Author Archives: Melanie Anne Phillips

Using Dramatica’s Plot Sequence Report

  A Dramatica User Asks…

In my Storyform reports in Dramatica Pro, ACT I in the Objective Storyline says: “The Past is explored in terms of Rationalization, Obligation, Commitment, and Responsibility.” So, here’s the question. The Past is a Universe Type. Rationalization, Obligation, etc., are Psychology Variations. Does that mean that I should look at the objective characters’ purposes in terms of their motivations with regard to the psychology variations?

My Reply…

Purposes and Motivations aren’t really pertinent to the Objective Story’s Thematic arenas. Rather than looking at what the Characters are doing, keep in mind that the Objective Throughline represents a point of view for the audience. From the objective view they will see not only characters, but plot, theme, and genre as well. Of course, this is most clearly seen in the Storyforming stage, and from encoding onward, the view may not be as consistent or clear.

So the point is, forget about characters when using this report and consider the whole point of view. Using the report this way means that the Act itself centers on an exploration of the Past. In other words, when you are exploring the grand scheme of the big picture of your story in an arm’s distance sort of way that gives the audience a change to look at the dynamics involved without being personally involved, THEN you will be examining the Past, in Act 1.

Another way to say this is that all four throughlines will have an area around which they center in Act 1. The Past will be one of those four items that serve as the focus of attention for the audience. In your story, in Act 1, the Past will be looked at Objectively (or impersonally, though not necessarily without feeling.)

Now we add in the thematics. What kind of things about the Past will the audience be looking at? Or, turned around a bit, what measuring sticks will be used to judge things that happened in the Past? The answer is: Rationalization, Obligation, Commitment, and Responsibility. These four items describe more specifically than just the notion of “The Past” the areas of interest in the Past that Act 1 will explore most closely from an Objective point of view.

So, look at the wide-ranging plot events, the behaviors that affect or are exhibited by all your characters, the overall genre of your story as it develops in Act 1, and then see that from an Objective sense. Your audience will see these things as all revolving around the Past and being examined in terms of Rationalization, Obligation, Commitment, and Responsibility.

“Illegal” Plot Progressions

A Dramatica user recently noticed that certain progressions of the Signposts and Journeys that define a Dramatica plot were “illegal.” That is to say, they never came up, no matter what the storyform structure that was created.

Here is the reply I sent off in response.

NOTE – this reply deals primarily with psychology and the mechanism behind the Dramatica software’s Story Engine. For most writers, this tip will not be very practical, but I thought the amateur detectives among you might like to get the grit.

Why Certain Signpost & Journey Patterns are “Illegal.”

Here’s another clue for you all…

The model of the “Story Mind” in the Dramatica software is intended to represent a model of an actual mind. But, if we are looking at a mind, from WHERE are we looking? To see this model, we must adopt a point of view. Even though we wish to be “objective” about looking at the Story Mind, the moment we actually observe it, we are seeing it from a perspective.

In other words, in the very process of making a model of the mind, we have to adopt an angle from which to come at the actual truth. In Eastern philosophy it is akin to “The Tao that can be spoken is NOT the Eternal Tao,” which simply means that if you ever arrive at a definition (or model) of something it must, by definition, be incorrect. Why? Because the only true and complete definition of anything is that thing itself. No model of it can actually BE it. Yet, we can come close…

When we conceived of the notion that every story was a model of a mind – a Story Mind – we soon came to realize that we must choose a perspective from which to portray it, or rather, that if we were to portray the concept at all, we could not do so without looking at it. And, if we look at it, we have adopted a perspective.

Perspective, by its very nature, amplifies some things and diminishes others. Perspective can make some things completely invisible and create mirages of other things that are not really there but seem to be.

The trick, then, for us, was to find a way to ensure that if we MUST be saddled with a perspective, that perspective was evenly applied evenly to EVERYTHING in the model so that dramatic decisions in one area would have an accurate impact on decisions made elsewhere.

The problem authors often have is that we shift our perspective while writing. This helps us involve ourselves in the personal nature of the story, but also causes us to lose our objectivity. For example, we might come to a story with all kinds of interesting ideas, all of which fit compatibly within the same subject matters, yet cannot work together in the same story structure. Dramatica was created to eliminate this problem by adhering to a single perspective in which all dramatic decisions must be considered by the same standards. Only in this way could the holes be certainly seen, rather than covered up and hidden from ourselves by our fancy mental footwork as authors, shifting perspectives to make the holes disappear.

