Author Archives: Melanie Anne Phillips

Indy… Why does the floor move?

A Dramatica user recently noticed that Elements (the smallest, most detailed story points in Dramatica) are in different arrangements at the bottom of each of the four Dormains.   In other words, he was wondering why the “floor” moved.  (Click here to download a PDF of the Dramatica Table of Story Elements).

Here’s my reply….

Think of each of the four Domains as four different kinds of filters through which to see the story’s problem.  They look at the effects of the problem in terms of Internal and External and divide each of those realms into States and Processes, creating the four Domains – Situation (external state), Attitude (internal state), Activities (external processes), Manipulation (internal processes, psychology or manners of thinking).

By the time you look all the way down to the greatest detail at the element level at the bottom of each Domain, you are seeing the same elements because you are looking at the same central core of the problem – the event horizon of the problem, as it were.  Though they are the same elements, because of the four different filters, they appear distorted.  It doesn’t change their names (the nature of the elements) but the distortion changes the way they appear to group together.  So, while the same elements appear at the bottom of each Domain, the way they are arranged is different due to that distortion.

Always keep in mind that you never actually see the real inequity that is at the heart of the story directly  It does not appear as being any particular story point or arrangement of story points.  Rather, the inequity exists in the relationships among all the story points.  It is the tension created by the gravitational pull of each story point upon all the others (actually the psychological pull, which acts like gravity in a storyform) that describes the effects of that inequity.  When the planets are out of alignment – essentially meaning that there is tension in the storyform map of the story mind’s psychology – then there is inequity.  And it is that inequity that leads to the unwinding of the story, act by act and scene by scene, like a Rubik’s cube being turned, seeking entropy – equity – in a realignment of all the forces into a stable balance once again.

The true inequity that causes the problem sits at the center of the story, in the middle of all the story points, guiding the celestial psychological orbits of the story points not unlike the unseen black hole at the center of our galaxy.  And the elements revolve around it like separate solar systems of mental processes, both logic and passion, wheels within wheels within the space-time of the mind.

Story Structure – Part 12 of 113 (video)

“Bad Story Structure is No Joke!”

Here’s the link to the video:

http://storymindguru.com/dramatica-unplugged/12%20Bad%20Story%20Structure%20is%20No%20Joke.htm

In this episode, I compare story structure to a joke and storytelling to the manner in which the joke is told.  Understanding the difference betweeen story structure and storytelling is crucial to separating the two so structure can be built logically, step by step, while simultaneously the Muse of storytelling can be unshakled to run free.  As long as these two essential aspects of a story are blended, structure is unclear and inspriation is hobbled.

Writing from the Passionate Self

Who are you, really? Do you even know? Or do you just think you know?

At the center of our beings, at the heart of our souls, can be found the truth of our identity: our compassion, our anger, the breeding ground of the very stuff that makes us love and hate.

Yet, though a lifetime of compromise in the attempt to garner approval and avoid rejection, most of us have hidden the true nature of ourselves so far behind the shield of a pseudo persona that we are no longer privy to the essence of our own selves.

Unable to tap directly into the firestorm of our Id, we live on second hand passions and pass them off in what we write as the gritty truth of personal reality. A writer can survive a career without ever becoming aware of his or her true essence.

What might you write if you became aware of your Passionate Self, and could tap into the primal force of your psyche?

The issue then becomes the effort to mount an inner expedition to the darkest reaches of your mind. It is dangerous territory. You may very well lose your sense of self in the process, discover you are a completely different person than you thought, and this knowledge may ultimately cost you your relationships, family, friends, job, and even your own peace of mind.

You don’t need to tap this cauldron of angst and elation in order to write interesting stories that captivate others. But as a writer, wouldn’t you like to be able to access it?

Let’s examine how and why we hide ourselves and then outline a method for recovering our first nature from the labyrinth of our second.

It all goes back to your childhood. You came from a loving, caring family, or from an antagonist family where you were always afraid of punishment, or were just ignored. Sure, there are many variations, but they all lead to the same syndrome.

If we are raised in a loving household, we learn compassion and empathy, and come to want to please others, even if it is at our own expense. Usually, we are accepted as ourselves in such a household, but when we arrive at pre-school or kindergarten, suddenly we are confronted by those who make fun of us because of inherent qualities that are expressions of our true selves. We quickly learn that to avoid displeasing others and to get the same kindness we have at home, we must hide certain traits and pretend to possess others. In short order, we establish a pseudo personality that no longer reflects ourselves, but reflects as nearly as possible the mean average of what we feel others would prefer us to be.

If we are raised in an angry recriminating household, we learn to hide any trait that could bring punishment or ridicule, and also create a mask we can wear to avoid pain and enhance pleasure. If we are just ignored as children, we invent an ersatz persona to attract attention, and/or as an attempt to make ourselves noteworthy.

It is almost an inevitable human endeavor.

As we grow, the mask must become more complex. We add to it whenever a new situation arises. We look to see how others act so we will know what to do in similar situations.

Slowly, we come to realize that it hurts not to express our true selves. And then we do one of two things: We break out of the mask and let it all hang out in a teenage rebellion, or we learn to stop looking inside at the real us, so that we don’t suffer the pain of suppression.

