What Is Dramatica?

What is Dramatica?

Dramatica is a new theory of story that offers both writers and critics a clear view of what story structure is and how it works. Dramatica is also the inspiration behind the line of story development software products that bear its name.

The central concept of the Dramatica theory is a notion called the “Story Mind.” In a nutshell, this simply means that every story has a mind of its own – its own personality; its own psychology. A story’s personality is developed by an author’s style and subject matter; its psychology is determined by the underlying dramatic structure.

The Story Mind

As mentioned above, the Story Mind concept is at the heart of Dramatica, and everything else about the theory grows out of that. If you don’t buy into it, at least a little, then you’re not going to find much use for the rest of this book. So let’s take look into the Story Mind right off the bat to see if it is worth your while to keep reading…

Simply put, the Story Mind means that we can think of a story as if it were a person. The storytelling style and the subject matter determine the story’s personality, and the underlying dramatic structure determines its psychology.

Now the personality of a story is a touchy-feely thing, while the psychology is a nuts-and-bolts mechanical thing. Let’s consider the personality part first, and then turn our attention to the psychology.

Like anyone you meet, a story has a personality. And what makes up a personality? Well, everything from the subject matter a person talks about to their attitude toward life. Similarly, a story might be about the Old West or Outer Space, and its attitude could be somber, sneaky, lively, hilarious, or any combination of other human qualities.

Is this a useful perspective? Can be. Many writers get so wrapped up in the details of a story that they lose track of the overview. For example, you might spend all kinds of time working out the specifics of each character’s personality yet have your story take a direction that is completely out of character for its personality. But if you step back every once and a while and think of the story as a single person, you can really get a sense of whether or not it is acting in character.

Imagine that you have invited your story to dinner. You have a pleasant conversation with it over the meal. Of course, it is more like a monologue because your story does all the talking – just as it will to your audience or reader.

Your story is a practical joker, or a civil war buff (genre), and it talks about what interests it. It tells you a story about a problem with some endeavor (plot) in which it was engaged. It discusses the moral issues (theme) involved and its point of view on them. It even divulges the conflicting drives (characters) that motivated it while it tried to resolve the difficulties.

You want to ask yourself if it’s story makes sense. If not, you need to work on the logic of your story. Does it feel right, as if the Story Mind is telling you everything, or does it seem like it is holding something back? If so, your story has holes that need filling. And does your story hold your interest for two hours or more while it delivers it’s monologue? If not, it’s going to bore it’s captive audience in the theater, or the reader of its report (your book), and you need to send it back to finishing school for another draft.

Again, authors get so wrapped up in the details that they lose the big picture. But by thinking of your story as a person, you can get a sense of the overall attraction, believability, and humanity of your story before you foist it off on an unsuspecting public.

There’s much more we’ll have to say about the personality of the Story Mind and how to leverage it to your advantage. But, our purpose right now is just to see if this book might be of use to you. So, let’s examine the other side of the Story Mind concept – the story’s psychology as represented in its structure.

The Dramatica theory is primarily concerned with the structure of a story. Everything in that structure represents an aspect of the human mind, almost as if the processes of the mind had been made tangible and projected out externally for the audience to observe.

Do you remember the model kit of the “Visible Man?” It was a 12″ human figure made out of clear plastic so you could see the skeleton and all the organs on the inside. Well that is how the Story Mind works. it takes the processes of the human mind, and turns them into characters, plot, theme, and genre, so we can study them in detail. In this way, an author can provide understanding to an audience of the best way to deal with problems. And, of course, all of this is wrapped up and disguised in the particular subject matter, style, and techniques of the storyteller.

Now this makes it sound as if the real meat of a story, the real people, places, events, and topics, are just window dressing to distract the audience from the serious business of the structure. But that’s not what we’re saying here. In fact, structure and storytelling work side by side, hand in hand, to create an audience/reader experience that transcends the power of either by itself.

Therefore, structure and storytelling are neither completely dependent upon each other, nor are they wholly independent. One structure might be told in a myriad of ways, like West Side Story and Romeo and Juliet. Similarly, any given group of characters dealing with a particular realm of subject matter might be wrapped around any number of different structures, like weekly television series.

But let’s get back to the nature of the structure itself and to the elements that make up the Story Mind. If characters, plot, theme, and genre represent aspects of the human mind made tangible, what are they?

Characters represent the conflicting drives of our own minds. For example, in our own minds, our reason and our emotions are often at war with one another. Sometimes what makes the most sense doesn’t feel right at all. And conversely, what feels so right might not make any sense at all. Then again, there are times when both agree and what makes the most sense also feels right on.

Reason and Emotion then, become two archetypal characters in the Story Mind that illustrate that inner conflict that rages within ourselves. And in the structure of stories, just as in our minds, sometimes these two basic attributes conflict, and other times they concur.

