Selecting Your Story’s Dividends

Dividends are benefits accrued on the way to the Goal.  Goal, Requirements, Consequences, and Forewarnings are all Driver Appreciations in Plot. Dividends are the first of the Passenger Appreciations. As such, we see it used in storytelling more as a modifier than a subject unto itself. Still, since authors may choose to emphasize whatever they wish, Dividends may be lifted up to the forefront in a particular story and take on a significance far beyond their structural weight.

No matter what emphasis Dividends are given in your story, they are still modifiers of the Goal. As such, when selecting the Type of Dividends for your story, consider how well your choice will dovetail with your Goal. Sometimes Dividends are very close in nature to the Goal, almost as natural results of getting closer to the Goal. Other times Dividends may be quite different in nature than the Goal, and are simply positive items or experiences that cross the characters’ paths during the quest.

As with the Driver Appreciations, this choice is not arbitrary. The dynamics that determine it, however, are so many and varied that only a software system can calculate it. Still, when one has answered the essential questions, it is likely one’s writing instincts have become so fine-tuned for a story as to sense which kinds of Dividends will seem appropriate to the Goal under those particular dynamic conditions.

From the Dramatica Theory Book

Selecting Your Story’s Forewarnings

Forewarnings appear as a signal that the Consequences are imminent. At first, one might suspect that for a particular Type of Consequences, a certain Type of Forewarnings will always be the most appropriate. Certainly, there are relationships between Forewarnings and Consequences that are so widespread in our culture that they have almost become story law. But in fact, the relationship between Forewarnings and Consequences is just as flexible as that between Requirements and Goal.

Can the Forewarnings be anything at all then? No, and to see why we need look no further than the fact that Consequences and Forewarnings are both Types. They are never Variations, or Elements, or Classes. But, within the realm of Types, which one will be the appropriate Forewarnings for particular Consequences depends upon the impact of other appreciations.

When selecting the Type of Forewarning for your story, think of this appreciation both by itself and also in conjunction with the Consequences. By itself, examine the Types to see which one feels like the area from which you want tension, fear, or stress to flow for your audience and/or characters. Then, in conjunction with the Consequences, determine if you see a way in which this Type of Forewarning might be the harbinger that will herald the imminent approach of the Consequences. If it all fits, use it. If not, you may need to rethink either your selection for Forewarnings or your choice for Consequences.

From the Dramatica Theory Book

Selecting Your Story’s Consequences

Consequences are dependent upon the Goal, though other appreciations may change the nature of that dependency. Consequences may be expressed as what will happen if the Goal is not achieved or they may be what is already being suffered and will continue if the Goal is not achieved. You should select the Type that best describes your story’s down-side risk.

One of the eight essential questions asks if the direction of your story is Start or Stop. A Start story is one in which the audience will see the Consequences as occurring only if the Goal is not achieved. In a Stop story, the audience will see the Consequences already in place, and if the Goal is not achieved the Consequences will remain.

Choosing the Type of Consequence does not determine Start or Stop, and neither does choosing Start or Stop determine the Type of Consequence. How the Consequence will come into play, however, is a Start/Stop issue. Since that dynamic affects the overall feel of a story, it is often best to make this dynamic decision of Start or Stop before attempting the structural one of selecting the Consequence Type.

From the Dramatica Theory Book

Selecting Your Story’s Requirements

Requirements are the essential steps or circumstances which must be met in order to reach the story’s Goal. If we were to select a story’s Requirements before any other appreciation, it would simply be a decision about the kinds of activities or endeavors we want to concentrate on as the central effort of our story. If we have already selected our story’s Goal, however, much has already been determined that may limit which Types are appropriate to support that Goal.

Although the model of dramatic relationships implemented in the Dramatica software can determine which are the best candidates to be chosen for a given appreciation, the ultimate decision must rest with the author. “Trust your feelings, Luke,” says Obi Wan to young Skywalker. When selecting appreciations that advice is just as appropriate.

From the Dramatica Theory Book

Selecting Your Story’s Goal

A story’s Goal is most often found in the Objective Domain for stories written in our culture. Aside from that bias, the story Goal might just as properly be found in any of the four Domains. As we now consider how to select the Goal for our story, we need to know a little bit more about what a Goal really does for an audience, and what kinds of control over our audience we can exercise simply by choosing where we place the Goal.

