Dramatica for Structural vs. Intuitive Writers

There are structuralist writers and intuitive writers. The Dramatica software can be used by both, but in a completely different way.

The software almost insists that you storyform first, then encode. This is fine for a structuralist who wants to draft the blueprints before raising the building. But, it works against the intuitive writer who wants to mold a lump of clay into a meaningful form.

If you are an intuitive writer, encode FIRST and then storyform.

Here’s how to do it:

Open Dramatica with a new file and go directly to the Story Points Window (available through the main Dramatica Desktop) The Story Points Window provides a tabular list of all the story points Dramatica “tracks.”

Even without storyforming, these story points provide a rather complete shopping list of the key dramatic elements of any fully developed story.

Scroll down the list and you’ll notice the story points are grouped into categories like “Main Character,” or “Central Plot Points,” for example.

As an intuitive writer, select the category that is most meaningful to you. Scan through the list of story points in that category and pick the one that is most important or meaningful to you. It might be the Main Character’s Critical Flaw or the Story Goal, for example. (Don’t use the Plot Type Order areas though. In another post, I’ll describe how writers who want to develop the plot progression might first approach the software).

By double clicking on the empty column on the far right of the window, you will bring up a screen where you can describe each story point. So, if we double clicked on Story Goal, we see a question at the top asking us to “Illustrate how the central “objective” of the Objective Story (Goal) concerns an unchosen item {an unchosen item}. You can pretty much ignore that or any of the other questions at the top of a story point description window.

Instead, just describe how you see your story’s Goal. “My story is about a guy who wants to be President.”

Go through the entire list of story points, filling in any of them with the subject matter you want to explore in your story. If you don’t know what to put in for a particular story point, leave it blank for now. When you have gone through all story points once, go back and re-consider the blank ones. You may be surprised to find that by virtue of the process of answering the story points you could, you may have already generated ideas you can now enter in the ones you left blank before. Just going through the list helps you marshal your thoughts!

When you have filled in every story point that brought something to mind, read over the whole list. See what you have had to say about your story. See if it feels like what you had in mind, or perhaps even brings the overall big picture into greater clarity than ever. In fact, you may even find that by taking the wider, all-encompassing view, you are now ready to fill in a few more story point descriptions!

When you are finally finished, even if some story points are left blank, you could probably sit down and start writing a fairly complete story. Still, there would be some holes, and it is also likely there would be some story points that really didn’t seem to work with some of the others. That is why it is NOW time to storyform!

What we want to do is to “find” the structure that most closely describes what we have written, then clarify or fine-tune our encoding to become more structurally sound. To do this, open up the Dramatica Query System (also available from the main Dramatica desktop).

At the top left of the Query System Window is a little pop-up menu that shows the word “Home.” When you click on the menu, a list of different question paths appears. Go down a little more than halfway into the list and select an item called “Storyforming—Complete.” This will bring up a list of all the storyforming questions the software has to offer.

Skim over the list to see what questions it has to offer. Then, zero in on the one question that overall it the single most important story point to you, passionately. You see, Dramatica has no preference among story points – any one is just as important as any other. But as an intuitive writer, there are going to be certain aspects of your story’s structure that are vastly more interesting or crucial to your message.

So, pick the most important story point to you, then open its question window by selecting it from the list. Now you’ll notice there is a row of “HelpView” buttons running from left to right across the middle of each question screen. One near the middle is labeled “Storytelling.” If you click that button, then the encoding you already did for that story point in the Story Points Window will show up in the bottom half of the question window.

If we opened Story Goal as the most important story point then, as described in our earlier example, our words, “My story is about a guy who wants to be President.” will show up. To find the structure closest to that story point, we look at the list of available structural choices.

If Story Goal was the first story point we decided to structure, then we would have 16 different descriptive words from which to choose. Among these would be the words, “Obtaining” and “Being.” By referring to the storytelling (encoding) we already wrote, we may decide that our story is about a guy who wants to Obtain the office of president, or alternatively it might be about a guy who wants to Be presidential.

Do you remember the story “Dave” about a man asked to impersonate an ailing president? In that case, the Goal is not Obtaining, but Being. By thinking about the implications of each choice, we are forced to refine what we had in mind, to find the structure closest to our nebulous intent.