Unfortunately, when you use a single perspective from which to view something, you lose the ability to see certain parts of it. One of the ramifications of the perspective we chose from which to observe (to create) the model of the Story Mind is that it does not “see” certain combinations of linear progressions (signposts and journeys).

If we were to “force” the Story Engine to “allow” these combinations, then they would create plot progressions that didn’t match any of the dramatic structures visible from the overall perspective of the Story Mind model. In such cases, then, the plot progression would create an audience impact that would not relate to any structural meaning the model might develop. Such a situation would have the plot progression no longer working like the scanning lines on a TV picture which make sense in and of themselves, but also form a larger picture as the sum of the parts. Rather, the plot progression would create one message that would have nothing at all to do with the “big picture” or “overall” message of the story’s structure. To make a complete argument, the flow of experience must operate in the same “reality” as the overview of the story’s larger meaning. If it doesn’t, the story simply seems “broken.”

Now, what perspective did we choose? Well, the human mind has four major areas – Knowledge, Thought, Ability, and Desire. These areas work together in a dynamic interrelationship, and in fact, there is no real dividing line from one to the next. Rather, they are like the names of colors (Red, Blue, Green, and luminosity). They are simply points along a spectrum, yet if you attach the names to equidistant points (like pickets on a fence painted like a rainbow) you can say “here is blue,” and “here is green,” and the divisions will make sense.

The model of the Story Mind as seen in Dramatica is called a “K-based” model, because it sees everything from the perspective of Knowledge, rather than Thought, Ability, or Desire. You can see that this is the case because there are no words like “Love,” or “Fear” in the model. These words would be in the “Desire” realm. But, from the perspective of Knowledge, Desire is the farthest away of the other three (Thought, Ability, and Desire.) So, terms of emotional value are the least represented, in fact are intended to be absent. The emotional side is left to the author to infuse into the structure once its “knowledge-base” has been constructed in a storyform.

As you may imagine, there are three other model projections which might be created – Thought, Ability, or Desire based models. At first, you might think that a D-based model would simply be a structure that had Love, Hate, Happiness, and Sadness as the classes, rather than Universe, Mind, Physics, and Psychology, but this would be wrong. In a true Desire-based model, the model would be experiential, rather than structural. So, an author might make dramatic choices by matching undulating color progressions to ever-morphing flow of colors.

Why did we choose a K-based system? Because our primary market – American Authors – works within American Culture. That culture is almost completely K-based. Which is why most rooms have four straight walls, why language is linear, why products are put in boxes on shelves, why definitions are important, why contracts are created, why laws exist. A D-based system would not have rooms with walls, it would have thickets where people congregated. It would not have laws, but tendencies. The worst punishment would not be death, but exile and isolation from the group experience.

If this sounds a little like the difference between a male world and a female world, that’s not far from the truth. In the Dramatica software, in each story, there is a Main Character, and to get a storyform, you must determine whether that character is Male or Female mental sex. But have you ever wondered what Mental Sex the Story Mind was itself? Male minds have direct access to K, T, and A, but synthesize D. Female minds have direct access to K, A, and D, but synthesize T. Yes, that’s right, female minds synthesize logic just as male minds synthesize emotions. So, the farthest thing from a male mind is the D-based system (though male minds can relate directly to D, they cannot get there from K, T, or A) Similarly, the female mind can appreciate T, come up with and entertain Thoughts, the female mind cannot “derive” thought by interacting K, A, and D together.

In the male mind, K is the foundation, and T and A are the tools. In a female mind, D is the foundation and K and A are the tools. American culture is based on the needs of the male mind. Men (who are more oriented toward spatial external views inherently, built the American Culture, in fact most of Western Culture, in its own image. Only when a female mind looks at the unspoiled landscape, untouched by billboards, sidewalks, buildings, and the like, does she experience the world without seeing it thought a filter of the male mind.

Law, Religion, Science, Grammar, and all other constructs of Western Culture, reflect a male Mental Sex view of the world. But, it is not the T perspective which women must synthesize, it is the K perspective which essentially calls for Structure.

So, women are able to access all the benefits of a K-based society, even though it is not in their native tongue of D. In fact, one might say that many women do not even know how to speak D because they were educated wholly in K. Ironic that so many Elementary teachers are women, providing instruction on how to be K when they, themselves, have a D operating system!

As a result of all this, we decided to make the first model of the Story Mind that would be created to be cast in the K-based standard of our culture. Effectively, the Story Mind is Male Mental Sex. And as a result of that, certain dramatic combinations (including the “illegal” signpost and journey combinations) simply cannot appear without violating that perspective and giving the overall story a split personality.