An audience sees a story’s Goal as being the central objective of the story. As such, it will be of the same nature as the Concern of one of the four Domains. Which one depends upon which throughline an author wants to emphasize in his storytelling. For example, suppose your Main Character and his experiences are the most important thing to you, the author. Then you will most likely want to make the Main Character’s Concern your story Goal as well. On the other hand, if your story is about a problem that is affecting everyone, you will probably want to make the Objective Story Domain Concern your story Goal.

Each throughline will have its own Concern. When the audience considers each throughline separately, it will focus on that Concern as being the principal objective from that point of view. When the audience considers the story as a whole, however, it will get a feel for which throughline is most emphasized by the author’s storytelling, and will see that throughline’s Concern as the overall story Goal.

Since emphasis is a gray-scale kind of process, the story Goal may appear to be a highly focused issue in some stories and of lesser concern in others. In fact, all four throughlines might be equally emphasized, which would result in an audience being unable to easily answer the question, what was this story about? Just because no overall Goal is identifiable does not mean the plot necessarily has a hole. It might mean that the issues explored in the story are more evenly considered in a holistic sense, and the story is simply not as Goal-oriented. In contrast, the Concern of each Domain must appear clearly in a complete story, for Concerns are purely structural appreciations which are developed through storytelling, but not dependent upon it.

When selecting a Goal, some authors prefer to first select the Concerns for each Domain. In this way, all of the potential objectives of the story have been pre-determined and the author then simply needs to choose which one to emphasize. Other authors prefer not to choose the Goal at all, since it is not truly an essential part of a story’s structure. Instead, they select their Concerns and then let the muse guide them in how much they emphasize one throughline over another. In this way, the Goal will emerge all by itself in a much more organic way. Still, other authors like to select the Goal before any of the Concerns. In this case, they may not even know which Domain the Goal will ultimately be a part of. For this kind of author, the principal question they wish to answer is, what is my story about? By approaching the selection of your story Goal from one of these three directions, you can begin to create a storyform that reflects your personal interests in telling this particular story.

There are four different Classes from which to choose our Goal. Each Class has four unique Types. In a practical sense, the first question we might ask ourselves is whether we want the Goal of our story to be something physical or something mental. In making this decision we are able to limit our available choices to Universe/Physics (physical goals) or Mind/Psychology (mental goals). Instantly we have cut the sixteen possible Goals down to only eight.

Next we can look at the names of the Types themselves. In Universe: Past, Progress, Present, and Future. In Physics: Understanding, Doing, Learning, and Obtaining. In Mind: Memory, Preconscious, Conscious, and Subconscious. In Psychology: Conceptualizing, Being, Conceiving, and Becoming. Some are easy to get a grip on; others seem more obscure. This is because our culture favors certain Types of issues and doesn’t pay as much attention to others. This is reflected in our language as well so that even though the words used to describe the Types are quite accurate, many of them require a bit more thought and even a definition before they become clear. (Refer to the appendices of this book for definitions of each).

Whether you have narrowed your potential selections to eight or just jump right in with the whole sixteen, choose the Type that best represents the kind of Goal you wish to focus on in your story.

From the Dramatica Theory Book

Who Are They and What Are They Doing?

When considering the Objective Story perspective, it is best to use the third person plural (“They”) voice to evaluate the Classes. They refers to the entire set of Objective Characters (protagonist, antagonist, sidekick, etc.) collectively.

  • If the Objective Story’s Domain is Universe (e.g. The Verdict, The Poseidon Adventure, or The Fugitive), consider asking: What is it like to be in their situation? What is their status? What condition are they in? Where are they going to be in the future? What’s so special about their past?
  • If the Objective Story’s Domain is Physics (e.g. Star Wars): What are they involved in? How do they get what they want? What must they learn to do the things they want to do? What does it mean to them to have (or lose) something?
  • If the Objective Story’s Domain is Mind (e.g. Hamlet or To Kill A Mockingbird): What are they afraid of? What is their opinion? How do they react to that? How do they feel about this or that? What is it that they remember about that night?
  • If the Objective Story’s Domain is Psychology (e.g. Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? or Four Weddings and a Funeral): Who are they really? How should they act? How can they become different people? Why are they so angry, or reserved, or whatever? How are they manipulating or being manipulated?

From the Dramatica Theory Book

Subjective Story: Who Are We and What Are We Doing?

