Introducing the Story Mind

About this video…

This is the first episode of a 113 part program I originally recorded in 1999 as a webcast, when such events were cutting edge, technologically. All these years later, it remains my best and most complete description of the Dramatica Theory of Story Structure and covers all key concepts and how to apply them to your novel, screenplay or any form of expression in fiction.

Though our understanding of the nuances and ramifications of the theory have grown in time, all the essential notions have remained unchanged, and are just as valuable and useful today as when I sat in front of my massive CRT monitor and shared them with my internet audience from my living room.

With this short glimpse into the past to set the stage, here is a textual exploration of the material covered in this first episode, informed by fifteen additional years of exploration and familiarity with the theory.

Introducing the Story Mind

When we write a story, it takes on a personality of its own, as if it were a real person in its own right. There is a reason for this. Every character represents a different aspect of our own minds, so when they all come together in a story, it begins to act like us, influenced by all those conflicting facets that determine our overall motivation and behavior.

From a theory stand point it is a bit more complicated than that. Each of us has the same basic attributes: reason, skepticism and conscience, for example. We use them all to try and solve problems and maximize happiness in our everyday lives. When we come together in a group toward a common purpose, we gradually self- organize until one person emerges as the voice of reason, another as the skeptic, and another as the conscience of the group.

This is just good survival strategy because if each of use becomes a specialist, collectively the group will be able to see the problem (and potential solutions) far more clearly than if everyone sat around doing all the same jobs as general practitioners.

As it turns out, since member of a group come to play the role of just one part of ourselves, the group as a whole becomes something of a fractal mind – a larger version of what goes on in our own head and hearts.

Our breakthrough that led to the Dramatica theory was a Eureka moment in which we realized stories weren’t just about people trying to accomplish something, but that the full complement of characters created a greater mind – a Story Mind that had just as much of a personality as any individual.

That, of course, is a gross simplification appropriate to this introduction. In truth, it took us three solid years of full-time effort (from 1991 to 1994) to take that insight, use it as a filter through which to examine the conventions of story structure and then document and clarify all of the aspects of human psychology they illuminated.

The end result was a conceptual model not only of story structure, but of the human mind itself. By 1994, we had converted our model into equations and algorithms that described the relationships among human thought processes, and implemented them in software as a Story Engine that became the Dramatica line of story development products.

Very complex, to be sure! But the important element is the simple understanding that in real life,people come together in groups and self-organize as a larger model of the mind in which each plays a role, and that the conventions of story structure reflect this in the individual characters and, collectively, in the overall personality of the story itself.

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Dramatica Theory vs. Practical Application

My response to a Dramatica consultant who lamented the gap between the theoretical concepts of our narrative model and its practical application:

Yeah, its tough to get a handle on this stuff, mainly because there’s a big difference between the model and the results it produces. The model is as far away from narrative or even psychology as you can get. It’s physics, really. That’s pretty far afield from writing story. The next level down from understanding how and why the model works is to understand how to use it and its results for narrative (or real world) analysis. That is the realm of the Dramatica consultant. Why it works isn’t important and how it was created is even less important than that. But, to know what each of the story points really means, how it differs from its brothers, and how to apply it in a practical way in the construction and deconstruction of stories is where the value is for almost everyone except those few nerds who must know the why and wherefore, including myself in that socially inept, detail worshiping gang of misfits.

Deep Dive into Narrative Theory (with a half-twist)

What’s my day job? I just got this question from a Dramatica user, and my answer follows…

A Dramatica user asked:

The layout of the archetypal characters are the same in Situation and Manipulation, but different in Activity and Attitude. In attitude the dynamic pairs are all in the same quads, which makes the archetypes in that domain both dynamic and dependent. In all the others, they are dynamic, but dependent with others. In Situation and Manipulation this is the same relationship, but in Activity it is different. I’m just now noticing, so I am not even sure what it means yet. It’s like I have spent three years in math and finally see the pattern of quadratic equations. 😉

My reply:

I wish I could give you an easy answer, but the fact is, the arrangement of the elements on the bottom level was the single most complex part of the design of the structural part of the model. Reason being, it is where the helical pattern of the lateral iterations of the non-linear equations that define each position in the model temporally, intersect with the linear breakdown of the psychological processes from the top to the bottom into increasing detail and granularity, even while drifting off “true” spatially. This creates an interference pattern at the interface between space and time along the continuum, essentially the same kind of organized anarchy you find at the event horizon of a black hole. Light bends, time distorts, space is warped and matter simultaneously exists and does not exist. Think of it as Schrodinger’s purgatory.

In terms of the psychology of story, all four element levels are really the same thing, seen from the four different points of view of the four classes and distorted by the four levels of detail. But, at that level, you are so far around the progression of the quad of your thinking, that you are almost standing behind yourself looking at the back of your left ear. And so the helices break down as well as the linearity. That’s why no level of familiarity with TKAD or with the iterations will allow the pattern to be seen. It is only by calculating the impact of those two systems on one another (though in normal psychology they never interact any more than the inside and outside of a black hole) that the actual pattern can be discerned, which, to the “normal” eye will appear chaotic in normal negative space/time.