If you’d like to know more about this aspect of the “hidden” workings of the Story Engine, visit my Mental Relativity Web Site.

(Mental Relativity is the name Chris and I gave to the psychology of the Story Mind itself.)

A Story’s Limit

  A Writer asks…

What changes within the Story’s structure when you switch the Limit from Optionlock – to Timelock or vice versa?

My reply…

The story’s Limit (Optionlock or Timelock) determines whether your story will draw to a climax because the characters run out of options or run out of time.

The quick answer to your question is that the story’s Limit, like most Dramatica story points, is not dependent on only one thing, but on several. So, there is not a one to one correlation between Limit and any other single story point. In other words, there is no simple answer to the question, “What happens to the story overall if you change the Limit from Optionlock to Timelock.

In fact, in some storyforms, the choices you make for other story points may create a condition in which a Limit of either Option Lock OR Time Lock will equally satisfy the contributing story points.

In such a case, the Limit becomes a “dealer’s choice” for the author, and one may select either option or time without impacting the overall storyform in any way, other than to determine the “feel” of the constraints imposed directly by the kind of Limit to the story’s scope. You have clearly created such a storyform.

In other storyforms, the choices for other story points would create conditions in which Option Lock or Time Lock will be predetermined by the collective impact of the contributing story points. In those cases, you would not be able to simply change from one kind of Limit to the other directly, but would need to unravel the entire group of story points that determined the choice for you.

As it turns out, the choice of Limit is determined by a great number of interrelated factors, so it is not really practical to list the scores of arrangements that would choose one or the other. Rather, if you find in a future storyform that the Limit (or any other story point) is “locked in” and cannot be directly changed, it is better to open a new storyform file and select the Limit (or other story point) first. That way you will be sure to get the one you want. Then, “re-make” the choices you had originally selected.

Of course, since you have now changed the Limit, you will find that the exact same combination of other choices will no longer be possible. Therefore, it is best to prioritize your choices, so that you begin with the story point most important to you and work your way down to the ones that are less important. In this way, you will get all of your key dramatic elements exactly as you want them, and will only encounter the constraints caused by the different choice for Limit when you are down to less important items.

Dramatica Software: Assigning Character Elements

 This is in response to a Dramatica user who wondered whether he needed to assign all 64 character elements in the “Build Characters” area in Dramatica Pro software to his characters or if the story might not suffer if he only assigned some of the elements.

A good rule of thumb is to at the least assign all of the elements in the set that contains the Objective Story’s Problem Element.

In other words… The sixty-four elements are broken up into four sets. The sets represent character Motivations, Methodologies, Purposes, and means of Evaluation. One of these sets will contain the Problem Element for you Objective Story. Since these are Objective Characters, they should certainly be developed around that particular set so that the Problem at the heart of your story if fully explored.

This means that in some stories, the characters are primarily identified/explored in terms of their motivations, while in others they are noted by their methods. For example, Sherlock Holmes (and the characters who appear with him) are almost always seen in terms of their methods. Sherlock himself is principally identified by the methodology of “Deduction”, right off the Dramatica element chart.

A “Fall-back” position that is a lot simpler is based on the notion that in Western culture, we normally tend to be more concerned with character motivations than anything else. Other cultures favor other sets. So, even if the problem element is not in the motivation set, if you develop the motivation set and just the problem, solution, focus and direction from the other set, the audience will generally buy it and feel quite comfortable doing so.

Also, for writers raised in Western culture, it is probably a lot more comfortable to work with the motivation set than any other.

So, if you illustrate the Objective Problem quad (problem, solution, focus, direction) and then either the rest of that set, or if it is not the motivation set, just the quad and the motivation set, then you have done the minimum for an average length novel or screenplay.

The next most important items would be to fill in the rest of the problem quad set if it is not the motivation set.

Beyond that it is not really necessary to explore the rest of the elements unless you have something artistically to say about them. Your argument to your audience will have been sufficiently made without them, and the audience will “give you” the rest.

You can use the remaining elements to good effect, however, by assigning one or two to incidental characters who may enter your story purely for plot convenience or entertainment purposes. It gives them more of a reason to be and also strengthens your overall argument. Also, assigning some of the remaining elements to those characters you wish to feature can make them more well rounded and help draw audience attention to them.