We continue to answer questions in the Storyforming Complete list in the order of next greatest importance. Eventually (due to Dramatica’s Story Engine) we may encounter a question for which all the available word choices don’t seem to fit. This is an indication that our storytelling has structural inconsistencies. In other words, structurally, some of what we wanted to talk about in our story doesn’t fit in dramatically with other areas.

If you want to strengthen your structure, then you simply choose the word that is most acceptable and then adjust your storytelling on that point to match that choice. Because you started with the story points that were most important to you, by the time you reach a question with choices that don’t match, it will probably be so far down your list of importance that you don’t mind adjusting the storytelling.

But, if you are really in love with that particular storytelling item, you can simply ignore the structure and go with what excites you as an intuitive writer. An audience is not looking for a perfect structure – they are looking for a fulfilling story experience. Therefore, they are likely to overlook a few inconsistencies if the storytelling is moving. A truly poor structure, however, can distract the audience from that experience.

Some story points are more impactful to the overall meaning of the story. And, some storytelling that is not consistent may still be close, or may be really off the mark. The key is to recognize the relative value of accuracy vs. passion when the two diverge. And that is a judgment call every author must make for himself or herself.

Either way, you will eventually reach a complete storyform structure which will then “predict” the kind of subject matter which ought to occur in every story point including the story points for which had not done any storytelling. You can then use this structural guideline to fill in the missing storytelling. You can do this by returning to the Story Points Window and reviewing what you had previously written, the structural items which the storyform has now associated with that storytelling, and the structural items suggested for the story points you haven’t yet storytold. With all this information on which to draw, it should help you find the inspiration you need to fill in those remaining story points.

Finally, as an intuitive writer you won’t likely want to use the storyform, or even your own story encoding as a guideline for writing. Rather, you’ll probably want to use that information to understand your story, then put it aside and write from the heart, now that you have that sound background.

When you have completed a draft, it will likely have drifted again from a sound structure. You won’t have noticed it while writing, but as your point of view and interests shifted during the writing process you may have gotten a bit off course.

To bring things back into structural focus, return to the software and go through the process again, but this time with a brand new file from scratch. Instead of describing what you intend to do, this time you need to analyze what you have already done.

Fill in the storytelling you actually did, then answer the storyforming questions based on what you actually wrote. Again, you may find inconsistencies in which case you are faced with the same choice: adjust the storytelling or keep it with the awareness it isn’t structurally on the mark.

Repeat this process as many times as necessary to hone your story into just the structurally sound, passionately strong work you wanted it to be.

The Creative Way to Use Dramatica

Many people get discouraged when they first try to create a story structure in Dramatica. This is because the software directs you to work out your structure first, THEN develop it into a real story. But there is a MUCH easier way….

Located on the Main Dramatica Desktop is a button labeled, “Query System.” When you press it, you’ll be taken to a screen that presents several different buttons, each of which is labeled as a different aspect of the story creation process, such as Character Storyforming or Plot Storyweaving. When you push one, you are taken to a list of story questions pertinent to the aspect you selected. IGNORE THE BUTTONS!!!

Instead, go to the top left portion of the screen and use the pull-down menu to see a list of many other question lists. One of them, near the bottom, is called All Storytelling. Select this choice from the menu. (Don’t select the All StoryFORMING item by mistake!)

The All Storytelling choice brings up a list of every storytelling question available in the Dramatica software.

Now, why did you do this? Well, if you approach Dramatica from any of the normal, easily accessible areas, you are presented with STRUCTURAL questions that you MUST answer before doing any storytelling at all. The StoryFORMING structural questions are multiple choice, and ask you such things as: “Which of the following items best describes your story’s Goal: Obtaining, Becoming, Understanding…”

Answering a question like that before you even know what your story is about is next to impossible! But by going to the All StoryTELLING list first instead, you will be presented with questions such as, “Describe your story’s Goal.” You don’t have any choices to make, just a space to fill in whatever thoughts you may have about your Goal. So, you might enter for example, “My Story’s Goal is that Joe wants to be president.”

Jump around in the All Storytelling list by clicking on any question you feel like answering, in any order you like. Even without Dramatica’s Story Engine feeding you choices, you’ll find the list of questions so complete and cogent that your story almost develops itself. Well, not really, but it sure makes you think and fill in gaps.