Even those who rebel, may later compromise their inner integrity to advance in a career, impress peers, or justify a lack of success to themselves. Very few of us reach full adulthood still knowing who we really are.

In most cases, we hide our true natures away from ourselves for so long that we forget how to find ourselves – we forget who we were, and have no idea who we have become down there in the darkness.

Our true selves are like ROM chips on a computer. They are preprogrammed with the essential elements of our personalities, and they are designed to load specific portions of that programming into our minds at various junctures, such as when we learn to walk, the onset of puberty, the arrival at childbearing age.

Our minds are like RAM in a computer. Into our minds we load our experiences. They sit on top of the ROM personality that has been loaded. In a sense, experiences are the data that is crunched by the personality program from our ROM.

But when you create a pseudo persona, you fill up RAM with another program. You create protected memory where nothing else can be loaded. And so, as you grow, the ROM personality tries to load, but sees that there isn’t enough space, and aborts the operation to try again at a later time.

As our minds expand with growth, there would be enough room for the ROM, but we also expand our personas so that there is never enough room. So our ROM personalities – our true personalities – can never load. And we become stunted in our emotions; never advancing past the development of the year we first invented our mask. And our true selves, hidden deeply in the ROM, remain only a potential, not an actualized self.

We meet a mate, we get married, we have children, we advance in our careers, and all with people responding to our personas, not to the true selves, which have never been realized, even to ourselves.

So the mate we attract is one who loves the false us. The children we raise associate love and comfort with a fake person who is not us. And they support that image with their holiday gifts, secret glances, and tender moments.

It becomes a web of lies from which we dare not attempt to escape lest we lose the love and respect of others when we reveal our actual essence and expose the person they thought they knew to be no more than a sham.

But you are a writer. And as a writer, you peddle emotions. And if you are a worthwhile writer, you want your wares to be honest and true. Yet how can they be, if you aren’t true to yourself?

If you are game then, how can you discover that inner person? Simply put, you have to pass through pain. You will need to come to feel the lack of all of your ROM programming. You will need to see your everyday self as a lie. You will explore the pain until you can stand it no more. And when you are ready, you will take a leap of faith and dump your RAM persona by unprotecting its files – files you have spent a lifetime building. When you do, the ROM will notice. It will rush in and overwrite your false self with all the past due sections of your self that should have been loaded along the way. And in one electric moment you will feel your old self vanish as if you had been exorcised, then feel perhaps a second or two of emptiness, followed by the force of your embryonic actual self-rushing in to fill the void.

You will then realize that the old files are gone. You cannot recover them, no matter how much you may want to. You make the leap of faith and there is no going back – ever. You cannot even rebuild them. You would have to start all over from scratch, and there probably isn’t enough lifetime left to do that.

But the consequences! You are now a different being, a more vibrant being, a creature of foundational power that we all have the potential to experience. So will your loved ones, and those you depend on find you acceptable and embrace the “New You,” or will they recoil, feel betrayed, abandoned, and perhaps mourn the loss of the person they thought they knew through all the seven stages of grief?

No one can predict the response of others, but positive or negative there will be a response from everyone you encounter once you have crossed to the other side?

If you are willing to take this risk, how to you get to that magic moment when you can shift over to a new reality? Through your writing: you need to keep a personal journal. You need to express your deepest thoughts and feelings in it daily.

My personal journal has sometimes resulted in 17 typewritten pages in a single day. More often, it amounts to a page or two. There have been years when I kept no journal at all. But I have always found that when I do keep a journal, angst is discovered become one with, and evaporated – eventually.

Usually, this major sea-change occurs in a time of extreme mental pressure – loss of a business or a loved one, or some impending change of lifestyle, situation, or relationship that rocks the very foundations of your soul.

These are the times to keep a journal without fail. The words you write will help you work it through, keep you sane, and in time reveal the actual issues that drive you.

Still, you don’t have to take that path. You can content yourself with the comfortable life you have fashioned around your pseudo self, and continue to write intriguing stories populated by compelling characters engaged in riveting action. You may find that sufficient. You may, even after all of this, believe that is all there is, “as good as it gets.” But what if there is something powerful within you – something basic and honest and true. Are you prepared to go to your death bed never knowing who you really are?

I leave you with a poem I wrote some years ago that touches on some of these issues:

Lulladie

by Melanie Anne Phillips

My emotions are dead
and lack any resistance
to the onslaught of logic’s
relentless persistence.

I’m malleable, moveable,
flexible, still.
I succumb with aplomb,
as I alter my will

to conform to the pressures
that weigh on my soul
without motive, or method,
opinion, or goal.

They reach for the stars,
as they stand on our hearts,
and they sell us off piecemeal,
parcels and parts.

They slice us to mincemeat
and padlock the door,
while our blood runs quite freely
through holes in the floor.

But nothing is wasted,
tho’ everything’s lost.
So our blood is recycled
to offset the cost.

We huddle in darkness
yet shy from the fire
to howl at the moon
with the rest of the choir.

And when the glow wanes,
we stoke it with dreams
in hopes that the crackle
will drown out our screams.

You sleep in your bed
and you doze in your chair.
Your cushions are comfy
and so is your air.

But your heartache grows heavy,
as well as your head,
’til you nod away, nod away,
nod away, dead.