Theme, on the other hand, illustrates our troubled value standards. We are all plagued with uncertainties regarding the right attitude to take, the best qualities to emulate, and whether our principles should remain fixed and constant or should bend in context to particular circumstances.

Plot compares the relative value of the methods we might employ within our minds in our attempt to press on through these conflicting points of view on the way toward a mental consensus.

And genre explores the overall attitude of the Story Mind – the points of view we take as we watch the parade of our own thoughts unfold, and the psychological foundation upon which our personality is built.

Melanie Anne Phillips

Each Archetype is an Equation

For all you Dramatica “theory hounds” out there, here’s one of the newest parts of the theory which grew out of my ongoing development of the new dynamic model of story structure.

Dramatica theory has always had eight equations that describe the relationships among elements in a quad.  They are all based on permutations of the initial equation we discovered, which was T/K = AD.

Turns out, the dramatic nature of each of the eight archetypal characters in Dramatica is described by one of the eight equations.  Now that’s pretty amazing – that characters who represent families of thought within our own minds can be described mathematically.

I’m writing a complete and lengthy article on this right now, but it will take a week or so, and I couldn’t wait to share this new insight with the Dramatica Theory Hounds.  You guys are such avid and loyal students of the underlying principals of Dramatica, that I’ve decided to let you in on every new insight, even before I have time to properly work out the details and present a solid argument for it.

I’ll end by saying the while the eight equations describe the natures of the eight archetypes, they do not describe their functions.  For that, eight other equations are needed.  And these dynamic equations are at the heart of the dynamic model.

They are the process of justification and can be seen in how the quad of Knowledge, Thought, Ability and Desire evolves through three other quads beginning with Can, Need, Want and Should, on to Situation, Circumstances, Sense of Self and State of Being, and ending in Commitment, Rationalization, Responsibility and Obligation.

I’ve touched on this process of justification in previous articles, and in fact it was worked out even before we created the Dramatica Table of Story Elements some twenty years ago.  But, we moved away from the justification process to focus on the structural elements and then flipped and rotated the structural model to show the effects of justification and how it influenced the relationships among dramatic elements to create a storyform.

But, in truth, it did not describe why those forces are at work, and that is the issue at hand in the dynamic model.

All for now, gotta go talk a walk in the woods.

More for you DTH folk soon.

Melanie

Our New Writer’s Blog on Storymind.com

Announcing our new writer’s blog on Storymind.com at http://storymind.com/blog!

Why another blog?  Well, you may have noticed that Dramaticapedia.com has grown like an unplanned city, categories cropping up all over the place!  While there is a ton of really useful information here, sometimes it is pretty hard to find just what you are looking for.

So, based on what we’ve learned here, we’ve designed a well-planned blog on our Storymind.com site with the very same material, just organized better.  There’s only a few articles reposted there so far (our first day…) but we’ll be re-posting all the best articles, videos, and audios very quickly, as well as new material as soon as we create it.

In addition, you can make comments and post replies to comments on the new blog to express your thoughts and ask questions of other writers!  So, check it out and let us know what you think!

About StoryWeaver Software…

A writer recently asked:

Just purchased the software. But am clueless how to use it and how to derive the maximum benefit out of it. Kindly mail me the links/articles which will help me understand the program and its concept better.

My reply:

The concept is simple. It is nothing more than a list of about 200 questions you answer in order. By the time you get through all 200 questions, you’ll have completely developed your story.

Here’s how it works. You go to the list of folders on the left hand side of the StoryWeaver window. You open the top folder by clicking on it. You click on the first item in the folder and follow the instructions. You then go to the second item down in the folder and follow the instructions. When you finish with the items in that folder, you open the next folder down and do the same. Just work from top to bottom of the question list and you’ll go through them all in the proper order.

What it does. As you answer questions, StoryWeaver from time to time will automatically show you your answers to previous questions as reference to help you answer the current question. in addition, every few questions StoryWeaver will present you with all the material you’ve most recently developed and ask you to blend it all into a synopsis of your story so far. As you go, you will keep blending new material into that ever growing synopsis, which eventually becomes your fully developed story.

Also, near the end, you will determine how you want to reveal your story to your readers/audience and it will help you outline all your chapters or acts and scenes.

In the end (or at any time) you can print out all your work or export it to a file you can open in your word processor for further polish.

That’s all there is to it.

Here’s a link to some articles about StoryWeaver:

http://dramaticapedia.com/category/storyweaver-software/

Here’s a link to some videos about StoryWeaver:

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL6C93E466CCA3BBE1

Melanie Anne Phillips
Creator, StoryWeaver

Writing Trilogies

Here’s a quick look at one aspect of fashioning a trilogy – whether each individual installment is a tale or a story.