How Male and Female Characters Think

 A Writer Comments…

Dear Melanie – I greatly enjoyed the Advanced Dramatica class last night. It is a testament to the power of your ideas that in my sleep-deprived state I could sit still for three hours and be quite riveted.

I had a comment on Male-Female mental sex that might be of some interest to you, though I suspect you may have been over this ground already.

For some time I have thought that there are two ways of knowing – 1) rule-based/logic, and 2) pattern matching. An example of rule-based would be “A=B and B=C ==> A=C”; an example of pattern matching would be a director knowing that the cast of a stage play is motivated to do good work because he’s worked with other successful casts.

Rule-based works well on many classes of problems (e.g., if you fire a rocket at such & such a trajectory it will land on Saturn). It allows you to support a conclusion by referring back to defined elements and their proven interactions. It fails to work when elements are not clearly distinct or interactions are complex. For instance, it seems unlikely that that anyone will ever be able to predict global weather based on number crunching of simple elements such as molecules, pressure and temperature.

To solve these more complex problems, pattern recognition is necessary. In other words, you discover that generally whenever it’s cloudy in Fiji and snowing in New York, Seattle is warm and dry. You don’t know why that is; you can’t “prove” it; yet it is a rule you can live by and therefore recognizing that pattern is adaptive.

So when I hear Male vs. Female mental sex, I frequently translate it to Rule-Based vs. Pattern Matching. This seems to explain all of the relationships simply and helps me avoid getting distracted by stereotyping one gender or the other. However, I do not yet know what to make of Chris’s comment that “the biggest difference between male & female mental sex is the way that time and space are perceived.” So I look forward to hearing more on that at some opportunity.

Mark

My Reply…

Hi, Mark, and thanks for the note. I’m glad you are enjoying the class. I’ll try to make the next one a bit more boring, so you can catch up on your sleep!

As for male/female systems of perception, the linear (IF “a” THEN “b”) and the pattern (WHEN “a” ALSO “b”, as exemplified in the statement, “where there’s smoke, there’s fire”) are both inherently male mental sex appreciations, because they are both spatial/binary/particulate. Even in your example of weather prediction by pattern, the “given” that is built into that perspective is that there is a difference between Fiji, New York, and Seattle. Female mental sex would find no such distinction.

You have correctly named two items in a quad of perspectives. The first one is linear, the second one is comparative. Here are the other two, by analogy: If linear sets the direction and pattern determines the speed, then the first FEMALE mental sex perspective would be like acceleration, and the second perspective would be CHANGES in acceleration.

In terms of another analogy, the first female mental sex perspective would be like watching the changing colors in a sunset. The second would experiencing changes in the rate at which the colors change.

Have you ever stepped outside on a blustery day with big puffy clouds that cause dappled patterns of shadow and light to move across the ground, from where you are all the way to the horizon?

Even if you don’t think about what causes the patterns (linear) and even if you don’t register the patterns directly at all, you still get an emotional sense of the “flavor” of the landscape as areas brighten and darken, and this “flavor” is due to the fact that the lightening and darkening is not linear, but accelerates, starting out slowly, then gradually increasing in speed until the final breakthrough of sun happens very quickly. That experience is like the FIRST of the female mental sex perceptions of the world, but female mental sex will experience EVERYTHING IN LIFE primarily from that perspective (or from the second female mental sex perspective.)

The second perspective can also be seen on that cloudy day. Do you know how it feels when the sun ALMOST peeks out but flirts with the clouds instead? So, it is accelerating toward appearing and then slows down, perhaps changes its mind, and heads deeper into the shadows with not only greater speed, but greater acceleration.

That constantly shifting flavor of the emotional experience as the RATE OF ACCELERATION changes is very close to the second female mental sex perspective.

Now, the point about male and female seeing Time and Space differently… Imagine that all four of these perceptions are available to both male and female mental sex individuals. But, the male mental sex begins in the linear, then seeks the pattern, then senses the acceleration (indicating the forces at work) and finally arrives at an awareness of the change in the forces through observing change in acceleration. In contrast, female mental sex would FIRST sense the changes in acceleration, then refine that to see the average acceleration (making acceleration appear temporarily constant), THEN see the patterns as being comprised of distinct units of shadow and light, and FINALLY see the linearity of progress from light to dark to light.

Each mental sex would see all four, but due to the ORDER or SEQUENCE in which the perceptions are experienced, the personal MEANING and therefore the VALUE and IMPORTANCE of both the entire scenario AND it’s components would come out differently.