Finding Inspiration

We all know that writing is not just about assembling words, but also about assembling ideas. When we actually sit down to write, we may have our ideas all worked out in advance or we may have no idea what we want to say – just a desire to say something.

Some of us must labor on projects that we hate, but which have been assigned to us. Others may simply be in love with the notion of being a writer, but haven’t a thing to say. Regardless of why we are writing, we all share the desire to create an expression that has meaning to our audience.

And just who is that audience? It might be only ourselves. Often I have written material as a means of getting something off my chest, out of my thoughts, or perhaps just to get a grip on nebulous feelings or issues by forcing myself to put them into concrete terms.

Some of what I write this way has actually turned out to be saleable as essays on personal growth or insights into meaningful emotional experiences. But, most of what I have written for my audience of one remains with me. Perhaps it is too personal to share, or just too personal to have meaning to anyone else.

When I write for myself, it is seldom a story. More often than not, it isn’t even a tale. Rather, it is a snippet of my real experiences, or a flight of fancy, such as the words “red ground rover.” What does this mean? I have no idea. But I do know how it feels to me.

In fact, popping out a few nonsense but passionate words is a trick I often use to get a story going. I’ll write something like the above almost randomly. Then I’ll ask myself, “Is the ground red with some one or something roving over it, or the whole thing a nick name for a bird dog or a mail carrier in the outback?

Blurting out something that has no conscious intent behind it can be a useful trick in overcoming writer’s block. It seems that writer’s block most often occurs when we are intentionally trying to determine what we want to talk about. But, when we just put something forth and then try to figure out what it might mean, a myriad of possibilities suggest themselves.

If you like, take a moment and try it. Just jot down a few nonsense words to create a phrase. Then, consider what they might mean. Rather than attempting to create, you are now in analysis mode, the inverse emotional state of trying to produce something out of nothing. You’ll probably be surprised at how many interpretations of your phrase readily come to mind.

Imagine, then, if you were to take one of those interpretations and build on it. In my example, let me pick the first interpretation – that “red ground rover” means someone or some thing that roves over red ground. Well, let’s see…. Mars is red, and the Martian Rover at one time examined the planet. Looks like I’m starting a science fiction story.

But what to do next? How about another nonsense phrase: “minion onion manner house.” What in the world does that mean? Let’s tie it in to the first phrase. Suppose there is some underling (minion) who is hunting for wild onions on Mars (onions being so suited to the nutrients in the soil that they grow wild in isolated patches). The underling works at the Manner House of a wealthy Martian frontier settler, but is known as Red Ground Rover because of his free-time onion prospecting activities.

Now, these phrases weren’t planned as examples for this book. To be fair, I just blurted them out as I suggest you do. Just as we see pictures in ink blots, animals in the clouds, and mythic figures in the constellations, we impose our desire for patterns even on the meaningless. And in so doing, we often find unexpected inspiration.

Even if none of our ideas are suited to what we are attempting to write, we have successfully dislodged our minds from the vicious cycle of trying to figure out what to say. And, returning to the specific task of our story, we are often surprised to find that writer’s block has vanished while we were distracted.

Now you may have noticed that in the example we just explored, there are elements of Character, Plot, Theme, and Genre. The Genre appears to be a variety of Science fiction. The Theme would seem to revolve around the class system on a frontier Mars and the implications of interjecting one natural ecosystem willy nilly into another. The plot involves an individual out to better his lot by working outside the system, and whatever difficulties that may create for him. And, we have at least two characters already suggested – the Red Ground Rover explicitly and the Lord or Lady of the Manner House implicitly (plus whatever servants or staff they may employ.)

This is a good illustration of the fact that when we seek to impose patterns on our world (real or imagined) we actually project the image of our mind’s operating system on what we consider. Characters form themselves as avatars of our motivations. Theme intrudes as representations of our values. Plot outlines the problem solving mechanisms we employ. And Genre describes the overall experience, from setting to style.

We cannot help but project these aspects of ourselves on our work. The key to inspiration is to develop the ability to see the patterns that we have subliminally put there. Almost as important is knowing when to be spontaneous and when to analyze the results, looking for the beginnings of a structure.

If you are a structuralist writer, you’d probably prefer to have the whole story worked out either on paper (or at least in your head) before you ever sat down to write. If you are an inspirationist writer, you probably wouldn’t have a clue what you were going to write when you began. You’d sit down, bop around your material and eventually find your story somewhere in the process, as you wrote. The final story would be worked out through multiple drafts. Most writer’s fall somewhere in between these two extremes. An idea pops into our head for a clever bit of action, an interesting line of dialog, or a topic we’d like to explore. Maybe it comes from something we are experiencing, have experienced, see on television, read in the newspaper, or perhaps it just pops up into our conscious mind unbidden.

Almost immediately a number of other associated ideas often come to mind. If there are enough of them, a writer begins to think, “story.” We then ponder the ideas with purpose, seeing where they will lead and what else we might dig up and add to the mix.

Eventually we have gathered enough material to satisfy our own personal assessment that we actually have the beginnings of a story and are ready to begin serious work on it. Then, structuralists set about working out the details and inspirationists set about finding the details as they go along.

Yet there is a problem for both kinds of writers. What holds all these ideas together is a common subject matter. But just because they all deal with the same issues does not mean they all belong in the same store.

