Finding Inspiration

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Story Structure Part 10 (video)

“The Four Throughlines, Part One”

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

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

Dramatica’s Semantics Explained

Some words about semantics…

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

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

Part One – Classification of Concepts (Taxonomy)

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

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

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

Structure

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

Dramatica Story Structure Chart

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

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

Dynamics

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

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

Relationship of Structure and Dynamics

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

Usage

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

Part Two – Vocabulary (Lexicon)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Part Three – Grammar (Syntax)

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

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

Conclusion and Summary

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

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

Fair enough.

Finding Your Creative Time

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Link to the video:

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

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What’s in Your Story’s Mind?

As with people, your story’s mind has different aspects. These are represented in your Genre, Theme, Plot, and Characters. Genre is the overall personality of the Story Mind. Theme represents its troubled value standards. Plot describes the methods the Story Mind uses as it tries to work out its problems. Characters are the conflicting drives of the Story Mind.

Genre

To an audience, every story has a distinct personality, as if it were a person rather than a work of fiction. When we first encounter a person or a story, we tend to classify it in broad categories. For stories, we call the category into which we place its overall personality its Genre.

These categories reflect whatever attributes strike us as the most notable. With people this might be their profession, interests, attitudes, style, or manner of expression, for example. With stories this might be their setting, subject matter, point of view, atmosphere, or storytelling.

We might initially classify someone as a star-crossed lover, a cowboy, or a practical joker who likes to scare people. Similarly, we might categorize a story as a Romance, a Western, or a Horror story.

As with the people we meet, some stories are memorable and others we forget as soon as they are gone. Some are the life of the party, but get stale rather quickly. Some initially strike us as dull, but become familiar to the point we look forward to seeing them again. This is all due to what someone has to say and how they go about saying it.

The more time we spend with specific stories or people the less we see them as generalized types and the more we see the traits that define them as individuals. So, although we might initially label a story as a particular Genre, we ultimately come to find that every story has its own unique personality that sets it apart from all others in that Genre, in at least a few notable respects.

Theme

Everyone has value standards, and the Story Mind has them as well. Some people are pig-headed and see issues as cut and dried. Others are wishy-washy and flip-flop on the issues. The most sophisticated people and stories see the pros and cons of both sides of a moral argument and present their conclusions in shades of gray, rather than in simple black & white. All these outlooks can be reflected in the Story Mind.

No matter what approach or which specific value is explored, the key structural point about value standards is that they are all comprised of two parts: the issues and one’s attitude toward them. It is not enough to only have a subject (abortion, gay rights, or greed) for that says nothing about whether they are good, bad, or somewhere in between. Similarly, attitudes (I hate, I believe in, or I don’t approve of) are meaningless until they are applied to something.

An attitude is essentially a point of view. The issue is the object under observation. When an author determines what he wants to look at it and from where he wants it to be seen, he creates perspective. It is this perspective that comprises a large part of the story’s message.

Still, simply stating one’s attitudes toward the issues does little to convince someone else to see things the same way. Unless the author’s message is preaching to the audience’s choir, he’s going to need to convince them to share his attitude. To do this, he will need to make a thematic argument over the course of the story which will slowly dislodge the audience from their previously held beliefs and reposition them so that they adopt the author’s beliefs by the time the story is over.

Plot

Novice authors often assume the order in which events transpire in a story is the order in which they are revealed to the audience, but these are not necessarily the same. Through exposition, an author unfolds the story, dropping bits and pieces that the audience rearranges until the true meaning of the story becomes clear. This technique involves the audience as an active participant in the story rather than simply being a passive observer. It also reflects the way people go about solving their own problems.

When people try to work out ways of dealing with their problems they tend to identify and organize the pieces before they assemble them into a plan of action. So, they often jump around the timeline, filling in the different steps in their plan out of sequence as they gather additional information and draw new conclusions.

In the Story Mind, both of these attributes are represented as well. We refer to the internal logic of the story – the order in which the events in the problem solving approach actually occurred – as the Plot. The order in which the Story Mind deals with the events as it develops its problem solving plan is called Storyweaving.

If an author blends these two aspects together, it is very easy miss holes in the internal logic because they are glossed over by smooth exposition. By separating them, an author gains complete control of the progression of the story as well as the audience’s progressive experience

Characters

If Characters represent the conflicting drives in our own minds yet they each have a personal point of view, where is out sense of self represented in the Story Mind? After all, every real person has a unique point of view that defines his or her own self-awareness.

In fact, there is one special character in a story that represents the Story Mind’s identity. This character, the Main Character, functions as the audience position in the story. He, she or it is the eye of the story – the story’s ego.

In an earlier tip I described how we might look at characters by their dramatic function, as seen from the perspective of a General on a hill. But what if we zoomed down and stood in the shoes of just one of those characters, we would have a much more personal view of the story from the inside looking out.

But which character should be our Main Character? Most often authors select the Protagonist to represent the audience position in the story. This creates the stereotypical Hero who both drives the plot forward and also provides the personal view of the audience. There is nothing wrong with this arrangement but it limits the audience to always experiencing what the quarterback feels, never the linemen or the water boy.

In real life we are more often one of the supporting characters in an endeavor than we are the leader of the effort. If you have always made your Protagonist the Main Character, you have been limiting your possibilities.