NOW… Once you have answered all the questions you care to, THEN you go to the All StoryFORMING list by selecting it from the pull-down menu. Select a question you have already answered in storyTELLING and click on the Storytelling HelpView button (in the middle of the screen between the top box and the bottom box) and the storytelling you did will show up in the bottom box!

You can now refer to your original concepts when making the structural choice in storyFORMING. In our example, suppose you go to the Goal Storyforming question. When you click on the Storytelling HelpView button, your words, “My Story’s Goal is that Joe wants to be president,” appear in the bottom box so you can refer to them while you are making your choice (Obtaining, Becoming, Understanding) in the top area.

In our example, you would look over the list of choices and ask yourself such questions as, “Does Joe want to OBTAIN the office of the presidency or BECOME presidential?” By having your own words in front of you, the storyFORMING choices now help you focus your intent, rather than making you work with logistic choices far removed from the creative process.

If you choose Obtaining, the story will be about trying to rise through the party, win the nomination, and then the election. If you choose Becoming, the story will be about trying to grow to become presidential (as in the movie “Dave”).

For help in making your choices, use the HelpView buttons. To do this, first select an item you think best sums up what you have written. Then, click on the Definition, Context, and Stories HelpView buttons to see if that choice matches. If it is perfect, go on to the next question. If not, try other choices until you find the one that best fits the description you wrote.

It is important to begin your Storyforming with the questions that are most important to you. This is because Dramatica’s Story Engine will be working in the background, limiting future choices to be compatible with what you have already chosen. So, by starting with the story points you are most “married” to, you will get all of the key elements into your story that you wanted before you run into dramatic inconsistencies.

What’s a dramatic inconsistency? Well, authors usually come to a story with lots of little pieces that deal with the same subject matter. But just because they all have to do with the same topic doesn’t mean they all fit in the same story! The process of structuring a story is working out which pieces fit together and which need to be discarded.

As you work down the list of questions you filled in for Storytelling, you may eventually find that none of the Storyforming choices remaining come close to describing your words. In that case, you have two options:

Change your words.

Ignore the dramatic inconsistency.

If the Storytelling you did is not really important to you, then you’ll want to return to the Storytelling question list and revise your words to match one of the available dramatic choices. But if your Storytelling IS important, then you may decide to ignore the dramatic inconsistency and leave it in anyway.

Why would you want to create a story with flawed dramatics? Stories are half Structure (meaning) and half Storytelling (audience experience). Sometimes a poor song well played sounds better than a great song poorly played. Only you can determine if the inconsistency is so dramatically wrenching as to derail the audience, or if the Storytelling is so compelling that its power far outweighs a minor dramatic flaw.

Finally, even when you have answered the Storyforming choices for all the Storytelling questions you described, you may still not have arrived at a single Storyform. At this point, you also have two options:

Go back to the Storytelling questions and describe more of them, inspired by what you have now developed for your story

Stay in the Storyforming questions and answer them directly without doing any Storytelling for them first.

In the first case, you should go to the next most important question and work down you list of priorities. Then, go back to Storyforming and proceed as before. Do this as many times as you need in order to finally arrive at a single Storyform structure.

In the second case, go to the most important unanswered Storyforming question remaining and make your choice. Work down your list of Storyforming questions until you arrive at a single Storyform.

(Keep in mind that you can make multiple selections on some items and let Dramatica’s Story Engine narrow those choices, perhaps even pick a single item, based on your continuing input with other questions.)

Eventually, you will have arrived at a single Storyform. At this point, there will be many Story Points determined by Dramatica’s Story Engine which do not yet have any Storytelling. Now it is time to return to the Storytelling areas of the software and fill them in, based on what you have already written.

(It should be noted that you can also fill in your Storytelling choices in the Story Points window as well as in the All Storytelling question list.)

In summary, rather than first approaching a sterile process of story structuring that leaves you cold, uninspired, and frustrated, you can go first to storytelling and express all of your interests and passions, letting them form the basis for your story structuring later. This works even better if you have already jotted down some notes or written a treatment or even a first draft.