Make of it what you will, but it is God’s own truth.

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How to Reform the Pattern of Pain

Here’s a little tip from narrative psychology theory you can use in everyday life:

When pressure is put upon the heart, the mind, it is like pumping up pressure in any closed vessel – it heats up, in this case with psychological energy. And that energy softens the pre-existing shape of the heart/mind so that is can conform to the shape of the pressures, and thereby avoid further pain.

When the pain stops, the pressure stops, and like any closed vessel in which the pressure is released, it cools quickly, freezing the heart/mind into this new pattern, which will continue to sustain unending, even if the original source of the pain is gone.

Only by warming that pattern up, a small bit at a time, in a safe setting and under your own control can you soften the shape within you that you wish to change and gradually siphon off the pain as you re-mold it into a pattern of peace and self-acceptance.

–Melanie Anne Phillips

Write Your Novel Step by Step (25) “Who’s Your Main Character?”

Of all your cast, there is one very special player: the Main Character. Your Main Character is the one your story seems to be about – the one with whom your readers most identify – in short, the single most important character in your novel.

You probably already know who your Main Character is. If, so, you’ll find this step opens opportunities to avoid stereotyping him or her. If you haven’t yet selected your Main Character, this step will help you choose one from your cast list.

First, your Main Character is not necessarily your protagonist. While the protagonist is the prime mover of the effort to achieve the story goal, the Main Character is the one who grapples with an inner dilemma, personal issue or has some aspect of his or her belief system come under attack.

Most writers combine these two functions into a single player (a hero) who is both protagonist and Main Character in order to position their readers right at the heart of the action, as in the Harry Potter series.

Still, there are good reasons for not always blending the two. In the book and movie To Kill A Mockingbird, the protagonist is Atticus – a southern lawyer trying to acquit a young black man wrongly accused of rape. That is the basic plot of the story.

But the Main Character is Atticus’ young daughter, Scout. While the overall story is about the trial, that is really just a background to Scout’s experiences as we see prejudice through her eyes – a child’s eyes.

In this way, the author (Dee Harper) distances us from the incorruptible Atticus so that we do not feel all self-righteous. And, by making Scout effectively prejudiced against Boo Radley (the scary “boogie man” who lives down the street), we see how easily we can all become prejudiced by fearing what we really know nothing about.

In the end, Boo turns out to be Scout’s secret protector, and the story’s message about both the evils and ease of prejudice is made.

Your story may be best suited to center around a typical hero, especially if it is an action story or physical journey story. But if you are writing more of an exploration novel in which the plot unfolds as a background against which a personal journey of self-discovery or a resolution of personal demons is told, then separating your Main Character from the protagonist (and the heart of the action) may serve you better.

Armed with this understanding, review the cast you have chosen for your novel. If you have already selected a Main Character, see if they are a hero who is also the protagonist, driving the action. If so, consider splitting those functions into two players to see if it might enhance your story for your readers. If you have already set up a separate Main Character and protagonist, consider combining them into a hero, to see if that might streamline your story.

If you have not yet chosen a Main Character and/or a protagonist, review your cast list to see if one player would best do both jobs or if one would better drive the plot and the other would better carry the message.

When you have made your choices, write a brief paragraph about your Main Character and/or protagonist to explain how those two functions are satisfied by your chosen character or characters.

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Dramatica Theory (Annotated) Part 10 “When to Use Dramatica”

Excerpted from the book, Dramatica: A New Theory of Story

For some authors, applying Dramatica at the beginning of a creative project might be inhibiting. Many writers prefer to explore their subject, moving in whatever direction their muse leads them until they eventually establish an intent. In this case, the storytelling comes before the structure. After the first draft is completed, such an author can look back at what he has created with the new understanding he has arrived at by the end. Often, much of the work will no longer fit the story as the author now sees it. By telling Dramatica what he now intends, Dramatica will be able to indicate which parts of the existing draft are appropriate, which are not, and what may be needed that is currently missing. In this way, the creative process is both free and fulfilling, with Dramatica serving as analyst and collaborator.

Annotation

Now this passage in the original theory book is just the tip of the iceberg.  In the twenty some-odd years since we wrote this, I’ve discovered a whole bucket of insights and practical tips that can really leverage Dramatica (both the theory and the software) to far greater power in their application.

Speaking of Dramatica software, this is one of the few passages in the theory book that references it when it says, “By telling Dramatica” and “Dramatica will be able,” which clearly are not speaking of the theory by itself.

While I’m on this topic, let me hold forth a bit about the relationship between theory and software so we can clarify that issue, be done with that, and move on.  First of all, the theory is a conceptual construct that accurately describes the function of the forces that make up narrative.  In other words, the theory really sees narrative as a collection of dynamics that are interrelated, rather than seeing narrative as a structure made up of story points.

“What about the Dramatica Chart?” you might ask.  “That’s made up of all kinds of structural points including some called ‘elements’ – you can’t get any more structural than that.”  Well, now, that’s not exactly true.  It’s how it appears, to be sure, but that not really what it is.  (Notice how I’m diverging farther and farther away from practical tips here, but I promise: I’ll get to those down near the bottom of what now appears to be one freaking huge annotation….