It is common for authors to become frustrated trying to make all the pieces fit, when in fact it may be impossible for them to all fit. Perhaps several different combinations can be worked out that gather most of the material into the semblance of a structure. But odds are there will be a significant amount of the material that gets left out no matter how you try to include it. Even if each potential structure leaves out a different part and incorporates material left out in another potential structure, there is no single structure that includes all.

Like trying to pick up chicken fat on a plate with the flat side of a fork, we chase a structure all around our subject matter until we run ourselves ragged. Then we stare at the paper or the screen, realizing we’ve tried every combination we can think of and nothing works. It is this dilemma we call writer’s block.

It is much easier when we realize that stories are not life; they are about life. In the real world, we group our experiences together by subject matter, not by the underlying structure that describes it. For example, we are more likely to see the issues regarding the disciplining of our children as being lumped into one category of consideration whereas getting chewed out by our boss is another.

In truth, if our child tells a lie, it is not necessarily the same issue at all as when he or she doesn’t do the assigned homework. But, not doing homework may have a much closer structural connection to our getting in trouble with our boss because we failed to file all of the expense reports he requested.

We can avoid writer’s block. We can recognize that the material we create at the beginning of our efforts is not the story itself, but merely the inspiration for the story. Then we can stop chasing our mental tails and pick the structure that is most acceptable rather than cease writing until we can find the impossible structure that would pull in all the material.

Based on this understanding, it is not hard to see that we come to Characters, Plot, Theme, and Genre not on a structural basis but on a subject matter basis as well. And, there is nothing wrong with that. As was said in the beginning of this book, we don’t write because of the desire for a perfect structure. We write because we are passionate about our subject matter. Yet sooner or later, the structure needs to be there to support our passions.

Story Structure Part 10 (video)

“The Four Throughlines, Part One”

http://storymindguru.com/dramatica-unplugged/10%20The%20Four%20Throughlines%20-%20Part%20One.htm

In this episode I explore the first two of four throughlines essential to every complete story.  Throughlines are based on different perspectives on a story, much as you might have four cameras covering a football game.  One is the objective view, which looks at the story from the outside in – it is often called the God’s Eye View of Author’s View.  Another is the view of the Main Character as we stand in his or her shoes.  it is the most personal view of what it is like to actually be in the story, without that special omniscience of the objective view.  A third view is that of the Main Character looking at and considering the one character who most stands in his way philosophically.  Often this is a friend or loved one rather than an enemy – a character who urges the Main Character to change his or her ways in some regard.  The final view takes in the philosophical battle between the Main and Obstacle Characters as they come into conflict in attitudes and approaches over the course of the story.  Like the Objective view, the Subjective view is seen from the outside looking in, but not from outside the whole story, just from outside the relationship between the Main and Obstacle.  Each of these four provide a point of view on the story, positioning the reader or audience on all sides of the issues.  Collectively, they all create perspective on the central message issue of the story.  When the story is put into motion and we follow the progress, growth and change in each of these perspectives, they become “throughlines” because they follow the line of each perspective through the story.

Dramatica’s Semantics Explained

Some words about semantics…

The terminology used in Dramatica is extremely precise.  Each word is designed to convey a very particular meaning.  But this creates a number of problems from a rather obtuse lexicon to an unfamiliar taxonomy resulting in an almost impenetrable syntax.

See what I mean?  Even just talking about Dramatica’s semantics is something of a brain tilt!  So, my task in this article is to explain the purpose of all the different kinds of complex language in the theory and then provide a perspective from which all those words become tools, rather than obstacles.  To that end, let us begin….

Part One – Classification of Concepts (Taxonomy)

To start with, it is important to note that when we developed the Dramatica theory, we didn’t come to the process with a whole bucket of preconceptions about how structure worked, tried to impose them on stories, and then slapped tricky names on them to obfuscate the issues.  (It would be cool if we had, but we didn’t.)  Rather, we intentionally didn’t read or study any other previous theories of story structure, just so we could approach the field with fresh eyes and open minds.

So, we looked for patterns – things that existed in stories and processes that drove them.  We identified the things as being the building blocks of dramatics, the elements of structure.  We identified the processes as the forces that arranged those building blocks, the dynamics of structure.

As these concepts started to pile up, we began to organize them, just to keep it all from becoming a confusing mess.  We soon discovered that things were naturally falling into four broad categories: Structure, Dynamics, How Structure and Dynamics relate to one another, and How to Use Structure and Dynamics to build the underlying dramatic backbone or foundation of a story.  Let me take just a brief moment to elucidate on each of these four categories…

Structure

Here we grouped all of the dramatic building blocks of a story – the elements that make up character, plot, theme, and genre.  The end result was the now-familiar Dramatica Table of Story Elements.  Here’s a link to a downloadable PDF copy, if you don’t already have one (and, for that matter, even if you do, it is still a link):

Dramatica Story Structure Chart

As you can see, it is rather reminiscent of the good ol’ Periodic Table of Elements besmirched by generations of chemistry and physics students.  This similarity is not surprising.  Just as the chemical elements are organized in families of like traits, so too the Dramatica Table groups the elements of structure into families as well.  And just as the chemical elements can be combined to create all manner of substances, so too can the Dramatica elements be combined to create the chemistry of characters, plot, theme and genre.