A New Approach to Genre

 A Writer Asks:

Can you say a few words about how Dramatica deals with Genre?

I Reply…

To begin with, Dramatica divides the substance of “Story” into two parst: Story Structure, and Story Telling. When you read a story or see it in a theater as a movie, play, or even hear one as a song ballad, you are only seeing the Storytelling. You never see the Structure directly; it is only inferred.

An audience infers Structure through the dynamic arrangement of symbols with which they are bombarded by an author. By sensing the patterns these symbols create, meaning is found behind them. This meaning represents logical arrangements, and emotional pathways. It is these arrangements and pathways that determine the nature of Characters, Plot, Theme, and Genre.

So, each of these four aspects of story – Characters, Plot, Theme, and Genre, has an element of Story Structure and an element of Storytelling. As a result, one cannot fully describe or define any of the four without considering both elements. Still, the balance between the two elements is often not equal. Some Genres will be almost exclusively Structure, while others are almost completely Storytelling. For example, and Action movie is defined mostly by Structure, for it describes something of the nature of what is going on. In contrast, a Western is almost all Storytelling, for it is defined by where the story takes place, not what goes on or what it means.

Looking at other Genres like Situation Comedy, Love Story, Romance, Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror (to name a few) we can sense that the balance between Structure and Storytelling is a bit different in each.

There is one common perspective, however, in which we can evaluate and compare Genres on an even platform. And that is by dividing the Storytelling element into four categories: Information, Entertainment, Comedy, and Drama. The Structure can also be divided into four categories: Universe (situation), Physics (action or activity), Mind (attitude), and Psychology (manner of thinking).

When we place the four Structural categories along one side of a table and the four categories of Storytelling along another, we create a grid in which we can see how they combine to produce the various flavors of Genres. For example, the intersection of Universe (situation) and Comedy gives us the “Situation Comedy”, where as the intersection of Physics (action or activity) and Comedy give us the Physical Comedy (of which slapstick and the Three Stooges are examples.)

Now, as you know from other Dramatica theory, each of the four items, Universe, Physics, Mind, and Psychology represents a different “Class” of problem that will occur in a story. After all, Universe is a fixed external state, Physics is an external process, Mind is an internal state, Psychology and internal process. And, clearly, any problem we might identify in a story will be seen as either an internal or external state or process.

Now, to provide perspective on each Class in a story, we couple each one with a different point of view. The four points of view are Main Character, Obstacle Character, Objective Story , and Subjective Story. I won’t go into definitions for these here, as it is beyond the scope of our immediate interests. Suffice it to say, that if a Main Character is a Physics character, he or she will remain a physics character throughout the story.

Keeping that in mind, we can look back to the Genre Table and see that if a Main Character is in Physics, he or she still has a run of the Genre Table from Information through Drama, down the entire row. Now, we get into the explanation about mixing it up.

The easiest way to assign positions on the Genre Table is simple to make sure that Main Character, Obstacle, Objective Story, and Subjective Story each fall in their own Class. Then, position them all in the same row so that they all fall into Comedy, or all fall into Drama. In this way, your story will have good breadth (because all four Classes are represented) but will have very little depth, because it is all Comedy, or all Drama.

The first way to mix it up, is to move the Structural aspects of Main Character, Obstacle, etc., each into a different row, so that your Main Character is Comedic, but your Objective Story is Dramatic (Like many Marx Brothers movies). In this way, you increase your depth, and can create a number of interesting combinations, such as having Both Main and Obstacle Comedic, but the Objective Story Entertaining, and the Subjective Story Dramatic.

So far, we have loosened things up a bit, but still not enough. The next step is to realize that the four Structural aspects don’t have to stay in the same Storytelling category (row) for the entire story. For example, a Main Character might begin in Entertainment, but end up in Drama by the end of the story. In fact, any of the four aspects might “move” through the table any number of times over the course of the story, touching on some or all of the rows.

The key is that no aspect can move to another row without passing through the ones in between. Referring to the grid (on page 152 of the 3rd edition of the theory book, and also available online) a Main Character might start at Entertainment and end up in Drama, but not unless he or she has passed through Comedy first.