Every item in the Dramatica Chart (AKA the Dramatica Table of Story Elements) is actually a process, treated as an object.  WTF?  Okay – imagine you make a list of chores for the day that includes washing the dishes, paying the bills, and going shopping.  Each of those is really a process, isn’t it?  But on the list, they are all treated as things: chores.  By thinking of a complex process at a thing, the complexity kind of melts away so that you can begin to see how one “thing” relates to another.

The Dramatica Chart is, essentially, a map of how all the processes that make up narrative relate to one another.  By treating them as objects, we can see those relationships more easily (and some of them are so subtle that you can’t see them at all until you create a chart in that manner and get rid of all the complexity).

Now for the software…  We took all these relationships among narrative processes that we found and discovered they had a pattern – think the DNA of story.  Every story has its own genome or perhaps “memnome” (playing off the word “meme” which is like a gene or cultural awareness).  But, they all use the same bases and there is an underlying deep structure to the way they are assembled.  (In DNA it is a double helix, in Dramatica it is actually a quad helix, which is why the “objects” in the Dramatica Chart are arranged in quads.)

So, we described this model of structure mathematically.  We realized that the way these elements could go together could be described by algorithms and these algorithms became a computer implementation of the model of DNA of narrative that is the story engine in Dramatica software.  Everything else in the software – the tools, features, interface and questions – are all just ways of accessing that algorithmic model.

The idea is to treat the model like a big piece of marble.  Michelangelo said, he just chipped away anything that didn’t look like what he was trying to portray and what was left was the image he was going for.  That’s how you use Dramatica: answer the questions so it sculpts the model to gradually look more and more like what you have in mind for your story.  Eventually, you’ll enter enough information about your mental image, that the model with all its DNA-style algorithms can determine that the unseen in-between impact of all your choices on each other can pre-determine what other potential choices must be if they aren’t to work against or undermine what you’ve already said you want to do narratively.  In plain language.  The more information you put into the model about your story, the more you limit what your other options are, without working against yourself dramatically.  Simple as that.

You can see this at work in the story engine feature in the software.  Every time you make a choice, the number of other options is reduced.  In Dramatica Story Expert there is a feature that shows all the choices you explicitly make in blue, and when enough information is input that other choices can be made by the model, these implied choices show up in red.  Interestingly, it never take more than about twelve explicit choices to know enough about your story to generate more than seventy other implied choices.  Pretty weird, huh?  But accurate as great-grandpa and his spittoon.

Now back to the title of this original section in the theory book, “When to Use Dramatica.” Well, to use Dramatica you really need to know what your story is about before you start.  Oh, you can use it without a clue, but then every choice you make is rather arbitrary.  Of course, you might go into the process with no story idea at all and then answer questions like, “Is your overall story about a situation, activity, attitude or manner of thinking,” and that might actually help you gravitate toward one kind of a story rather than another.  And, as you continue answering such questions as “Is your Main Character a Do-er or a Be-er” then you build up elements of the framework of a story, just like in 3D printing until you have a complete structure.  It won’t have any subject matter yet – it will just be a bunch of girders and pulleys.  So, you’ll then follow through the storytelling section of the software to describe what kind of subject matter in your story is going to fulfill each of those structural requirements.  For some folks, that’s the best way to go.

But for me, and writers like me, I’m more like ol’ Michelangelo.  I want to know what I’m trying to get at first, then use Dramatica to chip away at that block of Muse-provided marble until I can see the structure at the heart of the story I want to tell.  Doing it this way, I already have all my subject matter and a story concept in mind.  Dramatica then becomes a way of finding the dramatic center of all that material, the way you might find the geographic center of a country.  It brings clarity and gives you a pivot point around which to build and balance your story.

That, in fact, is why I created StoryWeaver after co-creating Dramatica: to provide tool for generating ideas, zeroing in on subject matter.  In short, to come up with people I’d like to write about before they became character, events before it became a plot, a message before it became a theme, and an atmosphere before it became a genre. Then (after using StoryWeaver to work out my story’s world) – then I go to Dramatica to X-ray the damn thing and see what kind of structural skeleton its got.

So when to use Dramatica (software)?  If you already know what your story is and how its structured, what do you need software for?  If you need inspiration, use StoryWeaver.  If you need structural grounding and guidance, use Dramatica.

When to use Dramatica (theory)?  The theory is an understanding.  It doesn’t generate creative motivation.  But, if you know it, the underlying concepts will open new doors to explore creatively and will almost subliminally guide your efforts so that the more theory you know, the more your stories will seem to be complete, make sense, not drive, and have consistency of outlook and consistency of impact.

And if you use the Dramatica software at least once every few months, you’ll find that our writerly instincts are constantly drifting off true and being warped by new life experiences and old justifications.  Dramatica points to the proper lane on the freeway that will get you there – the corridor of clear thinking.  It doesn’t regiment your Muse but keeps it from running off a cliff like the vast majority of lemming-like writers out there who follow formulas right behind the writer in front until they end up in a broken heap at the bottom of what might have been the best story they ever told.

–Melanie Anne Phillips

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