Category Archives: Dramatica
The New Dramatica for Macintosh is Finally Here!
Ten years in development since the release of Dramatica Pro 4 comes the next generation of story structuring and story development software for Macintosh: Dramatica Story Expert!
Built around the same patented Story Engine, Dramatica Story Expert is bursting with new tools and features that will once again revolutionize the process of story creation for novelists, screenwriters and playwrights.
Visit the Dramatica Story Expert Product Page to learn all about the new and enhanced features!
Upgrade for just $69.95
Full Version for $169.95
Windows version expected in Spring 2013
Beyond Dramatica – a new free eBook by Dramatica co-creator Melanie Anne Phillips
Introducing a new free eBook by Dramatica co-creator Melanie Anne Phillips that explores how insights from the Dramatica Theory of Story can be applied to real world psychology, both for the individual and for society.
Click here to download “Beyond Dramatica” for free in PDF
Click here to download “Beyond Dramatica” Kindle format for $0.99
From the Preface:
In 1994, the book Dramatica: A New Theory of Story was first unveiled to the writing community and almost instantly revolutionized the way authors understood and constructed stories. Since then, its techniques have been employed by Pulitzer Prize winning authors, academy award winning writers and directors, and producers of some of the most innovative series on television.
Melanie Anne Phillips, co-creator of the Dramatica theory, has written hundreds of articles describing Dramatica’s concepts and their application to practical story development. But Dramatica is more than just a writer’s tool to construct fictional stories; by its very nature it has implications in the realm of human psychology at large. This book gathers together some of the most insightful articles by Melanie on the application of Dramatica to the real world.
Assembled and edited by Dramatica expert Sandy Stone, this collection has been organized to provide useful new perspectives on how human thought functions, both individually and societally.
So, put away your preconceptions and prepare to have your eyes opened to a whole new approach to some of the most intriguing questions of our time.
Featured articles include: Storyforms in the Real World and the Mobius Doughnut, Fractal Psychology in the Real World, Narrative Space in the Real World, Dramatica and the Brain, Dramatica Theory Application on World Problems, al-Awlaki, the “Uncanny Valley” and Writing Empathetic Characters, Watson and Dramatica: Building an Artificial Mind, and more!
Dramatic Quads & Dramatic Pairs
In each quad of Elements, we find not only Dynamic (diagonal) Pairs, but horizontal and vertical pairs as well. Horizontal Elements are called Companion Pairs, and vertical Elements are Dependent Pairs. Each kind of pair describes a different kind of relationship between the Elements, and therefore between the characters that represent them.
In addition to the three types of pairs, we can look at each Element as a separate component and compare it to the overall nature of the quad itself. This Component approach describes the difference between any given Element and the family of Elements in which it resides (quad). Therefore, the degree of individuality the characters represent within the “group” can be explored.
Dynamic Pairs describe Elements with the greatest opposition to one another. Whenever two opposing forces come together they will create either a positive or negative relationship. They can form a synthesis and create something greater than the sum of the parts or they can simply tear away at each other until nothing is left (destructive). Within a quad, one of the Dynamic Pairs will indicate a positive relationship, the other a negative one. Which is which depends upon other story dynamics.
Companion Pairs contain the Elements that are most compatible. However, just being compatible does not preclude a negative relationship. In a positive Companion Pair, characters will proceed along their own paths, side by side. What one does not need they will offer to the other (positive impact). In a negative Companion Pair, one character may use up what the other needs. They are not against each other as in a negative Dynamic Pair, but still manage to interfere with each other’s efforts (negative impact).
Dependent Pairs are most complementary. In a positive sense, each character provides strengths to compensate for the other’s weaknesses (cooperation). Together they make a powerful team. In its negative incarnation, the Dependent Pair Relationship has each character requiring the other in order to proceed (codependency).
Components describe the nature of the Elements in relationship to the overall quad. On the one hand, the individual characters in a quad can be a group that works together (interdependency). The group is seen to be greater than the individual characters that comprise it, at the risk of overwhelming the individuality of its members. This is contrasted by identifying the disparate nature of each character in the quad (independency). Seen this way, the characters are noted for their distinguishing characteristics at the risk of losing sight of shared interests.
Dynamic Relationships are the most familiar to writers, simply because they generate the most obvious kind of conflict. Companion and Dependent Pairs are used all the time without fanfare, as there has previously been no terminology to describe them. Components are useful to writers because they allow characters in groups to be evaluated in and out of context.