In fact, the character could also arrive at Drama, by passing through Information instead, even though this would take them off the bottom of the Table and back up to the top (as published in the book). The reason is, that the Table is really more like a cylinder – the cardboard tube in a roll of paper towels. The Table really wraps around, connecting the top to the bottom; Information to Entertainment.

This represents the flow of human emotions. We can all get to any emotion, but just as with the Seven Stages of Grief, or Freud’s Psycho-Sexual Stages, you can’t skip the in-between. If you do this, the audience will not be able to follow the story emotionally, and you will lose them – pull them out of the experience. They will suddenly become aware they are an audience to a story, and will examine what happens dispassionately.

This was the mistake made by the Bruce Willis movie, “Hudson Hawk”. They wanted to mix it up (comedy, thriller, action movie, musical!) but rather than wrapping around the Table, they jumped over in-between and lost the audience. If you haven’t seen it, rent the video just to see what I mean.

Still, (and finally), there is one way to violate this rule to your advantage. If you skip a step, your audience will look to see if it is just a fork in the road. If it is, then you will effectively be telling your audience to “be of two minds” about what is happening. In other words, you are telling them to have mixed emotions about what they see.

The way to make this work, is to make one and ONLY one skip-over, then start TWO lines of emotional presentation for the same throughline. For example, you might have the Objective Story be Informational, then jump to Comedy, but also continue the Informational line. The audience is now split in their emotional assessment of the Objective Story, and will experience mixed emotions until you bring both lines back to the same row, perhaps Drama, or any one you choose. When the flow of each of the split lines converges back to the same Storytelling aspect, the audience will wait one more scene to see if they are just crossing paths or really combining.

To cross paths, each would next jump to different places, to combine, on the next move, they would move to the same place again.

When you consider the four aspects of Structure, the four aspects of Storytelling, the ability to place different Classes in different Storytelling aspects (Comedy, Drama, etc.), the ability to move around the Table with each Class independently, and the ability to split and recombine any or all of the Classes pathways, you end up with a highly complex, highly flexible, yet absolutely predictable method of creating the “Genre feel” of a story, all from one simple little 4×4 table.

“Premise” Leads to Lack of Conflict

Many authors have been taught that a meaningful story must have a premise in the form of “Some human quality leads (or does not lead) to a particular inevitable conclusion.” Such a premise might be “Greed (human quality) leads to Self destruction (inevitable conclusion).”

One problem with the premise concept is that it contains no built-in conflict. Rather, it simply presents a starting point, an ending point, and a non-specific path that might be anything at all.

Adding conflict to your premise can provide a driving force to help move your theme through the “leads to” to the conclusion. To add conflict to a premise, consider the human quality stated in the beginning of the premise. In our example, this was “greed.” Next, determine the “opposite” of greed, which might be “generosity.” Now, restate the beginning of your premise as “Greed vs. Generosity.”

We have now created a thematic conflict between two opposing human qualities, rather than simply exploring the one. But, of course, if we left things in this condition the overall premise would not read very well: “Greed vs. Generosity leads to Self Destruction.”

Since we are now examining the relative value of two alternative thematic approaches to life, we must also provide a judgment as to the outcome of each approach. So, we might say that “When Greed vs. Generosity, Greed will result in Self Destruction while Generosity leads to Success.” Now we have a premise full of potential conflict and a comparative conclusion that brings the audience to think, rather than to simply accept the inevitable.

Of course, Generosity might also lead to Self Destruction in a particular story, illustrating that sometimes there is no way out. Or, Generosity might lead to Love, or Wealth, putting a different spin on the “proof.” It also might be shown that Greed leads to the favorable conclusion, while Generosity is Self Destructive. (For an example of this kind of approach, even though it deals with other thematic issues, view Woody Allen’s “Crimes and Misdemeanors.”)

There is much more that can be done with a premise to not only provide conflict, but create a complete thematic argument that works with an audience’s heart, rather than through its intellect.

I’ll examine these and other thematic issues in future postings.

As a side note, the Dramatica Pro software fully supports thematic conflict, argument, and emotional conclusion through a number of clever tools designed to spark your creativity and help you build a road map for your theme.

Theme: An Emotional Argument

It is one thing to tell your audience, “Greed leads to self-destruction.” It is another thing to prove it! Using a premise as the basis for your theme provides you with clear idea of what you hope to say, but it provides precious little guidance in how to say it.

