Category Archives: Dramatica

The Story Mind (Part 6) – Audience Reach

Excerpted from the Book “Dramatica Unplugged“
By Melanie Anne Phillips, Co-creator of Dramatica

Who is your audience? And for that matter, does a single story structure affect all audience members equally? Let’s find out….

In Dramatica, there are some story points that deal directly with the structure and others that pertain to the collective impact of a number of story points. Audience Reach is one of these combined dramatics. It is also called an Audience Story

Point because it is concerned with the kind of reach the story has into the audience.

Specifically, it describes whether your readers/audience will empathize or sympathize with your Main Character. Empathy is when your readers/audience identify with your Main Character. Sympathy is when they care about your main character but feel more as if they are standing right behind the character, rather than in its shoes.

When audience members empathize, they suspend their disbelief and emotionally occupy the Main Character’s position in the story. When audience members sympathize, it seems to them as if the emotional maelstrom of the story revolves around the Main Character, making him or her the Central character of the story.

Audience Reach is determined by the effects of two story points: Story Limit and Main Character Mental Sex. Limit describes the story dynamics that force the story to a conclusion. Mental Sex describes whether your Main Character thinks like a man or a woman.

Story Limit has two variations – Time Lock and Option Lock. Time Lock stories are like the motion picture “48 Hours” in which a police detective has exactly two days before he has to return to jail a convict who is the key to solving another crime. When the time is up, the story reaches its conclusion.

Option Lock stories are similar to Disney’s “Beauty and the Beast” in which a transformed prince must make someone love him before the last petal falls from an enchanted rose or he will remain a beast forever. When the last petal falls, the conclusion is reached.

Main Character Mental Sex also has two variations – Male and Female. Mental Sex does not refer to the physical gender of the Main Character but only to its mental gender. (Because none of us truly know how the opposite sex thinks, authors often can’t help but write all of their characters as thinking in their own sex, regardless of the character’s physical gender.)

Examples can be seen in the motion picture “Aliens” in which the Main Character (Ripley) was actually written for a man and changed only the character’s dialog when the role was cast with Sigourney Weaver. Alternatively, in the movie “The Hunt for Red October”, Jack Ryan is a female mental sex Main Character as he solves problems intuitively and emotionally, rather than by observation and logic. As one might expect, male and female readers/audience members empathize or sympathize with a Main Character for different reasons.

For men, they will empathize with Male Mental Sex Main Characters and sympathize with Female Mental Sex Main Characters, regardless of which limit is

invoked – time lock or option lock. Conversely, women will empathize in an option lock but only sympathize in a time lock, regardless of what mental sex the Main Character possesses.

Why the difference? Well, the reasons are in the physiology of the brain, and too deep to go into here. If you are really interested, you’ll find a complete description of what causes the mental differences between mean and women later in this program in a lesson devoted specifically to mental sex.

Still, for a quick visual, imagine a plain old clock face. Imagine that men’s minds sit at noon, and women at 9 o’clock. Thinking clockwise, men see women as being three quarters of an hour away. Women see men as only being one quarter of an hour away. This serves to illustrate that the sexes really aren’t opposite, but are more accurately sideways to each other.

When men and women converse, they are often speaking apples and oranges and are not really in conflict or disagreement. They simply don’t have a means of seeing things the way the other sex does. So, it is not surprising that men’s empathies might be drawn to those who think like them (also at noon on the clock) while women (seeing men as just one quarter hour away) would be more affected by the situation in which the main character finds itself. For women, and option lock is more like the way they think – trying to balance all the elements at once, just as in their own lives. But time locks (to women) are just deadlines and seem imposed from the outside rather than open to some degree of control.

Okay, let’s put that behind and see what we can do with this information.

If you want to create a story in which both men and women empathize with the Main Character, then you will want to limit your story with an option lock but employ a Male Mental Sex Main Character. On the other hand, if you want to explore a despicable Main Character, you may not want to disturb your readers/audience by making them empathize with such a cad. In such a case, you can ensure your readers/audience will only sympathize by writing a Female Mental Sex Main Character in a time lock story. The danger is that since nobody empathizes, nobody really gets into the story and it doesn’t sell very well.

Naturally, the other two combinations can also exist – Men Empathize (Male Mental Sex) and women Sympathize (Time Lock) or Women Empathize (Option Lock) and men only sympathize (Female Mental Sex).