I’ll return to the chart a little later to talk about the specific names of the elements and why they were chosen, but first let’s examine the remaining three categories into which we placed our dramatic concepts as we developed the theory….

Dynamics

Here we grouped  the forces that drove the story – such things as whether the main character would eventually change its essential nature or remain steadfast to its long-held ideals, and whether the effort to achieve the story goal would ultimately end in success or failure.  As with the elements in the structure chart, the dynamics, handily enough, also self-organize in sub-groups or families.  The most familiar of these dynamics (and arguably the most powerful) eventually became known as the 12 Essential Questions (a nice marketing phrase) and you can easily delve into them with a simple search on the internet.

By the time we were done, we had discovered, organized and named several dozen dynamics, each of which is something of a unique point of view from which the elements of structure can be explored.

Relationship of Structure and Dynamics

Our third category held all the dramatica concepts that explored how structure and dynamics could be fitted together to create the jelled structure of a specific story.  In other words, we found that structure just says what the pieces are, dynamics is the set of instructions for how they will come into play, and when you put them together in a particular way you end up the form of a particular story.  Not surprisingly, we called that a Storyform.  Rats!  I’ve jumped ahead and described an actual word.  Well, no matter, there will be plenty more of that to come.  For now, suffice it to say that everything from Acts and Scenes to Points of View and Perspectives fall into this category.

Usage

In our fourth box for story stuff we tossed all of the techniques we discovered for how to actually go about choosing which dynamic to be attached to which structural element in order to get a precise effect in the completed story.  We found four stages (or aspects) of communication between author and audience and identified many creative operations that could be applied in each of those four.

Part Two – Vocabulary (Lexicon)

Now we get down to the nitty gritty of how and why specific words were chosen for different kinds of things.  I’ll do this by using examples  from the Dramatica chart.

First, look at the Dramatica Table of Story Elements (and if you didn’t bother downloading it earlier, you might as well stop reading now, or just bite the bullet and download the sucker).  You’ll note that the highest, most broad-stroke level the Table is divided into four families, each identified by a big boldface block letter name – Universe, Physics, Mind, and Psychology.

Now why in blazes are those names there?  Where in the world did we come up with such things in reference to story structure?  I’ll tell you.

When discovering all the new concepts we talked about in part one, in the structure category we had a whole jumble of words that described human qualities.  Things like faith, denial, learning, or manner of thinking.  At first we thought they were all of the same “weight” – that is to say, that you could put each of these qualities onto a different index card and then just use them almost as topics or aspects of human nature that came into play like playing cards in the course of a story.

But as we began to discover more of these qualities in story and to start to organize them, we discovered that some of them were traits we used to examine ourselves and some we used to interact with our environment.  So, we considered each trait individually to determine whether it belonged in the set of those that looked inward or those that looked outward.

Now we had two groups of traits.  The outward looking one we called “Universe” and the inward looking one we called “Mind.”  Why?  There is an old saying – “What’s Mind? No matter.  What’s Matter? Never mind.”  And that’s pretty much what we were thinking.  Each trait either pertained to something of the physical world or something of the mental one, hence, Universe and Mind.

As for the traits in each of these two groups, we found two interesting things.  One, they weren’t all the same weight.  in fact, some traits were like family names, and other traits were like members of that family.  When working in the Mind group, for example, it is filled with the mental processes we use to solve problems or work things through.  And sometimes certain areas of consideration are just parts of an even larger kind of consideration.  That larger consideration is an umbrella – a family name – for the similarity of the smaller kinds of considerations that fell within it – that made it up, just as individual member of the Smith family all have individual identities, yet also have roles within the family structure at large, making them all Smiths in on to their own identities.  In the Periodic Table of Elements, you have families such as the Rare Earth elements and the Noble Gases (like Argon and Neon) – similar enough to share a family name, individual enough to be separate elements.

The Dramatica Table works much the same.  If you scroll down through your downloaded PDF of the table to page 6, you’ll find a more “3D” view of the table, showing families and sub-families on different levels.  For example, you’ll see in the upper left that the Universe Class (as we call it – a class of elements, as one might classify plant or animal species) is divided into four sub-families: Past, Present, Future, and Progress.  Those sub-families appear in the second level down.  And each of those, in turn, is made up of even smaller (or more detailed) kinds of considerations at the third level.  And finally, you arrive at the bottom fourth level at which you encounter the quintessential elements of which all families are ultimately comprised.

For the moment, let’s go back up to the level just beneath Mind (the class in the lower right of the 3D table: Memory, Conscious, Subconscious, and Preconscious.  To show you how the chart works and why the names in it were chosen, note that the word Memory in the Mind class is in the same relative position to Mind (upper left) as the word Past in Universe (also upper left).  What this is saying is that Past is to Universe as Memory is to Mind.  In other words, position in the chart is indicative of semantic relationship.

Let’s put that in far simpler terms…  When we organized all the elements of structure into families and subfamilies we found that a pattern emerged (and this is the second interesting thing about Universe and Mind I earlier promised to explore): for every element (human trait) in Universe, there was a corresponding trait in Mind.  There was a one to one correlation!  Another example, Present is to Universe as Conscious is to Mind.  Each one deals with the momentary nature of the here and now, one outward-looking, the other inward-looking.