When considering the Subjective Story perspective, it is best to use the first person plural (“We”) voice to evaluate the Classes. We refers to the Main and Obstacle Characters collectively.

  • If the Subjective Story’s Domain is Universe (e.g. The Ghost & Hamlet’s pact in Hamlet or Reggie & Marcus’ alliance in The Client), consider asking: What is it like to be in our situation? What is our status? What condition are we in? Where are we going to be in the future? What’s so special about our past?
  • If the Subjective Story’s Domain is Physics (e.g. George & Martha’s game in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?): What are we involved in? How do we get what we want? What must we learn to do the things we want to do? What does it mean to us to have (or lose) something?
  • If the Subjective Story’s Domain is Mind (e.g. Frank & Laura’s affair in The Verdict or Dr. Kimble & Sam Gerard’s relationship in The Fugitive): What are we afraid of? What is our opinion? How do we react to that? How do we feel about this or that? What is it that we remember about that night?
  • If the Subjective Story’s Domain is Psychology (e.g. Obi Wan & Luke’s relationship in Star Wars): Who are we really? How should we act? How can we become different people? Why are we so angry, or reserved, or whatever? How are we manipulating or being manipulated?

From the Dramatica Theory Book

Obstacle Character: Who Are You and What Are You Doing?

When considering the Obstacle Character’s perspective, it is best to use the second person singular (“You”) voice to evaluate the Classes. This is best imagined as if one is addressing the Obstacle Character directly, where “You” is referring to the Obstacle Character.

  • If the Obstacle Character’s Domain is Universe (e.g. Marley’s Ghost in A Christmas Carol), you might ask them: What is it like to be in your situation? What is your status? What condition are you in? Where are you going to be in the future? What’s so special about your past?
  • If the Obstacle Character’s Domain is Physics (e.g. Jim in The Glass Menagerie The Glass Menagerie or Booth in In The Line of Fire): What are you involved in? How do you get what you want? What must you learn to do the things you want to do? What does it mean to you to have (or lose) something?
  • If the Obstacle Character’s Domain is Mind (e.g. Obi Wan in Star Wars Star Wars or Martha in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?): What are you afraid of? What is your opinion? How do you react to that? How do you feel about this or that? What is it that you remember about that night?
  • If the Obstacle Character’s Domain is Psychology (e.g. Laura Fisher in The Verdict The Verdict or Sam Gerard in The Fugitive): Who are you really? How should you act? How can you become a different person? Why are you so angry, or reserved, or whatever? How are you manipulating or being manipulated?

From the Dramatica Theory Book

Main Character: Who am I, and what am I doing?

When looking from the Main Character’s perspective, use the first person singular (I) voice to evaluate the Classes.

  • If the Main Character’s Domain is Universe (e.g. Luke in Star Wars or George in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?), questions like the following would arise: What is it like to be in my situation? What is my status? What condition am I in? Where am I going to be in the future? What’s so special about my past?
  • If the Main Character’s Domain is Physics (e.g. Frank Galvin in The Verdict The Verdict or Dr. Richard Kimble in The Fugitive), questions like the following would be more appropriate: What am I involved in? How do I get what I want? What must I learn to do the things I want to do? What does it mean to me to have (or lose) something?
  • If the Main Character’s Domain is Mind (e.g. Scrooge in A Christmas Carol), you would consider questions such as the following: What am I afraid of? What is my opinion? How do I react to something? How do I feel about this or that? What is it that I remember about that night?
  • If the Main Character’s Domain is Psychology (e.g. Laura in The Glass Menagerie The Glass Menagerie or Frank in In The Line of Fire), the concerns would be more like: Who am I really? How should I act? How can I become a different person? Why am I so angry, or reserved, or whatever? How am I manipulating or being manipulated?

From the Dramatica Theory Book

Dramaticapedia – The Number 64

It has been suggested that the fact there are 64 dramatic Elements in the Dramatica Theory of Story is mighty suspicious.  After all, that’s a real convenient number if you are going to be creating a software program, such as Dramatica Pro.  Which naturally leads to the speculation that perhaps the Dramatica Theory is not so much about what’s really going on in story as it is about describing stories in terms of how software might best look at them.

Another unsettling fact is that you’ll find a lot of symmetry in Dramatica – pairs of things like Protagonist and Antagonist, quads of things like the four Domains: Objective Story, Subjective Story, Main Character and Obstacle Character, and so on.  Perhaps one of the most “disturbing” aspects of the theory is that everything is in even numbers – 2 Subjective Characters, 8 Archetypes, 4 Plot Signposts, etc. – Or, perhaps it just appears that way….