You can predict whether a book or movie will attract more men or women, just by seeing who empathizes. Hollywood tends to favor Male Mental Sex / Option Lock stories most often. This has the entire audience empathizing, and therefore (since far more mixed mental sex couples go to movies that single individuals or same mental sex couples) it ensures the largest percentage of the audience is personally involved in the movie, thereby increasing its box office (all artistic merit aside).

Also from Melanie Anne Phillips…

The Story Mind (Part 5) – The Grand Argument Story

Excerpted from the Book “Dramatica Unplugged“
By Melanie Anne Phillips, Co-creator of Dramatica

Over the years a number of my students have asked how the Dramatica chart can possibly describe the fullness of the human experience, especially since we, as a species, seem to have an unlimited supply of issues?

The quick answer is that even in chemistry there are a limited number of elements yet they combine to create the vast variety of materials in our world. Similarly, we only have a limited number of kinds of issues; they just manifest themselves in different combinations.

But there’s an even better (or at least a more technical) explanation how the vast panorama of our hearts and minds can be captured in a chart of finite size. Bear with me on this, and fasten your mental seat belts….

It is a well-known psychological fact that short-term memory can hold seven items (+ or – 2). We have seven days in a week, seven is considered a magic or lucky number, phone numbers are seven digits (minus the area code).

Why is seven so important? And more important still, what does this have to do with story and the size of the Dramatica Chart? As described above, the Dramatica Chart is built from eight items – the four external dimensions and the four internal ones. And that’s about as big a thought as the mind can hold at one time.

As an illustration, try this thought experiment. Picture a piece of twine. Easy to do. Now, picture that twine twisted along its length like a candy-cane. Again, pretty easy. Next, imagine that twisted twine again twisted into a spiral shape like a slinky. In your mind’s eye, you can probably still see the twists on the twine itself, even while you are also seeing the length of twine wrapped into that spiral shape.

Now, take that slinky-line twine, and spiral the spiral. You know, like you used to do as a kid. You take a slinky, stretch it out, then wrap it around your leg in a spiral. At this point, though it take a bit of work, you can probably still see the candy-cane twists along the body of the twine, even while simultaneously observing the slinky shape of the overall length of the twine and the bigger spiral as it wraps around your leg.

Finally, remove your leg from the center of the largest spirals and assume the twine holds its shape. Try to go one more level and twist the spiraled spiral into a larger spiral, even while maintaining the candy cane twists on the twine itself.

If you are like most people, you’ve reached your limit. You can focus on any part of this construct and see it clearly, as well as the twists one level larger and one level smaller. But to try and picture a three dimensional object that is twisting at four different levels – well that’s seven things to consider and is the limit of short- term memory.

Go any larger and you’d be hard pressed to find someone who could see the smallest twist all the way to the largest at the same time. Theoretically, it is not possible for a mind that exists in a three dimensional brain to go that far.

Why? Well, we have four dimensions in the external world and four dimensions in the inner world. (They really all exist in our minds, but we have four kinds of external measurements we can take to see how things are – Mass, Energy, Space, and Time – and four internal measurements available – Knowledge, Thought, Ability, and Desire.

This gives us eight places to look. But, at any given moment, our mind – the seat of our consciousness – has to be somewhere. So, our “self” sits on one of these areas to look at the other seven. That gives us one place to be and seven slots we can fill with information. And that is why our short-term memory is just seven items.

Getting back to the Dramatica Chart, because it provides all eight dimensions, it can produce with it as much detail as we can hold in our minds at one time without losing track of the big picture.

Recall our discussion of how a story structure needed to include all the ways the audience might consider to solve the story’s problem in order to prove to their satisfaction that the author’s purported solution is the best of the worst. What is to keep the audience from coming up with an infinite number of alternatives? Simply, for any given problem, the capacity of the audience mind is limited by the same seven dimensions (plus one to stand on) factor. If you satisfy all the potential solutions within those eight dimensions, you satisfy the audience because anything larger or small that goes beyond that scope would seem unreasonable or not pertinent.

In Dramatica Theory we call this limit, the Size of Mind Constant. And, we call any story that covers all the reasonable ways in which a given problem might be solved a Grand Argument Story.

Author’s arguments may be insufficient or may be overstated, but a Grand Argument story is one in which the argument is just big enough and no bigger than necessary to cover all reasonable alternatives as defined by the size of mind constant.

And that limit? Well, that’s what determines that the Dramatica Chart is four towers, each with four levels.

So leaving theory behind (for quite a while we hope) all you need to do as an author is explore your story’s problem to full extent of the Dramatica Chart and your argument will be exactly the right size to convince any audience.