By constructing characters with thought and foresight, an author can use the position of Elements in the Chess Set to forge relationships that are Dynamic in one dimension while being Companion and Dependent in others. Characters created with Dramatica can represent both the structural Elements of the Story Mind’s problem solving techniques and the dynamic interchange between those techniques.
The Purpose of Stories
To convince ourselves (and others) that our actions are justified, we say things like, “This is going to hurt me more than it’s going to hurt you,” “It’s for your own good,” I had to teach him a lesson,” “She had it coming,” I had no other choice,” “I couldn’t help myself,” “There was nothing I could do,” “It was the right thing to do,” “The end justifies the means,” etc. Each of these statements tries to imply that even though feeling says this is wrong, reason makes a stronger case that it is right (or vice versa).
Whenever the “proper” response is unclear, the legitimacy of our actions is open to interpretation. If there were a way to stand outside of it all and take a truly objective view, we could see absolutely which actions were justifiable and which were not. Unfortunately, we are not afforded this objective view in real life. So, we create stories to try and approximate the objective truth.
Using Dramatica Example Stories
Dramatica Pro ships with 68 complete example stories ranging from “Hamlet” to “Star Wars” and including books, movies, teleplays and stage plays. Each of the Dramatica Story Example files loads up in Dramatica as if you had written it in Dramatica yourself. In other words, each example file is a complete analysis of all the story points and descriptions in that story, in order to illustrate how you should go about creating and illustrating your own story in Dramatica.
One at a time, load story examples that are similar to the kinds of story you want to tell. Once you have viewed all the examples you want to explore at this time, then open a new blank file from the file menu and begin creating your own story, based on what you’ve learned from the examples.
The best way to begin building stories with Dramatica is in the StoryGuide – the upper left icon on the Dramatica desktop. It takes you step by step through the whole process of creating and illustrating a story in Dramatica. It also has three levels of complexity so, for new users or shorter stories, you can use the smaller list of questions to start with. You can always switch to the other levels of complexity at any time in order to add more details or depth to your story.
Later, when you are experienced in the Dramatica process, there are many powerful tools you’ll want to explore directly, outside of the StoryGuide path. They can be used at any time, and you can switch back and forth from the StoryGuide to the other features whenever you like. No matter where you answer questions or manipulate your story in Dramatica, all the information goes to the central Story Engine so a change made anywhere will instantly update throughout the software to every other area.
More Ways to Use Example Files
Dramatica’s story examples also show up throughout the software to help you make choices about your story. One of the most powerful places is in the StoryGuide. Most question screens in the StoryGuid has a HelpView bar running horizontally across the middle of the right side of the screen. I has several different buttons which can provide help and inspiration for how to best answer each question for your story. One of the buttons is labeled “Examples”.
If you select a story structure point for a given question and then click on the Examples button, it will show you all the other stories in the Examples folder that share that story point with your story. By selecting different story point choices on a question, you can see different sets of example stories that share that choice, so it will help you make the proper choice for your story by giving you a feel for the kinds of stories that use each of the available story point choices.
Finally, if you want to write a story that is very much like one of the example stories, but just change it a bit to apply it to your own story concept, you can do the following:
Load the story example you want to use as the basic framework for your story. Go to the “Storytelling” menu and select “Clear Storytelling”. This will remove all the subject matter and specifics of the story example, leaving nothing but the underlying structural dramatic framework for the story. For example, “Romeo and Juliet” has almost exactly the same structural framework as “West Side Story”. The biggest difference is in the setting and specific subject matter, while the underlying dramatic structure is very much the same.
So, by removing all the specifics, you can write your own version of two lovers caught between their warring families without being derivative any more than “West Side Story” is of “Romeo and Juliet”. And, you can always choose to make changes to the structure itself using Dramatica’s Story Engine, in order to put a different spin on the familiar concept. If you choose to do this, Dramatica Story Engine will ensure that your altered version is as structurally sound as the original, even though the dramatic tensions will have been adjusted to a different kind of audience impact.
Indy… Why does the floor move?
A Dramatica user recently noticed that Elements (the smallest, most detailed story points in Dramatica) are in different arrangements at the bottom of each of the four Dormains. In other words, he was wondering why the “floor” moved. (Click here to download a PDF of the Dramatica Table of Story Elements).
Here’s my reply….
Think of each of the four Domains as four different kinds of filters through which to see the story’s problem. They look at the effects of the problem in terms of Internal and External and divide each of those realms into States and Processes, creating the four Domains – Situation (external state), Attitude (internal state), Activities (external processes), Manipulation (internal processes, psychology or manners of thinking).