A tale is a linear progression that both makes sense logically, step by step, and also makes sense emotionally, mood to mood.  If any steps are missing or if it jumps from one mood to an inappropriate one that just doesn’t follow, then the tale ceases to function.  But, if all the steps and moods are progressive and consistent, then the tale will work and the meaning or message (as in a fairy tale) is whether the tales linear path is a good one or a bad one by comparing the beginning situation/feeling to the ending one.

A story is a more complex form, though not necessarily a more powerful one – different in structure, but equally effective in audience impact.  If a tale can be said to proclaim that a given path is independently a good or bad one, a story purports that a given path is either the best or the worst of all that might reasonably have been taken.  To do this, rather that just showing the one path and its outcome, all other paths of equal potential must also be fully illustrated to “prove” why the proffered path is the epitome.

While any individual “work” may be a tale or a story to equal effect, when combined in a trilogy, fashioning the three works as tales, stories, or some combination of the two has a fundamental impact on how well an audience will embrace the overarching collection.

Consider these five examples of trilogies with different combinations of tales and stories.  First, Lord of the Rings, each installment of which is a tale.  There is never the audience expectation that any of the individual tales is a complete story, but rather that each moves the overarching story along to its ultimate conclusion at the end of the final installment as if each separate work was an act in a three act play.

Second, examine the Men In Black trilogy of movies.  Each of these is a complete story and could stand alone as a message that a particular path is the best or the worst of all that might be taken in regard to each story’s individual central issue.  Collectively, they also function as acts in an overarching story in which each story installment in the trilogy broadens and deepens the understanding of structural and dynamic interrelationships within the subject matter.

So, in a sense, a trilogy of tales seems to move linearly through progressive subject matter, exposing new information, new issues, and new challenges, while a trilogy of stories seems to explore the same subject matter in greater depth and detail as the framework of the larger story gradually emerges and clarifies.

Our third example is the Matrix trilogy in which the first installment was a story, the second a tale, the third was also a tale, but the overarching form was also a tale rather than story.  This is not a problem structurally, but in this particular case, the audience was led to believe that the three parts would ultimately resolve into a single larger story. And so, audience expectations were violated.  In a sense, they invested emotionally in the anticipation of a grand scheme which was to be revealed, onto to discover at the end that there was no such deeper meaning.  This results in a feeling of being scammed, that we were promised one thing and delivered another, that the promoted size and scope of the overall work was left incomplete.

To remedy this, the filmmakers could either have completed an overarching story or been aware of the expectations they were building and clearly communicated that while the first episode was a story, all future installments do not contribute to a “greater” story, but are simply additional tales in the same world as the original story.

What is most unfortunate in this particular example is that they were so close to fulfilling  an overarching story and might have done so with just a few tiny changes, as follows: Neo becomes the first person so strong in the matrix that he can continue his consciousness int he Matrix even though his physical body has died.  He can still communicate with the real world through Trinity when she is in the matrix.

It is recognized that not everyone in the matrix wants to or even could transition to the real world.  Now that humans exist there, they must continue to exist there except for those who are ready to leave.  So, an alliance is formed between the Architect and the Oracle so that he maintains the system for those who will stay and she protects those who are becoming aware of the greater Truth of the outside real world.  Neo helps bring them to the point they can leave, and Trinity provides a familiar bridge to carry them from one world into the next.

This would have created a complete overarching story and left the audience feeling their investment had been returned with interest.  And, again, the alternative would have been to not have created the audience expectations of a larger story.  It should be noted that the filmmakers probably thought they had completed the story by arranging for machines to agree to leave the people alone.  But that is just a conclusion to the war – a plot issue that stemmed from the first story.  But true stories must wrap up both the logistic (plot) and emotional (character) issues, and in the overarching form, these character issues were left unresolved.

As our fourth example, consider the first released Star Wars trilogy – episodes IV, V and VI.  In this case, it follows the same formula as the Matrix trilogy – a story, followed by two tales that result in an overarching story, but in this case, the overarching story is completed when not only is the empire overcome at the end in the plot, but the father/son issues of Darth and Luke are resolved as well.

One may argue as to whether the storytelling of either of these two trilogies is better or worse, but structurally, the Star Wars trilogy is clearly better handled.

Finally, let us consider the Bourne Identity trilogy of films.  While each of the tree parts is a complete story, they fall within an overarching tale in which all three stories simply take place sequentially in the same narrative world of subject matter.  In this case, it works because the audience is not led to expect each episode of an overall story.

Having now examined five different trilogies, each with its own structure in terms of the relationships of tales and stories as episodes and overarching form, you can do a little preplanning for potential trilogies of your own.

—Melanie Anne Phillips

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