Well now.  Armed with this understanding, we began to organize and re-organize all of the various traits (elements) we had discovered, placing them in identical relative positions to each family and sub-family name.  When we were done, we realized two things: One, that in some cases we had two elements that were really the same thing, just with a different name.  So, we picked the best name and put that in the chart.  Two, that sometimes there was a term in one of the classes with no corresponding term in the other class.  Therefore, we needed to figure out what was that equivalent term that was missing, and then to give it a name.

We did this by looking at the neighbors of the missing term and comparing them to the neighbors of the term that did appear in the other class.  We could begin to sense the semantic difference between the existing term and those around it, and then to calculate what the missing term in the other class would have to be (conceptually) to fill that same space and function.  And so, bit by bit, we were eventually able to discard all the redundant terms and to fill in all the holes with appropriate names.

The end result was a balanced table in which a complete spectrum of human considerations had been mapped.  And position in the table indicated meaning.  In fact (for you mathematically inclined folk) you can draw a vector (line) between any two terms anywhere in the whole table and if you move that line so it connects two other terms completely unrelated to the first pair, the semantic difference between the second two terms will be identical to the semantic difference between the first two.  And that line doesn’t have to be just vertical or horizontal – it can be at any vector angle that connects two terms – even ones in different positions within families and at different levels.

Now that’s a hell of a thing.  Imagine!  We had a chart that mapped all of the principal kinds of considerations we make in our minds, organized into families and named and arranged with such precision that meaning from one space to the next equalled the same distance in meaning, regardless of where it occurred in the table.

We found about one third to one half of those terms in stories, then filled in the holes by comparing similar terms in each class and looking to the neighbors of each to cross-reference what the missing terms ought to be.  So, hundreds of generations of storyteller, though trial and error, had gotten us so close to an accurate map of the human mind that we were able to carry the baton the last leg, fill in the rest of the details in that sketchy image, and arrive at a precise Table of Story Elements.

Oh, and for those new to Dramatica who are wondering why I haven’t said anything about those other two classes in the Table (Physics and Psychology) – well, they were two of the holes we filled in.  At first we thought is was just external and internal with Universe and Mind.  And then we realized that it was also about seeing things in terms of space and time.  Simply put, when we take a flash-photo of our environment, we see the fixed state of things.  That’s what Universe is all about.  And then we turn that camera on ourselves, we get a photo of the fixed state of our minds – things like biases, attitudes, preconceptions or, at a most basic level, our mind set.  But, the mind doesn’t just exist as a bunch of attitudes.  It is also in constant motion, figuring things out, coming up with plans.  So, the mind is partly made up of relatively unchanging things, and also of processes.  Similarly, the external world is partly about how things are arranged (space) and the processes at work (time).

Back to the Table, we eventually had come to refine our notion of Universe and Mind by adding Physics and Psychology so that rather than lumping the substance and processes of external and internal into just two classes, we split it all out, so that Universe is an external state, Physics an external process, Mind and internal state, and Psychology an internal process.  If you stop to think about it, there’s nothing we can consider that can’t be described at the top most level as being either an internal or external state or process.  And that’s why those four class names are at the very top of the consideration table.

It should be pretty obvious that in such a refined chart, choosing just the right word so it fits in its family from the top down, matches the other same-positioned words in the other three classes and is even so precise as to be able to create those vectors of semantic distance I mentioned earlier – well, it was hard.  It took us about two years of full-time effort to polish up the vocabulary with the utmost in precision.

And herein lies both a strength and a weakness.  As it turns out, the English language isn’t evenly spread around all potential meanings.  In fact, it glops together in places where there are many words for the same thing, and then is quite threadbare in other places where there is actually no word at all for a meaning that clearly exists in a class because it exists in the other three.  What to do?

After much discussion, we decided there were only two things we could do: One, find the nearest word to the meaning we were trying to describe and then redefine that word more specifically to our target meaning.  Two, if there was no word of nearby meaning, just invent one of our own.  Depending on the situation, we employed both methods.

Of course, if you are redefining and inventing words, no one is going to know what you are talking about.  So, as part of the effort, we wrote a 150 page dictionary of every single term, including ones of common usage and understanding plus all those redefined and all those invented.  Problem is, so many words and so many alterations for the common understanding….  It creates quite wall to scale if you want to use the theory or the Dramatica software that implements the theory as a tool for story development.

One solution is just to require every user to learn our definitions.  While this is a perfect solutions for accuracy, it isn’t very practical as it makes the learning curve WAY too high to sell more copies than a handful.  So, over the years, some key terms have been replaced with more common usage ones, such as Mind becoming Attitude or Psychology becoming Manipulation.

Now for most story purposes, these work okay.  And this is because most structure is innately sloppy.  After all, no one reads a book or goes to a movie to experience a flawless structure.  Rather, we wish to excite our passions.  And, driven by our emotional involvement (especially in the storytelling, subject matter and style) we are apt to not even notice a few slightly false beats, as long as they are in the ballpark.  In short, show us a good time and we’ll forgive a few things that don’t quite ring true.  For purists, however, the original terminology is still there in the software and you can swap it in and out ’til your heart’s content.  There’s even two different versions of the Table of Story Elements – the accurate one I provided the link to and the revised, less accurate, more accessible one that I won’t provide a link to because I’m a freakin’ purist, okay!!!