By the time you look all the way down to the greatest detail at the element level at the bottom of each Domain, you are seeing the same elements because you are looking at the same central core of the problem – the event horizon of the problem, as it were. Though they are the same elements, because of the four different filters, they appear distorted. It doesn’t change their names (the nature of the elements) but the distortion changes the way they appear to group together. So, while the same elements appear at the bottom of each Domain, the way they are arranged is different due to that distortion.
Always keep in mind that you never actually see the real inequity that is at the heart of the story directly It does not appear as being any particular story point or arrangement of story points. Rather, the inequity exists in the relationships among all the story points. It is the tension created by the gravitational pull of each story point upon all the others (actually the psychological pull, which acts like gravity in a storyform) that describes the effects of that inequity. When the planets are out of alignment – essentially meaning that there is tension in the storyform map of the story mind’s psychology – then there is inequity. And it is that inequity that leads to the unwinding of the story, act by act and scene by scene, like a Rubik’s cube being turned, seeking entropy – equity – in a realignment of all the forces into a stable balance once again.
The true inequity that causes the problem sits at the center of the story, in the middle of all the story points, guiding the celestial psychological orbits of the story points not unlike the unseen black hole at the center of our galaxy. And the elements revolve around it like separate solar systems of mental processes, both logic and passion, wheels within wheels within the space-time of the mind.
Dramatica Class: Mental Sex
Dramatica: Okay, we move on to Mental Sex…
This question is not about the gender of the main Character. And, it is not about their sexual preferences, AND, it is not about masculine or feminine. It is about problem solving techniques,linear, or holistic. More often than not, if you have a male gender, they are male mental sex, and female gender is female mental sex. Sometimes this is not true. Ripley, in the original Alien, was male mental sex. In fact, the part was written for a man,they just changed the names and gender references, but kept the problem solving techniques intact.
That’s why it is so odd when she goes back for the cat! Not that a man wouldn’t go back, but just that they had not given male reasons to, they just assumed she was a woman, so she would go back,but they had created her as male mental sex.
Now, men or women can easily learn to respond in the opposite sex techniques, but underneath it all is a tendency or bias to adopt either spatial or temporal problem solving techniques.
Clarisse Starling in Silence of the Lambs is another male mental sex character, whereas, Tom Wingo, the Nick Nolte character in Prince of Tides, is Female mental sex. Again, most often, go with what you expect.
PGThomas : Wasn’t Ripley saving the cat meant to build horror suspense, regardless of “mental sex”?
Dramatica : But be aware that it will have an influence on the way your main character goes about solving the problem, not the conclusions they come to.
PGThomas : How could they have established that action for Ripley?
Dramatica : Yes, PG, that is the author’s intent, but if the action is out of place to the established character, even though it may build tension, it rings untrue.
Dan Steele : how do linear/holistic relate to spatial/temporal? not clear.
Dramatica : Well, Dan, female mental sex tries to hold it all together, male tries to pull it all together, female tries to “tune-up” the situation with leverage,male determines steps that lead to the desired outcome. And so on, women look at things holistically, because they think with the time side, men look at things in sequence, because they are using the space side to think with.
PG, all they would have needed to do, is to have Ripley have said to Jonesy, the cat, at some earlier time, that no matter what, she would never leave him.
PGThomas : Gotcha
Dramatica : Then, she would have made a commitment, and that is a male contract.
PGThomas : “Commitment” a male contract? Don’t tell my girlfriend that!
Dan Steele : But there are time sequences ie., do a then b then c; and men do that.
Dramatica : Yes, men stand on space to see time, women stand on time to see space.
William S1 : What?
Dramatica : It all goes back to inside the womb in the 12th to14th week of pregnancy…There is a flush of testosterone or estrogen over the brain of the developing fetus. Testosterone boosts serotonin, the neurotransmitter that is an exciter. Estrogen boosts dopamine, the neurotransmitter that inhibits. This does not affect the body, which is controlled by XX and XY chromosomes, but just the foundation upon which the mind is built.
Dan Steele : hmm, going to run into my resistance on these views of male/female intelligences, but not going to make issue.
PGThomas : Does this flush determine the sex of the baby, or vice versa?
Dan Steele : The stand on space to see time thing versus time to see space is too vague for me without clarification, can’t buy it
Dramatica : One sees easily the arrangement of things, and works to figure out how things are going (paths). That’s seeing logic and figuring the emotions. The other sees emotions clearly, which give meaning, but need to work to see what the mechanism is. Again, its only an influence, and training can counteract it, though not eliminate it.