Also from Melanie Anne Phillips…

Introducing the Story Mind

Watch the entire 113 part series free on our web site…

Transcript of the soundtrack from this video:

Dramatica Unplugged

Class One: Introduction

1.1 Introducing the Story Mind

Let’s look at the central concept in Dramatica: the Story Mind. It’s what makes Dramatica unique. Dramatica says that every complete story is an analogy to a single human mind trying to deal with an inequity.

That’s quite a mouthful, but what it really means is that every complete story is a model of the mind’s problem solving process. In fact, it says that all the elements of the story are actually elements of a single human mind – not the author’s mind, not the audience’s mind but a mind created symbolically in the process of communicating across a medium to reach an audience. It is a mind for the audience to look at, understand and then occupy. That’s the story’s structure itself.

Characters, plot, theme and genre, are not just a bunch of people doing things with value standards in an overall setting. Rather, characters, plot, theme and genre are different families of thought that go on in a Story Mind, in fact that go on in our own minds, made tangible, made incarnate, so that the audience might look into the mechanisms of their own minds – see them from the outside looking in – and thereby get a better understanding of the problem solving process, so when a particular kind of problem comes up in their lives, they’ll have a better idea how to deal with it.

Also from Melanie Anne Phillips…

What Is Dramatica?

What is Dramatica?

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

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

The Story Mind

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

—Melanie Anne Phillips

Dramatica Do-er vs. Be-er

A Dramatica student asks:

In Dramatica theory, are all Objective Characters be-ers and all Subjective Characters do-ers?

My reply:

No, there is no assignment of be-er or do-er to objective characters at all. Objective Characters, such as the archetypes, are all defined by their functions only, when seen in terms of structure.

Naturally, in storytelling, you layer on a personality for each objective character to help the readers or audience connect to them as real people. And that personality, which is independent of structure, could be a do-er or a be-er, but it is not assigned by structure.

Conversely, Subjective Characters, of which there are two: Main and Influence, will be do-ers or be-ers, based on which domain you have chosen for them in your structural storyform. Universe (Situation) and Physics (Activities) are both externally focused areas of exploration, so if your Main character resides in one of these, he or she will be a do-er as a result.

And, since the Influence Character is diametrically opposed in outlook to the Main Character, they will be positioned in the domain opposite that (diagonally) to the Main Character. So, if your Main Character is in one of the external domains, your Influence Character will be in one of the internal domains: Mind (Attitude) or Psychology (Manner of Thinking), which will make it a be-er.

So, to sum up, only the two subjective characters are structurally mandated as be-ers or do-ers, they will be opposites.

—Melanie Anne Phillips

Can There Be More Than One Protagonist In A Story?

A writer recently asked:

I write Western genre screenplays. And I love to use Dramatica Pro. In Western Genre sometime I will run into more than one protagonist more than one antagonist . I name my antagonist in Dramatica Pro and then when I try to name another antagonist it will not allow me to go any further down the road in story. Will there be another advanced software in Dramatica Pro that will allow me to name more than one antagonist and let me go on with my story and continue to use Dramatica Pro?

Here’s my reply:

There is only one protagonist and antagonist in a story, but there may be more than one story in a single book or movie.

The protagonist is defined as the character who is leading the effort to achieve the Story Goal, and the antagonist is trying to prevent him from doing that.

The protagonist and antagonist represent initiative and reticence in our own minds – the force to effect change and the force to prevent change or to embrace or return to the status quo.

There can be a protagonistic group where, as an assembly they all function as a single protagonist, but if there were just two protagonists, they would both have to be the prime mover of the quest to the goal and they both can’t be, by definition. Or, each could have a separate Story Goal that affected everyone, but then you really have two stories.

In a nut shell, here’s why narrative works that way. Narratives reflect how people interact in real life. As individuals, we all have a sense of initiative, reason, emotion, skepticism and so on. And in solving personal problems we use all of these to try and find the solution.

But when we come together as a group toward a common purpose, we quickly self-organize into specialities, where one person becomes the Voice of Reason, another as the resident Skeptic and another as the Prime Operative who pushes everyone else forward toward completion of the group’s goal.

The “specialists” are represented in narrative as the archetypes, and each is just one facet of all the traits an individual has, yet each function just as we do in groups, focusing on just one aspect of the problem solving so that, collectively, the group can go into more detail and thought than if we were all general practitioners, each trying to be a jack of all trades (as we have to do for our personal issues.

