Category Archives: The Story Argument

The Story Mind (Part 3) – A Story Is An Argument

Posted on February 7, 2018 by Melanie Anne Phillips

Excerpted from the Book “Dramatica Unplugged“ By Melanie Anne Phillips, Co-creator of Dramatica So a tale is a simple linear path that the author promotes as being either a good or bad one to take, depending on the outcome. There’s a certain … Continue reading →

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A Story is an Argument

Posted on January 12, 2017 by Melanie Anne Phillips

By Melanie Anne Phillips There are two principal forms of story structure: the tale and the story. A tale is a statement – a statement that ‘this lead to this lead to that’ and ‘here’s how it ended up’. Using … Continue reading →

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Dramatica Theory (Annotated) Part 6 “The Scope of Dramatica”

Posted on September 13, 2014 by Melanie Anne Phillips

Excerpted from the book, Dramatica: A New Theory of Story With all these forms of communication, isn’t Dramatica severely limited in addressing only the Grand Argument Story? No. The Grand Argument model described by Dra- matica functions to present all … Continue reading →

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Dramatica Theory (Annotated) Part 4 “What is a Grand Argument Story?”

Posted on September 9, 2014 by Melanie Anne Phillips

Excerpted from the book, Dramatica: A New Theory of Story A Grand Argument Story is a conceptually complete story with both an emotional and logical comprehensiveness. There are a number of qualities which determine whether a story is a Grand Argument … Continue reading →

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Dramatica Theory (Annotated) Part 3 “Grand Argument Stories”

Posted on August 22, 2014 by Melanie Anne Phillips

Excerpted from the book, Dramatica: A New Theory of Story The question arises: Is telling a story better than telling a non-story? No. Stories are not “better” than any other form of communication — just different. To see this difference … Continue reading →

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A Tale is a Statement

Posted on October 17, 2013 by Melanie Anne Phillips

Part 2 of our 113 part video series on story structure Download this video, audio or view on our web site at http://storymind.com/page104.htm

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The Four Story Domains

Posted on July 20, 2012 by Melanie Anne Phillips

The subject matter of any story that describes the nature of the central problem falls into one of four domains – Universe (a fixed state), Mind (a mind set or attitude), Physics (an activity), or Psychology (a problematic chain of … Continue reading →

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The Four Story Throughlines

Posted on July 18, 2012 by Melanie Anne Phillips

A story “throughline” is a bit different than a story “point of view.”  A point of view is an angle from which you wish your readers or audience to see the topics of your story.  But a throughline is the … Continue reading →

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Introduction to Theme

Posted on July 12, 2012 by Melanie Anne Phillips

Theme is perhaps the most powerful yet least understood aspect of story structure.  Theme is an “emotional argument” that strives to lead the reader or audience to feel about a topic as the author would have them feel. The reason … Continue reading →

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Subjective Characters and the Objective Story

Posted on June 8, 2012 by Sheldon

One of the most common mistakes made by authors of every level of experience is to create a problem for their Main Character that has nothing to do with the story at large. The reasoning behind this is not to … Continue reading →

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