PGThomas : So a male baby could conceivably get an estrogen flush? And vice versa?
Dramatica : Yes, PG, that is true.
Dan Steele : are you saying that basic difference this theory builds on is that men see objects, logic, order, and women see emotion, reasons?
Dramatica : More precisely, Dan, that is just an aspect of the theory, only one of perhaps 80 questions, and it is not exclusive, it says men see linear logic more clearly, and women see holistic logic more clearly, and they lead to different approaches to problem solving. This is always the controversial question, but we found it in our model and can’t deny it.
Dan Steele : Am still bothered by definition of “holistic logic” and the contrast. Is stereotyping people too much I think. But dropping issue now so we can move along.
William S1 : Relax… for the most part males think in male patterns, and females think in female.
Dramatica : Tell ya what Dan, I’ll email you a whole article I wrote on the subject for our newsletter, that can go into more detail than I can here.
Dan Steele : Sure, helpful.
Dramatica : How about an easy question?
PGThomas : Is it possible to have a character equally male AND female mental sex?
Dramatica : PG, when a character switches between the two, they move from problem solving to justification, And that is, in fact what hides problems from the main character, creates a blind spot, and winds up the engine of potential. Its not a sex issue at that point, just like saying things are rotten now, but the reward is worth it, or I don’t care if this leads anywhere, I’m having fun.
William S1 : Don’t we all think in some parts male and female?
Dan Steele : Ah – men tackle problems head-on, women work around them. Confrontational versus nurturing.
Dramatica : There are four levels of the mind, and this only affects one of them. The other three questions about the Main Character, create dynamics for the other three levels. What’s nice is, once you answer enough questions to determine the shape of the message your working toward, Dramatica, the software, starts to see that pattern, and limit out choices that would no longer be consistent with the direction you have chosen. Eventually, it fills in the rest of the blanks, and tells you things about your story you didn’t tell it, and the things “feel” right! This could be formula,but you can start with any question and take any path through them, so there is no bias built into the software at all.
William S1 : What impact does Dramatica have on the intuitive creative process?
Dramatica : That depends on the particular author, Willam, first of all, some writers like to use it right off the bat, to figure out their dramatics so they know where they are going. But others like to write a draft first, then go to Dramatica to look for leaks and inconsistencies. And for the “chain of consciousness” writer, since they are not consciously trying to convey any overall meaning,but are just exploring a path and leaving a trail, then Dramatica has no value to them at all.
Male vs. Female Problem Solving
All too often in stories, relationships and interchanges between characters of different sexes come off stilted, unbelievable, or contrived. In fact, since the author is writing from the perspective of only one of the two sexes, characters of the opposite sex often play more as one sex’s view of the opposite sex, rather than as truly being a character OF the opposite sex. This is because the author is looking AT the opposite sex, not FROM its point of view.
By exploring the differences in how each sex sees the world, we can more easily create believable characters of both sexes. To that end, I offer the following incident.
I was at lunch with Chris (Co-creator of Dramatica) some time ago. I had ordered some garlic bread and could not finish it. I asked the waitress if she would put it in a box to take home, and she did. On the way past the cashier, I realized that I had forgotten to take the box from the table. I said, “Rats! I forgot the bread!”
Chris said, “Go ahead and get it, we’ll wait.”
I thought for a moment and said, “No, it’s not that important.” and started to walk out.
Chris: “It’ll only take a moment.”
Me: “Yes, but I have to go all the way back, and I probably won’t eat it anyway, and it probably won’t reheat very well, and…”
Chris then said in jest, “Sounds like a bunch of excuses to me.”
In fact, they really did sound like excuses to him. But to me, the reasons I had presented to him for not going back for the bread were not rationalizations, but actually legitimate concerns.
At the heart of this difference in perspective is the difference in the way female and male brains are “soft wired”. As a result, neither women nor men can see into the heart of the other without finding a lack of coherence.
Here is a line-by-line comparison of the steps leading from having too much bread to the differing interpretations of my response to forgetting the box.
Melanie thinks:
That’s good bread, but I’m full. I might take it home, but I’m not convinced it will reheat. Also, I’ve really eaten too many calories in the last few days, I’m two pounds over where I want to be and I have a hair appointment on Wednesday and a dinner date on the weekend with a new friend I want to impress, so maybe I shouldn’t eat anymore. The kids won’t want it, but I could give it to the dog, and if I get hungry myself, I’ll have it there (even though I shouldn’t eat it if I want to lose that two pounds!) So, I guess it’s better to take it than to leave it.