After all, there are 3 Plot Journeys that span the 4 Plot Signposts and give us the standard Three Act Structure.  But, you can also structure a story to emphasize the first Signpost, the three Journeys, and then the final Signpost, thereby creating the feeling of a 5 Part Plot Progression (handy for television programs and their commercial breaks).  In addition, you can clearly illustrate all four Signposts and all three Journeys in a throughline thereby creating 7 different dramatic movements along the way.

As a final example of odd numbers in Dramatica, there are four primary character functions: Protagonist, Antagonist, Main Character and Obstacle Character.  Protagonist and Antagonist fight over the goal, Main Character and Obstacle Character fight over moral values.  Often, stories will make the Protagonist the Main Character and the Antagonist the Obstacle Character so that only two players represent all four attributes between them.  In such a case, these two characters fight over the goal and also fight over moral values.  This can get pretty confusing, so often authors will split one of those character to create a “dramatic triangle” to make the two kinds of conflict easier to follow.  In such a case, you might have the Protagonist be the Main Character, the Antagonist fight with him (or her) over the goal and the Obstacle Character (often a “love interest”) fight with him or her over moral values.  Suddenly four attributes becomes three characters.

The point of all this is that you aren’t limited to exploring just even numbers or things in fours, eights, sixteens, or sixty-fours.  And yet, the Dramatica theory (and especially the Dramatica chart) does divide itself into these even number chunks based on multiples of four.  So why is that?!!!

Simple – because we all think in four dimensions: Mass, Energy, Space and Time.  There are no other dimensions we can directly sense (though we can conceive of all kinds of dimensions in M theory, for example).  But at the very top of that heap are the four dimensions we can sense directly.

Actually, Dramatica goes beyond that.  It sees those four external dimensions but also sees four internal ones as well: Knowledge, Thought, Ability and Desire.  What the hell?  Stay with me here…  Knowledge is the Mass of the mind.  It is “material” in the mind – the fixed and defined.  Thought is the Energy of the mind.  Just as Energy can rearrange mass or become attached to it as potential, so too can Thought organize Knowledge and also be attached to it as potential.

Ability is the “Space” of the mind.  Say, what?  Think about it.  Mass exists in Space; Ability exists in Knowledge.  And you can think about Mass and Space in terms of what is and what isn’t just as you can think about Knowledge and Ability in terms of what you know and what you don’t.  It is really the relationship between what you know and what you don’t that defines Ability just as the relationship between what is and what is not defines Space.

Now, Desire….  Desire as it equates to Time in the external dimensions.  Time can only be measured by comparing what was to what is and what might be – that is how we can experience the concept of motion – by comparing where something was to where it is and projecting where it might be.  Internally, Desire is determined by comparing how things were to how they are and how they might be.  And in this way we measure progress, which is how we see motion in our lives.

This isn’t just a lot of cute loose connections between hard physics and pop psychology – oh, no!  Well, not entirely anyway.  You see, in physics E=MC2, which is to say that Energy equals Mass time the speed of light squared.  How is speed measured?  in Space and Time (cm per second, in the case of Einstein’s equation).  So, even in the physical world, four things – Mass, Energy, Space and Time – can be combined into three (Mass, Energy and Speed).  Sounds a lot like Dramatica, don’t it?

Well, then you’ll love (or hate) this…

The primary equation of the Dramatica model of story from which the entire structure is built is quite simple: T/K = AD, or Thought divided by Knowledge equals Ability time Desire.  What the hell?  (again!)  Okay… when we think in logic, we are parlaying our Thought against our Knowledge.

Example:  Knowledge bends our thoughts in new trajectories because of what we know, just as Mass in Space bends energy (such as light waves) along the vectors of its gravity.  “Plain English, PLEASE!”  ‘Kay….

It takes a lot of thought to make a little knowledge, just as a little bit of knowledge can generate an awful lot of thought.  Now…  isn’t this interesting…  That relationship between Knowledge and Thought is the same as the relationship between Mass and Energy in Einstein’s equation:  It takes a lot of energy to make a little mass but a little mass can generate an awful lot of energy.