Looking at SEQUENCE is a binary temporal view of the whole above process. Another way to look at it would be that male and female mental sex individuals give a different EMPHASIS to each of the four perspectives. That is a binary SPATIAL view of the process.

So, as you can see, even in my description of the differences, I have adopted a binary framework as a means of communication. Therein lies the real answer to you investigation: because the spatial and temporal (binary/holistic) frame of reference is built in to the brains of male or female mental sex people, no matter how much you look toward the opposite side, no matter how far you step back, you will always still have a point of view that is biased toward the binary or holistic on top of your perspective.

This is why male and female mental sex individuals will never be able to ever TRULY experience how the other variety sees and feels about life, but can only approximate it in terms of the spatial or temporal bias that forms a foundation of our very awareness.

Hope this give you cause for thought, and doesn’t keep you up all night!

Introducing the Story Mind

Dramatica Unplugged

Class One: Introduction

1.1 Introducing the Story Mind

Let’s look at the central concept in Dramatica: the Story Mind. It’s what makes Dramatica unique. Dramatica says that every complete story is an analogy to a single human mind trying to deal with an inequity.

That’s quite a mouthful, but what it really means is that every complete story is a model of the mind’s problem solving process. In fact, it says that all the elements of the story are actually elements of a single human mind –  not the author’s mind, not the audience’s mind but a mind created symbolically in the process of communicating across a medium to reach an audience. It is a mind for the audience to look at, understand and then occupy. That’s the story’s structure itself.

Characters, plot, theme and genre, are not just a bunch of people doing things with value standards in an overall setting. Rather, characters, plot, theme and genre are different families of thought that go on in a Story Mind, in fact that go on in our own minds, made tangible, made incarnate, so that the audience might look into the mechanisms of their own minds – see them from the outside looking in – and thereby get a better understanding of the problem solving process, so when a particular kind of problem comes up in their lives, they’ll have a better idea how to deal with it.

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

Do-ers & Be-ers

A Writer Asks…

Can a “do-er” change to a “be-er” over the course of the story (and vice <> versa). Also, I’m having a problem changing one character from be-er to do-er at my particular stage of story encoding (seems I’m locked in)

My Reply…

The choice of do-er or be-er describes the Main Character’s preference – not necessarily what circumstances allow him or her. So, although a character will maintain their preference throughout the story, they may be forced to act in quite the opposite way.

For example, a do-er in an Action story will be right at home, manipulating the environment which is just what is needed. But, a do-er in a Decision story will be like a fish out of water, always trying to take action to resolve obstacles when what is needed is internal work to set an example or adopt an attitude. Such a character will try to resolve things in his or her preferential way until, as a last resort he or she may give in and work at it in the other, uncomfortable way.

So, any character can respond either as a do-er or be-er at any point in the story, but it is important the audience know what the character’s preference is in order to understand the kinds of pressures the character is going through.

Men Are From Mars; Women Are From Next Tuesday

The concept of “Mental Sex” is one of my personal favorite parts of the Dramatica Theory. In fact, Chris and I didn’t go looking for it but it came out and bit us during the theory development. Eventually, Mental Sex became the driving force behind the further development of the Mental Relativity Theory – a model of psychology which grew out of Dramatica.

Since I enjoy this topic so much, I’ve written quite a bit about it. Chris and I have talked about doing it up right as a book but we haven’t yet gotten around to it. For now, I’ll post a few of these essays on the subject here for anyone who shares the interest. And, if you just can’t wait until they all get posted, you can find most of the work on Mental Sex through the Mental Relativity Home Page.

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The notion that “Men Are From Mars; Women Are From Venus” is in itself a very male way of looking at the differences between the sexes. A more gender-neutral perspective would describe men as coming from a place and women from a moment. In fact, it is the differing ways in which men and women view space and time that account for all of the principal biologic influences that determine Mental Sex.

An analogy:

First of all, imagine a range of open ground in a valley. Now, imagine the valley is split in two by a fence. In the middle, where the fence is, the valley is somewhat of a bog, half water and half soil. As we move away from the fence to the left, the valley becomes more and more solid, until mid-way from the fence to the left side of the valley, the land is perfect for growing crops.

As we continue to the left, the land gets drier and drier until at the far left end of the valley, it is a desert, where nothing can grow.

Now, imagine as we move to the right of the fence toward the other side of the valley, about mid-way the bog gradually becomes marshland, which harbors all sorts of life. But, as we move all the way to the other side, the land gives way to completely pure water, in which nothing can live.