Dramatica focuses on the Emotional Argument as the way to prove your point without resorting to cut-and-dried, ham-handed, generalizations and platitudes. Here’s how it works:

“Greed,” in our example premise, does not really stand alone, but has a counter-point of “Generosity.” Although the focus of our story will be on Greed, by also showing the contrasting impact of Generosity, we create a thematic conflict pitting point against counter-point.

In our story, act by act, we need to explore both point and counterpoint several times to see the relative worth of each. BUT, we should never compare both DIRECTLY. Rather, the thematic point should be explored on several occasions to see how it fares. Interwoven in other scenes or moments, the counterpoint needs to be separately explored to see how it fares on its own. As the story progresses, the audience will begin to tally-up the independent value of each, averaging its benefits with its drawbacks. By the end of the story, when all examples of the worth of both point and counter-point have been presented, the audience will arrive at an emotional conclusion that one is better than the other.

For example, Greed may seem to have a greatly negative impact in its first appearance, but slightly positive results in its second. A third appearance might see it as being neutral. Overall, the average of all three appearances rates it as slightly negative.

In contrast, Generosity might appear ALSO greatly negative at first, then highly positive, then slightly positive. In the end, it averages out as slightly positive. The conclusion for the audience is that Greed is somewhat worse than Generosity.

Emotions don’t see things as black and white. By avoiding the simple blanket statement made by a premise and “arguing” the relative worth of point and counter-point over the course of your story, you will create an “emotional argument” which will sway your audience to your point of view, rather than trying to hit it over the head.

Dramatica’s Plot Sequence Report – Deep Theory

  A Writer Asks:

1) In the plot sequence report, the variations by which the signposts are
explored are shifted to a different domain. Is the same true for the
variations (theme/sequences) explored in the journeys?

The quick answer is:

Don’t use the plot sequence report for Signposts and Journeys!

In fact, the plot sequence report does not deal with Signposts but with the order of the Types in sequence. Signposts are part of a Signpost/Journey pair, which constitutes a single “act” in any given throughline. Types, in contrast, are structural appreciations of order in which subjects are explored in the story.

So, Signposts must contain the fruit of the previous Journey (if any) and the seeds of the one to come, just as the Journey must reflect the roots of the earlier Signpost and the flowers of the coming one as well.

In the plot sequence report, the Types are seen as existing without journeys, from a purely structural point of view. This is what a story looks like after it is told, when all the pieces are in place and you can chart the order in which subjects were explored.

In that context, each Type seems to be explored by a different quad of Variations. But in Signposts and Journeys, the association with Variations does not hold up. The Variations listed for a given Type in the plot sequence report would only hold true at the exact center of your exploration of a signpost, halfway from one journey to the next.

In short, Signposts are not like Types. Signposts are ALWAYS morphing or evolving out of one Journey and into the next. Look at them like “bell curves” or the top of a hill on a roller coaster. The Signpost is only a pure Type at the very top – just one tiny point in time in your story. On either side, it is part Journey and therefore the Variations for that Type don’t apply.

Now, there IS one context in which you can loosely apply the Variations from plot sequence to signposts. As has been noted before, the AMOUNT of time you spend exploring Signposts relative to Journeys is completely up to your storytelling choices. So, in some stories you might just touch on a signpost in a single line of dialog and then spend the rest of the act in the journey, moving gradually to the next momentary signpost. Similarly, in other stories you might spend nearly the whole act exploring the signpost, then have only a very brief journey to the next signpost. In this kind of story you can loosely apply the Type Variations from the plot sequence report since time is kind of frozen by taking that single moment of the signpost and extending it through storytelling.

In general, however, use the plot sequence report to get a feel for the thematic progress of your story in relationship to the structure of the plot, but avoid using that as a template for the Signposts and Journeys.

(As a side note, it was argued before DPro 3.0 that perhaps the plot sequence report should be eliminated since it might lead to this exact kind of confusion. But, a lot of people like the structural overview of their story it provides, so we kept it in. The plot sequence report should only be used for your story’s structure, Signposts and Journeys should only be used for your storytelling.)