Now the protagonist in the group – the one leading the effort – does not have to also be the main character. The main character is the group’s identity – the character who represents the spirit of the group – its personality in a sense. Sometimes the leader of the effort is also heart and soul of the group, in which case you have a typical hero who not only does the job, but also has to grapple with a personal issue – a decision about his own value standards that can make or break the overall effort depending on how he decides to see things, often in a leap of faith, as when Scrooge changes in A Christmas Carol.

So, only one protagonist or antagonist or reason archetype or emotion archetype, etc. per narrative.

BUT, often stories have sub-narratives built around some of the archetypes. Everyone has a story of their own. And so does every character in an overall story. We just don’t always choose to sell those “sub-stories” because we want to focus on the principals and not clutter things up.

But, you can take any character and create a sub-story around a personal goal in which he is the protagonist and main character in his own personal narrative that is not at all the issue the whole group is dealing with. This sub-story might be completely independent of the main story, or it might be hinged so that events in a character’s personal narrative are so potent than it causes the character to step out of his function in the overall story in a surprising way.

After all, our own personal narratives tend to be more important to us than the narrative of the overall group with whom we are associated.

So, with sub-stories, it can seem as if there are two protagonists in the story and even two antagonists, but they aren’t really in the same story but in a sub-story in the same overall “world” you’ve created in your story telling – your story universe.

I hope this helps provide some new ways in which to think about your characters and plot.

Let me know if you have any additional questions and may the Muse be with you!

Melanie Anne Phillips
Co-creator Dramatica

Story Structure Help for the Ukraine

A writer in the Ukraine recently wrote me with some questions about the Dramatica theory of narrative structure. First, his questions (indented) and then my answers below each.

Hello!

I’m a big “Dramatica” fan from Ukraine!

Recently I was struggling with understanding some “Dramatica” aspects and especially with translating “Dramatica Dictionary”.

Can you, please, help me? Unfortunately, I haven’t found answers to my questions on your web-site.

Hello to the Ukraine!

Nice to meet you.

Here are some answers to your questions. I’ve put my answers right below each question for easy reference:

1. I agree, that we need Overall Story as bird’s eye view, Main Character Storyline to get to know more about MC, to sympathize and even empathize with him, to see the Story through his eyes nd of course we need MC/IC Storyline to see the battle between two alternate Approaches and Worldviews.

But I can’t understand one thing – why do we need separate IC Storyline? I thought we are interested in IC as long (and as much) as he has direct connection and influence on MC. Yes, we need Impact Character to show MC an alternative way, but having separate IC Line – is it so necessary?

Here are some thoughts on that. First of all, in the mind, the MC represents our sense of self – our identity – “I think therefore I am.” The IC represents the person we might become if we decide to change. And so, in the course of our internal exploration as to whether to retain our identity exactly as it is or to alter it in regard to a particular issue represented by the IC we need to know as much about the IC as we can, in order to make our best educated guess as to whether to stick to our guns or alter our outlook.

Also, the four throughlines represent I (mc), You (ic), we (mc vs. ic) and They (OS). We need all four points of view to understand the environment in which we make our decisions.

2. If we have a Story where there are Main Character and Protagonist (separate characters) – MC goes through a mental emotional journey and decides: he will Change or remain Steadfast. But does Protagonist go through such inner journey or he just goes from Event to Event in a Story (goes only through Outer Journey)? Protagonist doesn’t need to choose between Change and Steadfastness, right?

Correct. Protagonist is only concerned with achieving the goal, though he or she may have very personal and passionate reasons for doing so. But, they are not internally conflicted and do not question their chosen point of view on the matter.

3. When we separate Main Character from Protagonist – does Main Character still have a Goal? Or the main Story Goal is only in hands of Protagonist?

The MC still has a personal goal – it is the kind of angst or anguish they are trying to overcome. The MC’s Concern and Issue and Problem give us some indications as to the nature of that angst. But, keep in mind that the MC, if not the protagonist, must be one of the other characters. If you are using archetypes, the MC could be any of the other 7 archetypes. This is important because the MC’s choice to change or remain steadfast is the lynchpin between the personal issue and story goal that the protagonist is after. The way the MC chooses will determine if the Protagonist finds success or failure, even if the MC is not directly involved in that effort.

4. In the Story Climax there is a battle between Protagonist and Antagonist. But when we have separate Main Character – should he also be involved in this battle? Or he has his own – battle between him and Impact Character?

You suspect correctly, the MC will have a battle of morals or outlooks with the IC in the climax. BUT because the MC will also be one of the objective characters, in that role the “player” that is both MC and an objective character may be involved with the Protagonist in the battle with the Antagonist.