If we chart the life in the valley, we see that there is none at the far left, none at the far right, and none in the middle. But everywhere in between there is some degree of life. The greatest concentration is at the two points midway from the fence to either side. And each of those points harbors a completely different kind of life.

Men are born with a spatial orientation, meaning they are to the left of the fence. Women are born with a temporal orientation, meaning they are to the right of the fence. How far depends upon the individual. Some men will be born right up against the fence on the left, and some women will be born right up against it on the right. But, statistically, most men will be born toward the middle of the left and most women toward the middle of the right.

This initial bias simply describes where they will be born – not where they will end up.

When we receive our pre-birth bias in the womb, it determines how much spatial or temporal bias we have to our thinking AS AN UNDERLYING AND CONTINUOUS PULL. But it does not indicate where our life experience, training, and personal choice will lead us.

Because this bias “sets” the L and R cells in the ganglia of the brain to a ratio between the production of Seratonin and Dopamine, we are constantly drawn toward one side of the fence or the other for all of our lives. This cannot be changed by our experience, training, or choice. But these three items are built upon that bias, and collectively, have three times the “pulling power” of our initial bias. We can’t get rid of the bias, and but we can compensate for it – or NOT, as we choose, as the cards fall.

So, a given woman might lean way over to the spatial side, due to here experience, while a man might be way over to her right – the temporal side – due to his.

If we just go with our bias because of upbringing or choice, those men would ALWAYS be more spatial than any woman, for she will always be pulled by that initial bias just a bit to the right. Similarly, a woman whose experience leads to a complete temporal outlook will be farther into the time side than any many can ever get.

Now, let’s add the final level of complexity, which really makes the whole thing a lot more simple.

Why would something like this happen?

We all have a space and time sense. We all have a degree of Seratonin and Dopamine producing cells. We also all have a limited mental bandwidth – a depth of field as to how much of the space/time continuum we can span at any given moment. Imagine our mental bandwidth as a railroad car on a track. We can move to the left or right on the track along the space/time line, but we can only cover a certain number of “ties” at any given moment. This is our mental bandwidth. Some of us have a bit more or a bit less, but we all have a limit.

Now, an individual who was centered right in the middle, would see a bit of a spatial view and a bit of a temporal view. But, if a spatial person bonded with a temporal person, collectively they could extend their bandwidth to almost double the number of ties on the track. Of course they would have to overlap a bit in order to communicate, but other than that, they would be complementary. Each one could provide a more clear view of one side, and they would watch each other’s backs.

As a bonded pair, they would be much better suited to survival than any single individual who could not anticipate or appreciate spatial and temporal patterns as well, at an instinctual level.

So, it is my contention that physical sex and sex roles did not create two different minds, but that two different minds formed quite naturally as a strong survival trait, and the differences in the bodies evolved to support the approach of the mind.

Note that although we all have a bias when we are born, it is enhanced by the addition of hormones at puberty. When we are young, before child-bearing years, we need to be more centered. But when we reach child-bearing age, then we need to form bonded pairs. The hormones do both jobs by making us more attractive and attracted to the opposite sex at the same time our minds begin to move farther from the fence and more to one side or the other.

In this way, just about the time we form a bonded pair, our minds have shifted to make it the strongest pair possible.

Now, in pre-society days, survival traits led to a genetic tendency for men to be far to one side and women far to the other in a double “bell curve”. Anyone in the middle was not as attractive a mate, because the bonded pair would not be as strong, and the off-spring would not have as much protection, and would therefore not be as likely to survive.

As we began to build cities and to tame the wild world, we incorporated structural roles for men and women base on these biases. But as we continued to tame the world, the value of these biases became less and less crucial (in perhaps the last 10,000 years).

As society and culture advanced toward the information age, we see more and more individuals being born closer to the middle on both sides, for society itself began to offer opportunities to individuals who were more balanced.

In today’s information society, the bias to one side or the other is actually a deficit. The individual who can jump from the spatial to the temporal at the drop of a hat is the most successful and most desirable of mates.

As a result, the best food, the best care and the greatest resources go to those who carry more balanced genes. In addition, and in support of this, as we pollute our lands, it changes the hormone balance in human beings. Men have a measurable lower level of testosterone and women are significantly taller from generation to generation.

These things are indications that our own environment is rippling back to continue the trend that genetics has already begun. The end result is that the two bell curves are simultaneously becoming flatter and also moving closer to the center.