There’s a move on now to make the software even more accessible by providing the capability to employ even more conversational and subject matter oriented language instead of the original terms for purposes of creating a storyform structure in the software.  This also has advantages and disadvantages….

Consider if a story is about a problem caused by trash that is left all over the place.  Well, the new approach would ask you what the problem of your story was and you’d type in “trash.”  The software would bring up all the common phrases that had the word “trash” in them.  So, it might then ask you, is your problem about the fact there is trash all over the place, or that people are leaving trash all over the place?  Most writers would just answer “yes” and have a hard time picking between the two because, in common usage, they seem pretty much the same.

But, if the problem is that the trash is all over, it is a Universe (fixed state) problem, while if the problem is that people are dropping trash all over, then it is a Physics (activity) problem.  In other words, picking one of the common usage phrases over the other could throw your whole story into a completely different class, which would alter where your main character was coming from, the kinds of story goals that might be appropriate to such a story and so on.

Now, add to that a long succession of such choices, each one based more on the subject matter than on the underlying structural position indicated by the original precise nomenclature and you can see the errors in meaning multiply until the final structure presented by the software bears no resemblance to story the user originally wanted to tell.

Still, using common language makes the theory and software so much more accessible an less daunting.  And so, many folks who would never buy the product with the difficult original names might be wholly drawn in with the replacement phrases, thereby getting over the rejection hurdle and giving them time to explore, learn, and eventually come to use and understand the accurate original language.

So, it is something of a paradox – the more accurate the terminology, the fewer people will try, stick with, or come to use these valuable concepts.  But, the more easily accessible the language becomes, the more inaccuracies will come into play.

The solution, of course, is that common language must be presented with the accurate terms side by side to at least provide guidance at the time the choices are made.  And, there needs to be a statement at the very beginning that, as with any complex endeavor, there are levels of skill and accuracy one can achieve.  You don’t learn about scarlet, cardinal and vermillion before you learn about red.  And you can do an awful lot with red before you find within yourself the need for any of those more refined colors.

And, perhaps it is just a justification on my part, but even with the inaccurate accessible language, Dramatica still provides a clearer picture of the underlying structure and how it works than any other system yet devised.

Part Three – Grammar (Syntax)

Now this section is going to be REALLY short – mostly because I’ve made my points and also because I’ve been writing this in one long marathon session and I’m getting tired and hungry.  So I’ll keep it to this – the grammar of story structure describes how you go about creating dramatic sentences.  In other words, every time you write a scene, movement, sequence or act you are structuring the dramatic equivalents of phrases, sentences, paragraphs and arguments.

Discovering the exact nature of those “rules” in story structure was another rather intense quest on our part, but it was only possible because we already had the Table of Story Elements to serve as a map.  In terms of semantics, suffice it to say that many of these rules were never observed before, and so a whole new set of terms was required to describe the parts and process of how dramatic elements are assembled in such a guided yet flexible manner as to create form without formula.

Conclusion and Summary

I imagine by now you’ve got the idea.  We weren’t going out of our way to make Dramatica difficult or to put any layers of confusion into the mix to mask errors or faults with our model.  Quite the opposite.  We went out of our way to be accurate and complete and, in so doing, could not help but make the learning of Dramatica a daunting prospect.

Twenty years after we began this effort, none of the underlying concepts has changed.  Once the model was originally fully built, it was both elegant, complete and true.  It is only the wording we use to describe it and the concessions we make to provide the easiest possible entry into it that alter as we consider progressively better means of striking a balance between understanding and usability.

Fair enough.

Finding Your Creative Time

You sit in your favorite writing chair, by the window, on the porch, or in the study. You wear your favorite tweed jacket with the leather elbow patches, or your blue jeans, or your “creative shoes.” You look around at the carefully crafted environment you spent months arranging to trigger your inspiration. Reaching eagerly forward you place your hands on the keyboard or grasp the pen or pencil, and… Nothing happens.

You look around the room again, out the window, sip your coffee, cross or uncross your legs, finger your lucky charm, reach forward and… Still nothing

What in blazes is wrong? You know you are full of inspiration; you can feel it! Why the ideas were flowing like a deluge just this morning, last night, or yesterday. Frustrated, yet determined, you try several more times to get the words to flow, but to no avail. “Good pen name, ” you think,” Noah Vale.”

So what’s the problem? How can you feel all primed to write, sit in your favorite environment with everything just perfect and still nothing comes?

Perhaps the problem is not where you are trying to write, but when!

Each of us has a creative time of day and a logistic time of day. Never heard of this? I didn’t discover it until quite recently myself. As a writer, I always thought creativity came and went with the Muse, sometimes bringing inspiration, sometimes spiriting it away. Like most writers, I had found that creating a quiet refuge, a creative sanctuary, increased the frequency and intensity of visits from the Muse. What I didn’t know was that the Muse keeps a schedule: she comes and goes like clockwork.

Here’s my scenario and see how it might apply to you… I’ve always felt guilty when I write – guilty that I’m not out cleaning something, building something, visiting someone, or even just getting out in the real world and living a little. But writing always draws me back. I find it therapeutic, cathartic, invigorating, stimulating, and, well, just plain fun. Sometimes… no, make that ALL the time, it’s as good as… no, make that BETTER THAN sex! And food! And earning a living! I often feel (when writing) like that rat with the wire connected to his pleasure center who kept pushing the stimulation button until it starved to death because it forgot to eat!