What an interesting (or convenient) similarity between Dramatica and Relativity.  Well, here’s a little more then…  If you take the equation of Dramatica – T/K = AD and do a little rearranging using Algebra by multiplying each side by K you get T = K (AD).  Looks unnervingly like E=MC2, doesn’t it?

Of course, in Einstein’s version, Space and Time are combines into C2 (which is the Speed of light (Time) multiplied by the wavelength of light (Space), thereby combining Space and Time into a single C2.  Why is it a constant?  Because when the speed goes up the wavelength goes down so they are both on this cosmic seesaw and collectively never change their value, even when they keep rocking back and forth.

So too it is in Dramatica.  Ability and Desire are blended by our minds into “Desirability” so we can think logically in Knowledge and Thought.

Think about the ramifications – no matter how great our knowledge or thought, if either our ability or desire are zero, then nothing’s going to happen because it means all our considerations amount to naught.  But if every element in the equation has a value of more than zero, there will be some degree of motivation within us.

We all know that different frequencies of light have different speeds, but none of them have a speed of zero or light would have to have a wavelength equal to infinity.  And in our minds, there are many emotional flavors of desire, but none are really ever at a zero-level or Ability would have to be infinitely huge (like, God, say…) or we’d never move.

My but haven’t we drifted far afield from “The Number 64” (the title of this article).  Alright, here’s another co-incidence for you – the IChing has 64 elements, just like the Dramatica Chart.  Honest to Madeline Albright, we didn’t know that until someone brought it to our attention once Dramatica was released.  But the really strange thing is that the pictograms in the I Ching line up exactly with the same mathematical progressions in Dramatica.

In fact, one Dramatica user was so intrigued that he created a whole explanation of how Dramatica’s archetypes correspond to the I Ching.  You can find it at http://storymind.com/dramatica/i_ching/index.htm  assuming you’re interested.  (It’s there even if you aren’t interested – like Schrodinger’s Cat)

Legend has it that the guy who originated the IChing got the idea from looking at the patterns on the back of a tortoise.  Not surprising.  If Dramatica and it’s equations are based on how the mind makes patterns, then any pattern we see is not so much generated by what we observe but by our projection of a pattern upon it from those available to our minds in order to understand it as fully as we can.  After all, a sprial in a teacup and a spiral in a galaxy have no similarity at all except in our own minds.

Oh, and as for the I Ching – to get the best interlock between the Dramatica Chart and the I Ching’s chart of Trigrams, be sure to use the “Pristine Yi King” rather than today’s common “I Ching” which was corrupted from the original by an ancient monarch seeking to bend the meaning of the grid to his own political motives.

So Dramatica deals with the concept of a Story Mind – that every story’s structure is the psychology of a SINGLE mind in which all the characters represent facets.  And, since Einstein’s equation was all about Relativity in the physical universe, we decided to name our equation and the model of psychology that grew from it, Mental Relativity.  I have a whole web site devoted to it, though it hasn’t been updated in years (no time, honest!)

Final thought for today – E=MC2 (and constants in general) appear as such only from inside the system being measured.  We always blend two items into a baseline from which to measure and observe the other two.  So, you stepped outside the universe you could clearly see time and space as separate and not locked to each other on that seesaw at all, thereby severing the space-time continuum and making all kinds of things possible (like that two dimensional man on a piece of paper who can’t cross a straight line drawn across the page).

Similarly, we think in threes, but one of the threes is really two things combined.  Looking at others we are observing their universe from the outside and so we see their thought processes in fours, leading us to easily see the solutions to their problems but not to our own.

And lastly, the equation T/K = AD is not the only one in Dramatica.  Sequentially, we go through all permutations such as A/K = TD.  Now that isn’t mathematically equivalent to the first equation, but it describes a particular mindset.  To get the best parallax on the universe, our minds adopt one equation (mind set) after another in order to see things in all possible contexts.  The benefit is that you get more “depth” on the issue, the drawback is that things are constantly changing so that by the time you go through all the mind-sets, the issue may no longer be the same as it was when you started, making your results inaccurate.

It is that inaccuracy that creates the dramatic potential that winds up the Dramatica chart into a single storyform, as all the permutations of the equation are represented in one quad or another – oh yeah – I should mention that each quad is a physical representation of one of the permutations of the equation.  They are twisted and turned to create dramatic potentials among them that describe the conflict between the way things are and the way we want them to be.

This whole system evolved as a survival trait, yet the devil is in the details.  But hey, aint that life.