It is my belief that over the course of the next thousand years or so, the range of humans on the spatial to temporal scale will be almost a flat line, evenly distributed from one end to the other. (Except, of course, that this isn’t likely occur due to genetic tampering with our own DNA).

Still and all, society itself is a structural beast. Human evolution is dynamic, in all of its forms. When the two meet, tensions are created, just like tectonic plates floating on magma.

The structure cannot bend, so it must either break or be progressively dismantled and rebuilt. One approach is cataclysmic, the other constructive. We, as a world of people, have a choice as to which approach to take. The one sure thing is that choice or not, the building pressure will be dissipated in one form or another.

Is “Objective Character” the Same As “Obstacle Character” ?

A Writer Asks…

I have a handle on most Dramatica terms but I’m having troubles conceptualizing Objective Character. Is Objective Character the same as Obstacle character?

I Reply…

No, they are quite different.

1. Objective Characters have structural roles and are identified by their functions.

2. The Obstacle character is a SUBJECTIVE character, which are identified by their points of view.

Here’s a bit more background on how it all fits together…

A central concept of the Dramatica theory is that every complete story represents a model of a single human mind trying to deal with an inequity.

This occurs because in order to communicate an author must make a copy of what they have in mind and show it to the audience. This model of the author’s perspective on his or her subject is called the Story Mind.

The audience examines this Story Mind from four different points of view. They are the Objective view (where we find the Objective Characters), The Main Character view (which is the subjective character who represents the audience position in the story), the Obstacle Character view (which is the subjective character who is trying to change the Main Character’s point of view on the issues), and the Subjective view (which describes the growth of the relationship between the Main and Obstacle Characters).

The first view we will examine is from the outside looking in. This is the Objective View. From here, the audience sees characters like soldiers on a field viewed by a general on a hill overlooking the Dramatica battle. There are foot soldiers, grenadiers, etc., all identified by their functions in the battle. In stories, we see these as the Protagonist, Antagonist, Sidekick, etc.

The second point of view with which an audience becomes involved with a story is for them to step into the story as if the audience were one of the players. When the audience leaves the general’s hill and zooms down to stand in the shoes of one of the soldiers on the field, that soldier becomes the Main Character. The Main Character is simply the name of the player who represents the audience’s position in the story.

Because Main Character is a point of view, it can be attached to any of the Objective Characters. So, in one story, the Main Character might be the Protagonist, creating the typical “hero”. In another story, however, the Main Character might be the Sidekick, so that the audience observes what the Protagonist is doing without feeling like they are driving the story forward themselves. This is how things are set up in “To Kill A Mockingbird”, in which Atticus (the Gregory Peck part in the movie) is the Protagonist (driving the action forward) while his young daughter Scout provides the audience position in the story (which is told through her child’s eyes) making her the Main Character.

Now, as the Main Character makes his or her way through the dramatic battle, he or she encounters another “soldier” blocking the path. The other soldier says, “change course!” But is it a friend trying to prevent the Main Character from walking into a mine field or an enemy trying to lure the Main Character into an ambush. This other solder is the Obstacle Character.

The Obstacle Character represents the alternative paradigm to the Main Character’s existing opinions about the central issue of the story. It is their dramatic purpose in the story to force the Main Character to reconsider changing his or her long-held views. This provides the other side of the story’s argument, making it a full exploration of the topic, not just a one-sided statement.

Sometimes the Obstacle Character is right, and sometimes wrong. And sometimes the Main Character chooses the good path and sometimes the bad one. Also, the Obstacle Character may not even know they have such an influence on the Main Character as to make him or her consider changing attitudes or approaches. The Obstacle Character can be a role model, even one on TV or from the past, whose presence or recorded works argue the alternative paradigm and influence the Main Character.

The fourth perspective is the Subjective view. This is simply a tale of the growth of the relationship between the Main and Obstacle Characters, as the Main Character is progressively influenced to change even while seeking to hold on to the tried and true. It is this view that gives a story its passionate flavor for an audience, as they watch the two “boxers” circling each other in the “ring”.

When all four points of view are provided, all the principal ways of looking at a story’s issues are built into the Story Mind. The Main Character is the “I” perspective for the audience – first person singular. Obstacle Character is “you” (for we never see things from the Obstacle’s point of view, but rather look AT the Obstacle from the Main Character’s point of view). The Subjective view is “we” as it describes the relationship between Main and Obstacle. The Objective view provides the “they” perspective, as the audience watches the Objective Characters from the outside looking in.