Well, the urge to write is there all the time. But, because I feel guilty I try to get all of my chores done I the morning, clearing the way to spend the afternoon or evening writing guilt free. But then I sit there watching the sun go down, full of the desire to write but completely unable to do so.

Recently, however, I had the good fortune of actually finishing all my chores the night before. I found myself with the whole morning free and guilt-free as well! At first, I was just going to goof off, do some reading, watch some TV, but then that old Writing Bug took a nip of my soul and off I was to my study to pound the keys. And you know what? The words just spilled out like secrets from the town gossip! This was wonderful! What an experience! I was pelting out the thoughts without the least guilt and without the slightest hesitation. I was flying through my own mind and playing it out on the keys! It felt very much like when I play music.

But why was this happening? I was truly afraid the feeling would go as quickly as it came and I would be lost in the creative doldrums again. In fact, it did fade with time – not abruptly, but gradually… slipping away until it was no more. But it did not leave a vacuum. In its place was a rising motivation to clean something, build something, visit someone, or get out in the real world and live!

Then, it hit me… Perhaps my creativity does not spring from where I write, but when! Perhaps the morning is my creative time and the afternoon, my practical time! I experimented. Try to write in the afternoon, the evening, at night, the morning. Quickly I discovered that if I felt free from the guilt of non-practical activity, I could write in the morning as if I were designed to do nothing else! But no matter how many chores I might accomplish in the morning, by the time the sun dropped below the horizon, my inspiration dropped away as well.

In fact, my creative time seems tied to the sun. For me, it brightens in the morning, peaks around noon, and fades away to nothing at dusk. Interestingly, I recently moved to the mountains and dusk comes early hear in the canyon this time of year – far earlier than when I lived down in the flatlands of the city.

Looking back over the years, I could see that my daily creative cycle depended upon the direct rays of the sun, not the time of day. And all those years I tried to get the practical stuff done in the morning to avoid guilt didn’t help my creativity but hindered it!

Lately, I just know that when the sun goes down it’s time to get practical. As a result, I know in the morning that I’ll accomplish real world logistic things later in the day. That eliminates guilt because the work part is already scheduled. And, that frees my mind to play with words all morning long.

When is your creative time? Just being a “morning person” or a “night person” isn’t enough because that only determines when you have your most energy. But what KIND of energy? Perhaps you are more energetic when you are working on the practical, so you think that just because you get your greatest energy at night you are a night person. This is not necessarily so! Suppose your creative side is NEVER the most energetic part of you, but is strongest in the morning. Then you are a Practical night person and a Creative morning person.

Your Creative Time might be any span of hours in the day. Or, it might even be more than one time. For example, you might be most inspired from mid-morning until noon and again from mid-afternoon to dusk. Everyone is a bit different. The key is to find your Creative Time and then adjust your daily schedule to fit it. It is important to remember to avoid guilt feelings while trying to determine your Creative Time. To do this, don’t just focus on when you are going to try writing, but make sure to also schedule other time to concentrate on chores. This way your “reading” of the level of your creativity will not be tainted by negative feelings of guilt, and you should arrive at more accurate appraisals.

After a week or so of trying different combinations, you should be able to determine the best creative and most practical times of the day. From that point forward, you will almost certainly find inspiration is present more than it is absent, and writing becomes far more joyful a process and less like work.

But there is a little bit more… Our lives are not just creative or practical. In fact, there are four principal emotionally driven aspects to our days: Creative, Practical, Reflective, and Social.

We need our Reflective time to be alone, to mull the events of our life over our minds eye, to let our thoughts wander where they will: to daydream. We need our Social time to recharge our batteries in the company of others, to express ourselves to our friends, to de-focus from our own subjective view by standing in the shoes of those around us.

I’ve found for myself that Saturday is a Social day for me, and that Sunday a Reflective day. I don’t do much of either on the weekdays at all. Whether this is nurture, nature, or something else altogether I can’t say, and to be truthful, it doesn’t really matter. What matters is that I have come to recognize it.

When is your Reflective time? Do you have some every day, just on weekdays, only on weekends, or some combination of these? How about your Social time? Do you ever feel guilty wanting to be alone? Do you ever feel deprived because you ARE alone? Part of these feelings may come from trying to do each of these activities in times that (for your) are actually geared toward the other.

Once you have mapped our your Creative, Practical, Reflective, and Social cycles, you’ll find that you get so much more accomplished, and with so much more fulfillment. All four aspects of your life will improve, and the improvement in each will remove emotional burdens and therefore increase the energy in each of the other three!

In short, you can be in phase with your emotional cycles, or out of phase. The more you schedule your activities to match the flow of your feelings, the more your life experience will buoy itself higher and higher with less and less effort. And best of all, the more inspiration you will find when you sit in your tweed jacket and reach for the keyboard.

“Writing Remakes” – Story Structure Part 8 (video)

In this episode we look at the major problem writers encounter when creating remakes of movies: they update the subject matter well enough but unintentionally break the structure at the same time. Learn how to identify this kind of problem and how to alter structure for a remake without undermining the integrity of the underlying dramatics.

Link to the video:

http://storymindguru.com/dramatica-unplugged/8%20Writing%20Remakes.htm

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