s our definition of a tale: an unbroken linear progression. That’s a “head-line” because it deals with your logic.

But you could also have an unbroken progression of feelings; how he felt at one time whether he was happy or sad, whether he found something funny, whether he found something disgusting. This would be a “heart-line”.   He might convey those emotions just to express what he went through without even talking about the territory that he covered and with no “head-line”  at all.

So, a tale could be just an emotional progression, or it could just be a logistic progression, or a tale could be a logistic and an emotional progression running along side-by-side, perhaps affecting each other, perhaps not.

Let’s look at that in a little more depth. We know that the human heart cannot just go from one emotion to another without going through steps in between. There are feelings that you have to go through to get from one mood to another mood. Now if you start with one emotion you may be able to jump to any one of a number of emotions and then from any of those, jump to others, but you can’t jump to all of them. If you could, then we would just be bopping about from one feeling to another. There would be no growth, there would be no emotional development.  But we know there is, and that’s an indicator that we can’t go from any one thing to any other thing but, rather, there is direction to it.

You look at Freud’s psychosexual stages; you look at the stages Seven Stages of Grief. You have to go through them in a particular order. You can’t skip over any. If you do, there is an emotional misstep. It feels untrue to the heart, and a story that has a character go through and miss a step, skip a step or jump to another emotion that they ‘couldn’t get there from here’, that will then feel wanky to the audience. It will feel like the character stopped developing in a way that they could follow with their own hearts and it will pop the audience right out of the story, and they will look at the character as being a fabrication rather than someone they identify with.

So the idea is to create this linearity.  But doesn’t that linearly create a formula? Well it would if you could only go from one emotion to a particular next one to a particular next one and so on. Then there would be only one path you could take, but as mentioned earlier, from one emotion there are several – not all but several – that you might go to. When you go to one of those, there are several others you might go to next.

Similarly, in points of logic, from a single point there might be any one of a number of things that might happen next that would be Kosher to happen with what already happened, but you couldn’t have anything happen next because some things would just be impossible to happen if this had happened first. There would be missing steps, or this would preclude that from happening. Now, you can start from any place and eventually get to anywhere else, but you have to go through the in-betweens.

So as long as a tale has either a head-line or a heart-line and it’s an unbroken chain that doesn’t skip any steps, it constitutes a complete tale.

Transcribed by Marc O’Dell from
Dramatica Unplugged by Melanie Anne Phillips

Do Dramatica’s Specific Questions Limit Story Richness?

  A Writer Asks…

Dramatica requires authors to make specific decisions about their story. In contrast, most great artists prefer to keep things ambiguous so that the audience is left with a richer experience. Doesn’t this indicate a limitation of Dramatica?

I Reply…

According to Webster, “ambiguous” means, “having more than one meaning”:. By this definition, Dramatica would agree that ambiguity is a hallmark of great art. Please note that “ambiguous” does NOT mean “unclear”, “cloudy”, nor “obscure”. Most artists do not desire to create a work that holds no meaning because no one can figure it out. If the audience doesn’t get ANY feeling from the piece, then why create it in the first place? However, if the audience experiences CONFLICTING feelings, we have not only moved it, but created a potential within it that forces it to address an issue of interest to us as authors. The audience is forced to consider all sides of the issue logistically and/or emotionally. We, as authors, have then accomplished our intent.

If the point of “great” art is to create multiple meanings, then first we must build single meanings. Next, we combine them together – some on this side of the fence, some on the other. In this way, we temper the “emotional argument” of the work so that it falls somewhere in the range between one-sided and evenly balanced, thereby creating an overall ambiguous meaning. This is one of the concepts upon which Dramatica is based.

The choices an author makes in working with Dramatica have been designed to represent these essential or “elemental” meanings that can be combined to create more complex meanings. This is not unlike the periodic table of elements in chemistry. Similar to the scientific chart, in stories there are “families” of emotions. Some react together, some do not. And just like elements, they all have individual identities. Lead is very stable. Gold is chemically inert. Both are malleable. One is dull, the other shiny. Both are heavy. But place Hydrogen and Oxygen together and they will quickly form water, which has properties that don’t resemble either parent. Sometimes catalysts are needed and other times inhibitors will slow down reactions. Both “catalysts” and “inhibitors” can be found in the terminology of Dramatica, and these story equivalents provide much the same function.

The questions asked of authors in Dramatica that have the greatest impact on a story (and therefore limit out more alternatives) were placed so as to come right up front in the software where the new user can see them before anything else. They are designed to let the new user become familiar with Dramatica concepts while having some powerful tools to use right off the bat. But there are HUNDREDS of other much more subtle, sophisticated and complex questions later like “Subjective Story Catalyst” and “Objective Story Inhibitor”. Experienced alchemists (authors) who understand these concepts, even intuitively, can jump right in and create magic. For the novice, like the Sorcerer’s apprentice, he or she will need to work up to that level of sophistication.

Just as with the great masters, it is not only in their subject matter that we appreciate their work, but in the nature of the brushstrokes as well. The brushstrokes are the storytelling, the creative, intuitive, organic part of communication. Although Dramatica offers some insights into this part of the creative process, it is specifically designed to focus on the exploration of the rational or emotional topic of a work and provide a “periodic table of story elements” from which to fashion complex and, yes, “ambiguous” meanings.

Why would a master storyteller have an interest in such a program? Because not all works by a great master are great masterworks. It is not that intuition fails or skills diminish, but that each of us carries our own biases, givens and preconceptions to the creative process. If our purpose is simply to document these, then there is no need for Dramatica. But if our intent is to impact our audience in ways we can predict, then Dramatica is an extremely valuable tool for creating both complex and ambiguous meanings.