So, one must develop a complete set of Objective Characters. Then, one of those characters needs to be selected as the audience position in the story (which will affect the whole feel of how the battle unfolds). This will become the Main Character. Next, another Objective Character must be selected as the Obstacle Character. Which one will determine the complex nature of the relationship between Main and Obstacle, as part of their interchange will occur between their Objective Character aspects in the Objective story, and part will occur between the Subjective Character points of view in the Subjective story.

Keep in mind that looking at a character as a doctor, mother, bum, or husband does NOT say anything about whether they are a Protagonist, Antagonist or any other Objective Character. Objective Characters determine who is for something, who is against it, who acts primarily according to Reason and who with Emotion, and so on. The Mother may be the Protagonist, the Reason character, or even the Sidekick. And choosing her as the Main or Obstacle would add another level of complexity.

So, it is important for consistency and completeness of the argument made through the Story Mind to assign all the Objective Characters a role in your story and to make one a Main Character and one an Obstacle Character. But, the “feel” of your story won’t truly develop until you assign the social roles these characters fulfill in your story world as well.

Often an author will wish to start with a Mother character or some other social role. Only then does the process begin of determining who is Main and Obstacle, and then determining what Objective Characters each represents.

How you approach the creation of the full complement of Characters and their roles is up to you. That is must be done is a result of the necessity of creating a Story Mind for the audience to both inspect and possess as the conduit of communication between author and audience.

Mental Sex: The Truth About Cats & Dogs

 A Writer Comments…
Hi Melanie—

Appreciate the time you took clarifying Male & Female perceptions of time and space. Now, if you have time for another question… What is the difference between a female mental sex way of viewing the world and an animal’s way of viewing the world? To use your (lovely) blustery-day-big-puffy-clouds example, wouldn’t a kitty cat get a sense of the flavor of the day without thinking about or being aware of any patterns? Wouldn’t changes in acceleration affect the kitty cat’s energy level?

I imagine this kitty cat getting playful, or frightened, or purring. It’s a fun thought so early in the morning.

Take care,

Mark

My Repy…

Yep, you’ve got the right idea about cats. And, in fact, dogs are much more male mental sex as a species. Returning to the idea that (to the extent we can see from our position INSIDE the universe) Space and Time form a continuum, then we not that this continuum might be looked at as a railroad track. The track from Space to Time is divided off in railroad ties. The perceptive “bandwidth” of any individual human can be represented as a box car of slightly differing lengths, averaging around seven ties long.

Now, that means that the average human sees only seven “ties” worth of the Space/Time continuum at any given moment (point in time along the track). But, if the individual focuses or diverts attention more toward space, the box car will move along the track in that direction. So, although the car will still only span seven ties, the portion of the track occupied will be more toward the spatial side than the temporal.

Male and female mental sex are like two different box cars, linked together. Since they don’t occupy the same position on the single track, one is more toward a spatial view and the other more toward a temporal. In any given environmental situation (position on the track), the male car will be more toward space, the female more toward time, but the two slightly overlapping where they link.

Up and down the track they move, each capable of seeing the same sights and getting to the same places, but never at the same moment.

Now, imagine a second and a third track running along side the first one. Each of these other two tracks is running in the same direction (say, Left to Right) as the first track, but they start at a different point to the Left and end at a different point to the right.

If Space is to the Left, then the Cat track will start a bit further to the Right (Time) and end a bit further to the Right than the Human track. This means that although Humans and Cats will run in parallel along portions of their natural route, Cats will also extend farther toward Time than the Humans. As a result, the Center of the Cat track, will be farther to the Right (Time) than the center of the Human track, and as the cars move back and forth, Cats, on the average as a species, will seem more toward the Female Mental Sex side (Time) compared to Humans. Similarly, the Dog track is a bit more, overall, toward the Left (Space) side, and therefore Dogs, as a species, on the average, will seem to be more Male Mental Sex than Humans, as a group.

Another notable difference among the species, is that while Human box cars may span seven ties on the track, Cat and Dog cars may span only perhaps four. This means that the “resolution” by which Cats and Dogs perceive their environment (and themselves) is less detailed (narrower bandwidth) than it is with Humans, even though we all share the same perspectives. This is why dogs seem so simple in their emotional responses, and cats so simple in their logic.

Dogs, being more Male Mental Sex as a species, have an edge in logic, masking the narrower bandwidth, but since their box car is not as wide, the emotional response is double whammied. The reverse is true for Cats.

Well, hopefully this little analogy might help people avoid having one track minds, eh what?