One other note: Journeys don’t have any Variations at all because they are constantly in motion. In fact, it is the flow of a Journey itself that generates Variations (which gives us a feel for how plot works to generate theme).

The Writer Also Asks:

2) If so, are they shifted to the same domain?

See above.

3) And what’s the theory behind the shift? Why is that particular
domain/variation quad chosen?

There is a simple answer and a complex answer. The simple answer is first:

The structure as seen in the chart is “at rest”. It contains no dramatic tension. When you answer the eight essential questions and the four structural choices (or any other combination of choices that arrives at a single storyform) you are not just picking points on the structure, but priming the story engine.

After your last choice, the engine has all the information it needs to run. The engine then twists and turns the structure like a Rubik’s Cube on steroids. All of the pieces get mixed up in ways that are directly the result of your choices. But because the choices influence each other at different levels and in different ways, the overall arrangement of items to one another (such as Types to Variations) is not consistent under all conditions (with all choices).

The complex answer is REALLY complex. It gets into the actual mechanism of the engine that applies the twists and turns to the structure as a result of your storyforming choices.

I’ll give you a brief overview, then point you to some pages on my web site which go into more detail if you want it.

Different choice you make in storyforming have different kinds of effects on the twisting and turning of the model. Some choice determine whether specific quads will be rotated in position (like turning a dial) to the right or the left one item (one notch). Others determine if items in a quad will be “flipped” in position, such as “logic” and “feeling” exchanging places. Other choices determine if the quads below an item will be carried with it when flipping or rotating or will be left behind in their original places while the item above flips or rotates in its own quad.

In fact, the effect of some choices is so complex that it doesn’t determine anything directly about the structure, but instead changes the effect of other choices! So, certain questions may determine if another question will cause a flip or a rotate.

Taken all together, the story engine is an elegant representation of the Dramatica theory. But even so, it is not representative of the WHOLE theory.

For example, part of the process of “winding up” the structure to create dramatic tension by answering questions involves the following:

There are actually TWO wind ups. One winds up around the Objective Story Problem Element, like a clock spring (using the kinds of flips, rotates, and “carrying the children” as explained above.) The other winds up around the Main Character Problem Element.

One of the wind ups is applied FIRST to the “at rest” structure, the other is applied SECOND. Which is first is determined by certain storyforming choices. The first wind up is closest to an “at rest” structure. The second is actually winding up a structure which is already partially wound up by the first. So, the second one is less close to “reality” than the first. You can see that this has an impact as to whether or not the audience will feel like the Main Character OUGHT to change or to remain steadfast, regardless of what he or she actually does.

The way the software is limited compared to the theory in this example is as follows:

The only two Domains which can wind up are the Main Character and the Objective Story. This is a Western Cultural favorite – so prevalent in fact that almost all stories told in Western culture use this approach. But there is no reason in theory as to why the Obstacle Character and Subjective Story might be the ones to wind, or even the Main Character and the Obstacle Character.

Clearly this would create a completely different feel for a story’s dynamics, since the order in which the items in the structure are explored and also the order in which they come into conjunction is quite different. But, this was just too much to incorporate in the original engine.

Now, one might think that the engine is quite large in the software because of all this complexity. But, as with a Rubik’s cube (which has only 27 pieces but creates 40,000,000,000,000,000 combinations – or thereabouts according to the label) the story engine creates all 32768 storyforms with only 28K of inter-related algorithms.

And, just as with the cube, it is hard to see at a glance at a finished pattern what twists and turns when into making it.

Someday, perhaps, other aspects of the theory will be incorporated into the software. For now, it is important to know that the software is right about 90% of the time – or put more accurately, the software is right for 90% of the stories you are likely to tell. But, if you have a story to tell that is running up against the software, ask yourself whether you are telling a story that is close enough to Western Cultural norms so that you should alter your story to match the storyform, or if you are telling a story so far from Western norms that perhaps you need to rely more on the theory than the software.

Well, that’s enough of the complex explanation. If you REALLY want more, visit the Mental Relativity Web Site.

There you will find the first few chapter of a book I am writing on the math behind the theory. The deepest exploration into these concepts in terms of the actual math can be found at:

http://storymind.com/mental_relativity/mrmath2.htm

Good luck!

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.