Melanie says:
“Waitress, can I have a box to take the bread home?”
Chris understands Melanie to mean:
I want to take the bread home.
The balance sheet:
To me there was only a tendency toward bringing the bread home, and barely enough to justify the effort. To Chris it was a binary decision: I wanted to bring it home or not.
Melanie says:
“Rats! I forgot to bring the bread!”
Chris says:
“Go ahead and get it, we’ll wait.”
The balance sheet:
I’m thinking, “How does this change the way I feel about the situation?” Chris is thinking, “How can she solve this problem.”
Melanie thinks:
Well, I really don’t want to be tempted by it, this unexpected turn makes it easier to lose the weight. If I go back I’ll be tempted or give it to the dog. If I don’t go back I won’t be tempted, which is good because I know I usually give in to such temptations. Of course, the dog loses out, but we just bought some special treats for the dog so she won’t miss what she wasn’t expecting. All in all, the effort of going around two corners while everyone waits just so I can get an extra doggie treat and lead myself into temptation isn’t worth it.
Melanie says:
“No, its not that important.”
Chris says:
“It’ll only take a moment.”
The balance sheet:
I’m thinking that since I was right on the edge of not wanting to take it in the first place, even this little extra necessary effort is enough inconvenience to make it not a positive thing but an irritation, so I’ll just drop it and not pay even the minor price. Chris is thinking that since I made up my mind to take the bread in the first place, how is it that this little inconvenience could change my mind 180 degrees. I must be lazy or embarrassed because I forgot it.
Melanie says:
“Yes, but I have to go all the way back, and I probably won’t eat it anyway, and it probably won’t reheat very well, and…”
Chris says:
“Sounds like a bunch of excuses to me.”
The balance sheet:
I’m trying to convey about a thousand petty concerns that went into my emotional assessment that it was no longer worth going back for. Chris just hears a bunch of trumped up reasons, none of which are sufficient to change one’s plans.
I operated according to an emotional tendency to bring the bread home that was just barely sufficient to generate even the slightest degree of motivation. Chris doesn’t naturally assume motivation has a degree, thinking that as a rule you’re either motivated or you are not.
The differences between the way women and men evaluate problems lead them to see justifications in the others methods.
Making sense of each other:
Now, what does all this mean? When men look at problems, they see a single item that is a specific irritation and seek to correct it. When they look at inequities, they see a number of problems interrelated. Women look at single problems the same way, but sense inequities from a completely emotional standpoint, measuring them on a sliding scale of tendencies to respond in certain ways.
Imagine an old balance scale – the kind they used to weigh gold. On one side, you put the desire to solve the problem. That has a specific weight. On the other side you have a whole bag of things that taken altogether outweigh the desire to solve the problem. But, you can’t fit the bag on the scale (which is the same as not being able to share your whole mind with a man) so you open the bag and start to haul out the reasons – biggest one’s first.
Well, it turns out the first reason by itself is much lighter that the desire to solve the problem, so it isn’t sufficient. You pull out the next one, which is even smaller, and together they aren’t enough to tip the scales. So, you keep pulling one more reason after another out of the bag until the man stops you saying, “Sounds like a bunch of excuses to me.”
To the man, it becomes quickly obvious that there aren’t enough reasonably sized pieces in that bag to make the difference, and anything smaller than a certain point is inconsequential anyway, so what’s holding her back from solving the problem?
But the woman knows that there may be only a few big chunks, but the rest of the bag is full of sand. And all those little pieces together outweigh the desire to solve the problem. If she went ahead and solved it anyway, everything in that bag would suffer to some degree, and the overall result would be less happiness in her consciousness rather than more.
This is why it is so easy for one sex to manipulate the other: each isn’t looking at part of the picture that the other one sees. For a man to manipulate a woman, all he has to do is give her enough sand to keep the balance slightly on her side and then he can weigh her down with all kinds of negative big things because it still comes out positive overall. For a woman to manipulate a man, all she has to do is give him a few positive chunks and then fill his bag full of sand with the things she wants. He’ll never even notice.
Of course if you push too far from either side it tips the balance and all hell breaks loose. So for a more loving and compassionate approach, the key is not to get as much as you can, but to maximize the happiness of both with the smallest cost to each.
All too often, one sex will deny what the other sex once to gain leverage or to use compliance as a bargaining chip. That kind of adversarial relationship is doomed to keep both sides miserable, as long as it lasts.
But if each side gives to the other sex what is important to to the other but unimportant to themselves, they’ll make each other very happy at very little cost.
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.