Story Structure – Part 7 (video)

In this episode, I describe the difference between story structure and storytelling. Story structure has no subject matter involved – it is simply a map of the relationships among concepts. For example, if two concepts are in opposition, it doesn’t matter if they are night and day or sweet and sour, protagonist and antagonist or conscience and temptation. Similarly, if a goal is to obtain stolen diamonds and another story’s goad is to obtain a secret code, they are both goals of obtaining something – the structure is the same, only the specifics of exactly what the characters are trying to obtain is different , and that part is therefore storytelling. It is hard, sometimes, to determine what is structure and what is storytelling, for example, if someone wishes to become more compassionate as a goal, that is different than someone wishing to obtain the quality of compassion. Why? Because in the first case, the character wants to become a different kind of person, while in the second case, the person simply wants to add an attribute to their list of traits. We have often described “becoming” as a goal by saying that to become something, you can’t simply be like it is, but you also must “not be” like it isn’t. So, someone who simply adds the quality of compassion does not necessarily become wholly compassionate. They might simply have achieved a duality of having both a sense of compassion and also still have a conflicting quality of not caring.

Of course, that’s all “black belt” level structural stuff – too nit-picky for most purposes. But still, consider Romeo and Juliet and West Side Story and give some thought as to how they differ and how they are the same. They differ in storytelling, they are very similar in structure.

Here’s the link to the video which covers the more practical story development considerations on the topic:

http://storymindguru.com/dramatica-unplugged/7%20Story%20Structure%20vs%20Storytelling.htm

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Why a Story Mind?

Before asking any writer to invest his or her time in a concept as different as the Story Mind, it is only fair to provide an explanation of why such a thing should exist. To do this, let us look briefly into the nature of communication between an author and an audience.

When an author tells a tale, he simply describes a series of events that both makes sense and feels right. As long as there are no breaks in the logic and no mis-steps in the emotional progression, the structure of the tale is sound.

Now, from a structural standpoint, it really doesn’t matter what the tale is about, who the characters are, or how it turns out. The tale is just a truthful or fictional journey that starts in one situation, travels a straight or twisting path, and ends in another situation.

The meaning of a tale amounts to a statement that if you start from “here,” and take “this” path, you’ll end up “here.” The message of a tale is that a particular path is a good or bad one, depending on whether the ending point is better or worse than the point of departure.

This structure is easily seen in the vast majority of familiar fairy “tales.” Tales have been used since the first storytellers practiced their craft. In fact, many of the best selling novels and most popular motion pictures of our own time are simple tales, expertly told.

In a structural sense, tales have power in that they can encourage or discourage audience members from taking particular actions in real life. The drawback of a tale is that it speaks only in regard to that specific path.

But in fact, there are many paths that might be taken from a given point of departure. Suppose an author wants to address those as well, to cover all the alternatives. What if the author wants to say that rather than being just a good or bad path, a particular course of action the best or worst path of all that might have been taken?

Now the author is no longer making a simple statement, but a “blanket” statement. Such a blanket statement provides no “proof” that the path in question is the best or worst, it simply says so. Of course, an audience is not likely to be moved to accept such a bold claim, regardless of how well the tale is told.

In the early days of storytelling, an author related the tale to his audience in person. Should he aspire to wield more power over his audience and elevate his tale to become a blanket statement, the audience would no doubt cry, “Foul!” and demand that he prove it. Someone in the audience might bring up an alternative path that hadn’t been included in the tale.

The author might then counter that rebuttal to his blanket statement by describing how the path proposed by the audience was either not as good or better (depending on his desired message) than the path he did include.

One by one, he could disperse any challenges to his tale until he either exhausted the opposition or was overcome by an alternative he couldn’t dismiss.

But as soon as stories began to be recorded in media such as song ballads, epic poems, novels, stage plays, screenplays, teleplays, and so on, the author was no longer present to defend his blanket statements.

As a result, some authors opted to stick with simple tales of good and bad, but others pushed the blanket statement tale forward until the art form evolved into the “story.”

A story is a much more sophisticated form of communication than a tale, and is in fact a revolutionary leap forward in the ability of an author to make a point. Simply put, when creating a story, and author starts with a tale of good or bad, expands it to a blanket statement of best or worst, and then includes all the reasonable alternatives to the path he is promoting to preclude any counters to his message. In other words, while a tale is a statement, a story becomes an argument.

Now this puts a huge burden of proof on an author. Not only does he have to make his own point, but he has to prove (within reason) that all opposing points are less valid. Of course, this requires than an author anticipate any objections an audience might raise to his blanket statement. To do this, he must look at the situation described in his story and examine it from every angle anyone might happen to take in regard to that issue.

By incorporating all reasonable (and valid emotional) points of view regarding the story’s message in the structure of the story itself, the author has not only defended his argument, but has also included all the points of view the human mind would normally take in examining that central issue. In effect, the structure of the story now represents the whole range of considerations a person would make if fully exploring that issue.

In essence, the structure of the story as a whole now represents a map of the mind’s problem solving processes, and (without any intent on the part of the author) has become a Story Mind.

And so, the Story Mind concept is not really all that radical. It is simply a short hand way of describing that all sides of a story must be explored to satisfy an audience. And, and if this is done, the structure of the story takes on the nature of a single character.

Story Structure – Part 6 (Video)

In this episode I explore the structural reasons why men and women respond differently to the same story. Pretty controversial stuff, until you hear the details! Hint – it all has to do with the reasons men and women will empathize or sympathize with the main character.

Here’s the link to the video:

http://storymindguru.com/dramatica-unplugged/6%20Audience%20Reach.htm

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