A writer asks: On the FAQ’s of the dramatica website, it explains short stories as (condensed):

Short stories typically do not go to the depth of a full story and epics usually have one “main” story embellished with lots of short sub stories

There are basically two different approaches to using Dramatica with “short form” works:

1. Cover all of the story points quickly (time wise).

Or.

2. Spend more time illustrating the story points, but limit the scope.

My question is:

When you say “limit the scope” do you mean limit the amount of “story points that you explore” ?

I guess that is how I am taking it … as being the opposite of #1 where you cover all the points but with less detail (quickly)

thanks

Kyle

My reply:

Hi, Kyle.

Limiting the scope is what we call “slicing and dicing” the Dramatica model.

Are you familiar with the “3-D” tower version of the Dramatica Structural chart? It looks like a cross between a Rubik’s Cube and a 3-D chess set. It has four levels, split into four separate “towers.” Well, the four vertical levels provide depth to a story and the four individual areas covered by the towers provide breadth.

So, you can “limit” a story to keep it short by either cutting it down to two or even one tower (like having just a Main and Impact character, but no overall story or subjective personal story, or vice versa), or you can cut it short by limiting the depth (such as having a plot and characters, but no thematic issues.)

The important thing to remember is that if you limit a story, don’t step out of those limits, even a little bit. The minute you move into a larger or deeper area, the audience will assume your message is bigger and expect your argument to cover all that ground. If you only dabble with a few story points in that area, then it will look as if you are failing to make a complete argument, rather than just adding a little extra breadth or depth.

It is much more powerful to make a complete argument within the scope you have outlined for your story, than to appear to make an incomplete argument with a larger scope.

Hope this helps.

From the StoryWeaving Seminar

All meaning comes from perspective – putting things in context. Perspective is created by the combination of what you are looking at, and where you are looking from. Change the object of your intention and perspective is altered. Shift your point of view and perspective shifts as well.

The Dramatica story structure chart is a map of a story’s perspective that describes how your readers or audience will be positioned in regard to the issues you wish to explore.

The chart is divided into four different sections, each one representing a different kind of topic. The first section deals with stories about fixed situations, such as being stuck in a collapsed mine or struggling with a disability. The second area is for stories about activities like trying to win a race or the effort to discover a lost civilization. The third covers stories about fixed attitudes,
mindsets, fixations or prejudices. And the final part deals with changing attitudes, manners of thinking, and emotional progressions such as slipping into a depression.

Each of these topic categories is called a “class” of topics, and each has a name. The area that covers situations is called the “Universe Class” because it centers on a fixed external state of things. The part dealing with activities is called the “Physics Class” because it is about external processes. The third section of topics is the “Mind Class” because it is about fixed internal states. The final realm is the “Psychology Class” since it focuses on internal processes.

Simply put, there are two external classes and two internal classes. Similarly, two of the classes deal with states and two with processes. As you can see, the Dramatica chart maps virtually every kind of consideration you might want to explore in a story, for there isn’t any story issue that doesn’t fall into a category as either an external or internal state or process.

But, what we wish to talk about in our story – what we are looking at – is only half of whatcreates the perspective that contains meaning. To complete the structure of our story we need to add points of view to the topics under consideration.

Just as there are four classes of topics, there are also four points of view. They are the Objective, Subjective, Main Character, and Obstacle Character. The Objective view explores your story’s topics as would a general on a hill watching a battle in the valley down below. Though he cares about the conflict below him, he is not directly participating and also sees a bird’s eye view of the broad strategies involved. Essentially, the Objective view encompasses the “Big Picture” of the grand schemes in your story – from the outside looking in.

But what about the personal view – what things look like from the inside looking out. For that, we have to imagine that we zoom down from the hill into the shoes of one of the soldiers on the field of battle. We experience what he experiences, we feel what he feels, we see things through his eyes. This is the most personal point of view in a story, and it is that of the Main Character – the character with home the reader/audience most identifies – the one whom the passion of the story seems to be about or to revolve around.