5. If we have a Story with separate Protagonist character and Main Character and also have Complex characters with swapped characteristics like in “Wizard of Oz” – is there a possibility, that Protagonist and Main Character would seem like cardboard cutouts in comparison? Can we accidentally make our supporting character More Interesting than our Main Character or Protagonist? The Only way we can make Main Character complex – is to combine him with Protagonist? The Only way we can make Protagonist complex – is to combine him with Main Character?

Well, any characters can swap characteristics, so if you want a complex “player” then assign the role of MC to a complex objective character. Still, consider that the MC gets a whole class by himself and so does the IC. Also, the MC/IC conflict gets a whole class. But the OS only gets one class and that is where all the objective characters live. So, just by the set-up, stories are designed to give far more exploration to the MC, IC, and their relationship than we find in the OS. You’ll find that this depth of personal, internal exploration makes the MC plenty complex, no matter if their objective player role is archetypal or complex.

6. What came first: Action or Decision? For me it’s really hard to judge. It’s like asking “What came first: Chicken or Egg?”. They are so interconnected. I thought that what if the answer is hiding in Inciting Incident – what Event pushes the Story Forward? If we answer this – we’ll know: Action or Decision, right?

That’s pretty spot on. But, you’ll find that the inciting incident of Action or Decision keeps repeating itself throughout the story. In other words, the inciting incident (action or decision) will occur prompting a response of the remaining item. For example, if an earthquake happens, it prompts decisions about what to do next. If a princess DECIDES to marry someone by the end of the week, everyone springs into action to win her hand. But, once the inciting incident has been dealt with, immediate potential is neutralized. But then, a new inciting incident will crop up requiring a new response. In this manner, .the “driver” will always be the same, throughout the story – in other words, the causality between action and decision is maintained.

The other key point is that whatever the driver is at the beginning that sets things off in a tizzy (action or decision), the plot will be brought to a conclusion by the same driver as the inciting incident. So, action driven stories will end through an action taken at the end that stops the domino effect of the causality. Similarly, decision driven stories will end through a decision that ends that causality.

But that’s just my assumption. For example, first scene in movie “Armageddon” (1997) shows that Meteor “Shower” destroys satellite = Action. Then they are talking about it and trying to develop a plan for rescuing Earth = Decision. Then they arrive to the oil derrick, train men to be an astronauts = Action and so on. So, maybe, in this movie Action is primary.

You pretty much have it. Even though the Bruce Willis character “decides” to sacrifice his life by setting off the bomb, it is the action of the bomb exploding that ends the causal runaway domino effect.

In detective story (like Colombo, Poirot, Sherlock) first we see the Murder = Action and then we see Investigation = Decision.

Yes. And it is an action that is required at the end as well.

In “Ocean’s Eleven” during the whole movie they are trying to develop a plan of the robbery – so it’s Decision Story? But there are plenty of Action (actually performing what they planned).

Yes – keep in mind that the choice of action or decision only determines the causal order of what drives the story. How MUCH of each is in a story is completely up to you and your storytelling. So, a story that begins with a decision, such as The Godfather, can have a tremendous amount of action in it but it ends in the decision to accept Michael as the new Don.

Then what are Decision-movies? Maybe “12 Angry Men”? The whole movie is a Decision-making process. But Inciting Incident was the Murder – Action again.

Well, we never see the murder in 12 Angry Men. It has already happened in the back story. The story begins with the charge to come to a decision. Still, you have to be careful. A story with a decision as the goal does not necessarily mean that it begins and ends with a decision. You really have to look at the back and forth alternation of decision and action to see which one triggers a sequence and which one wraps it up: which creates a potential and which neutralizes that potential.

Yes, I remember that when deciding A or D we don’t need to look at how much A or D there are in a Story.

Indeed. In fact you not only don’t need to look at that, you shouldn’t.

But what is the best, quick and accurate way to identify A or D then?

Look for the moments when a story seems like all the forward momentum has been halted or all the potential has been resolved or all the momentary frenzy has been satisfied. What satisfied it – an action or decision? And what throws another monkey wrench in the story forcing the characters to respond – an action or a decision?

7. Can the Contagonist slow down the Protagonist by accident, can C even not know that he’s doing it? Or he should always be aware about his function and be consciously willing to slow down the Protagonist?

Objective characters, like the protagonist, antagonist and contagonist, are defined by their function in the story. They are defined about how the “work,” not by their opinion of themselves. For example, you could have someone who prides himself on being logical but is actually making all his decisions based on passion. This would be the Emotion archetype, not the Reason archetype for though he things of himself as Reason, his actual function is as passion.