The third point of view is from the inside looking in – much like one soldier encountering another in the midst of all the dramatic explosions. This represents the way we all look within ourselves to consider our options, other outlooks we might adopt, whether or not we should change our point of view. So this is the view of the Main Character looking at the Obstacle Character – representing that alternative paradigm we might change to embrace.

Finally, there is the Subjective view of the argument we make with ourselves about the pros and cons of sticking to our guns or changing our minds. This is represented by the personal skirmish between the Main and Obstacle characters in the midst of the overall battle as seen by the general from the Objective view.

In essence, the four points of view are equivalent to I, You, We and They – the four angles we have on ourselves and our fellow human beings. Main Character is “I” – our sense of self or identity in our own minds. Obstacle Character is “You” – perhaps the future “I” – another way for being we might become. Subjective is “We” – our examination of the relationship of our now
and futures selves – the difference between who we are and who we might become. Objective is “They” – all the other aspects of ourselves that are not under pressure of possibly changing, represented by all the characters in our story other than Main and Obstacle.

Now that we have outlined the four topic categories and the four points of view, what remains is to combine them to create your story’s perspectives. In fact, all four topic categories must be explored in your story for it to feel complete. What sets one story apart from another begins by the author’s decision as to which point of view will be used to explore which topic category.

When the points of view are matched to a corresponding topic realm, four principal perspectives are created for your story. And each perspective is a different angle on the truth at the heart
of your story – a different approach to discovering and solving the problem issue that creates all the difficulties in your story. This match of angle and object is called a “Domain.” So, your story will have four Domains of perspective – the Objective Domain, Subjective Domain, Main Character Domain, and Obstacle Character Domain.

Within each domain we’ll need to dig deeper and to see in greater detail in order to uncover the true heart of your story’s problems. To this end, each domain is divided into smaller and smaller parts – wheels within wheels in the mechanics of your story’s structure. For example, in “A Christmas Carol” by Charles Dickens, Scrooge is a “Mind Domain” character because he is driven by a fixed attitude of selfishness. The ghosts are “Universe Domain” character because they are stuck in a fixed situation – their own ethereal condition that cannot directly effect the world of men.

One magnitude of detail deeper in the Dramatica chart we find that the overall Class of Universe is sub-divided into four smaller aspects: Past, Present, Future, and Progress. And how appropriate (or predictive) that the ghosts of “A Christmas Carol” are Past,
Present, and Future. And what about “Progress”? Why it is the ghost of Marley who argues to Scrooge that he forges his chain link by link, extending it day by day with every selfish act. His message is one of Progress which is why it makes the collective argument of all four ghosts feel complete.

In conclusion, one must establish perspective in order to create meaning and therefore message. The Dramatica chart provides a map of topic categories to which we can apply the four essential points of view and thereby full develop our story perspectives.

At the heart of Dramatica’s story engine is a matrix of story points: The Dramatica Chart of Story Elements (which is not unlike the Periodic Table of Elements in chemistry). You can use it to create the chemistry of your characters, plot, theme, and genre.  (Download a free copy of the Dramatica Chart in PDF)

 The Dramatica chart contains all the psychological processes that must exist in a Story Mind. In fact, every human mind shares all of these processes. What makes one mind different from another is not the kinds of mental activities in each, but rather how the activities are interconnected.

 Just as in chemistry, various elements might be combined to create an infinite number of compounds, so too the dramatic elements of the Dramatica Chart can be combined to create virtually all valid psychological structures for stories.

 At its most simple level, the chart can be seen as having four principal areas (called classes): Universe, Physics, Mind, and Psychology. These represent the only four fundamental kinds of problems that might exist in stories (or in life!)

Universe is an external state

Physics, an external process

Mind is an internal state

Psychology, an internal process.

Essentially, any problem you might confront can be classed as either an external or internal state or process.

Universe then is our external environment. Anything that is a problematic fixed situation falls into this category. For example, being stuck in a well, held captive, or missing a leg are all situational “Universe Class” problems.

Physics is about activities that cause us difficulty. Honey bees dying off across the country, the growth of a militant organization, and cancer are all “Physics Class” problems.

(Note that if having cancer is a problem – such as people being prejudiced against you because you are cancerous – that is a situation or Universe problem because it is a steady or fixed state: a condition. But if it is the spread of the disease that we see as a problem, then it is a Physics-style activity problem. It is important not to assume content in a story falls into a particular class until you determine how that content is actually problematic.)

Mind is the internal equivalent of Universe – a fixed internal state. So, a prejudice, bias, fixation, or fixed attitude would be the source of problems in a “Mind Class” story.

Psychology is the Physics of the mind – an internal process. A “Psychology Class” problem would be someone who makes a series of assumptions leading to difficulties, or someone whose self-image and confidence are eroding.

(Again, note that having a negative self-image is a state of “Mind” whereas the erosion of one’s self-image is a process that must be stopped or even reversed, and would therefore be a Psychology problem.)

In stories, as in real life, we cannot solve a problem until we can accurately define it. So, the first value of the Dramatica Chart is to present us with a tool for determining into which of the four fundamental categories of problems our particular issue falls.

Now you may think that the terms, Universe, Physics, Mind, and Psychology, are a little antiseptic, perhaps a bit scientific to be applying to something as intuitive as the writing of stories.

Back when we were naming the concepts in the Dramatica Theory, we were faced with a choice – to either use extremely accurate words that might be a bit off-putting or to use easily accessible words that weren’t quite on the mark.

Ultimately we decided that the whole point of the theory was to provide an accurate way of predicting the necessary components of a sound story structure. Therefore, we elected to use the terms that were more accurate, even if they required a little study, rather than to employ a less accurate terminology that could be grasped right away.

Returning to the chart itself, it appears as four towers, each representing one of the four classes and each class having four levels. As we go down the levels from top to bottom we subdivide each kind of problem into smaller and smaller components, thereby refining our understanding of the very particular kind of problem at the core of any given story.

The top level, being the most broad, describes the structural aspects of genre. Genre (in the traditional sense) is largely a storytelling or content-driven realm. But genre is not immune to structure. In fact, as we shall see down the line genre must be built upon a solid structural foundation or it will flounder.

The second level, slightly more refined, deals with the dramatic components that are most associated with plot, especially at act resolution. That’s an odd term, so let’s define it. An act is the largest building block of plot. Each act has a particular kinds of concern that defines all the action that goes on in that act. For example, one act may deal with looking for a lost object, the next act with trying to obtain it, and the last act with bringing it back against steep odds.

“Resolution” is a term we use in Dramatica to describe how big a dramatic component is. The Genre “classes” cover the whole story since each story falls within a particular genre. But the acts change over the course of the story, shifting from one concern in a given act to another in the next. Therefore, we say that the components of the Dramatica Chart in the second or act level, are of a smaller resolution. Just as the genre level components are called “classes,” the act level components are referred to as “types.” So, we have classes of genres and types of acts.

The third level has the greatest structural impact on a story’s theme. Each of these components is called a Variation, as in “variations of a theme.” The Variations are of an even smaller resolution, and therefore provide more detailed information about the story’s problem.

A story’s thematic conflicts can be mapped in the Variation level. Story-wise, variations are sequence sized. “Sequences” are smaller than acts and are usually comprised of a number of scenes that deal with a particular moral issue or ethical topic.

The fourth and lowest level of the chart provides the greatest resolution on a story’s problem. It is comprised of components called Elements (in reference to their indivisible nature) and has the greatest structural impact on characters.

It is here in the Element Level that we find the plethora of human traits that make up our motivations or drives. It is the interaction among characters representing these various drives that constitute the scenes of our story. So, we say that the Element Level is at scene resolution.

So, like nested dolls, scenes fall within sequences within acts within a genre. In this manner, the structure of a story can be understood not as a simple sequence as one would find in a tale, but rather as a complex mechanism built of wheels within wheels.

I’ll provide a full description of the chart and its workings later on, but for now, picture it as a cross between a three dimensional chess set, a Rubik’s Cube, and the Periodic Table of Elements, which can be used to build perfect story structures.