Objective character are objective because we seen them from an objective point of view, like a general on a hill watching a battle. You identify them by their function in the story, not by their awareness of non-awareness of that function.

8. Who can be an Impact Character in a Story:

– Love Interest?

– Sidekick?

– Guardian?

– Contagonist?

All of the above. Any of the Objective Characters can be the IC. Objective characters are identified by role, IC (and MC) are identified by point of view. You can attach a point of view to any of the Objective charactrs.

Seems like each of then can be IC.

Yep.

9. What is the difference between Preconditions and Prerequisites? What are real-life examples (or from movies)? Is it like: if I want to become a student of Oxford, for example, I need to know English not lower than a certain level (this is Precondition). And for this I need to take some necessary steps (Prerequisites) like watching more movies without translation, engage with English tutor or even living in UK for some time to listen to the native speakers. Is my understanding correct?

Best way to think of it is prerequisites are logistically necessary to advance the effort toward the goal. But preconditions are only necessary because someone insists those things are added on. For example, to meet one of the requirements of a goal, the protagonist needs a boat to get across a river. There’s only on person who has a boat and he will let the protagonist use it if the protagonist will take his daughter along. So, the boat is the prerequisite, the daughter is the precondition.

10. What is the difference between Inaction and Protection? It’s the same for me. What real-life or movie example illustrates these terms?

Protection can be like building up defenses or standing between danger and someone else or fighting to keep harm from coming to something or someone. Inaction is not doing anything at all. But, sometimes, just standing by, as in passive resistance, can be a tool for change for it causes forces to change directions to go around you into a new course.

11. What is the difference between Proven and Unproven? It also seems the same for me. Is it just shifted emphasis? Like first i concentrate on what is proven and make my assumptions and decisions based on it. But then I look at clues and shady relationships that are still unproven and try to find evidence to prove they really exist.

Proven and unproven are ways of evaluating. Those focusing on Proven seek to build an understanding based on what is actually known, leaving out anything that is not yet certain. Those focusing on Unproven seek to widen consideration to what might be since it has not yet been ruled out.

“We have proven he was in the same city as each of the three murders at the same time they were committed.” “Sure, and so were 10,000 other people. What you haven’t proven is why he was there.”

Sorry for long letter. I just want to figure out “Dramatica” and, hopefully, successfully use it to make full Stories.

No problem. Always happy to help a seeker.

Thank you for your time and can’t wait to read answers)))

Enjoy!

Melanie
Storymind

What Good Is Dramatica?

Chris Huntley and I developed a theory of story structure back in the early 1990’s. Our theory was all about the relationships among structural story points – like a Rubik’s cube of story structure. We programmed those relationships – that cube of story – into a software program called Dramatica where they became something we call the “Story Engine,” and it is not like any other tool for story.

Basically, you answer questions about the kind of structure you want for your story, and behind the scenes, the Story Engine adjusts the relationships among all the story points of your potential structure accordingly.

As you answer each question, it tightens up your structure a little more until you reach a point where all the other questions are automatically answered because your previous questions have enough influence to lock the structure.

You can answer the questions in any order you like, starting with the ones most important to you on a given story, and in this way, your story structure always reflects your intent as an author, yet is always complete and consistent.

Simple concept, but it requires a bit of learning about the story points, the questions and their implications for your story.

If you are more of an intuitive writer, you may find it a little too specific, but if you are looking for some guidance or a framework for your story that provides form, not formula, then Dramatica is probably just what you are looking for.

Like all our products for writers, it comes with a risk-free 90 Day return policy, so if it doesn’t work with your writing style, you can get just ask for your money back.

Origins of the Dramatica Theory of Narrative Structure

By Melanie Anne Phillips

Many people have asked how we came up with the Dramatica Theory. Well, it didn’t happen all at once. In fact, it was a three year full-time effort, 8 hours a day. In going through my archives, I just discovered four hours of recordings we made in 1991 to document our very first attempt at a “complete” theory – kind of a unified field theory of story.

Of course, the theory continued to evolve for another three years until we finally published our findings. So, the Dramatica you know today, is quite different in many ways than what you will hear on this recordings. Still, they provide a checkpoint right in the middle of development – the equivalent of a “paper trail” that documents how we got from our original view of story to the model of narrative structure we ultimately created.

So, here for the curious and/or for posterity are all four hours of audio, unedited, in mp3 format, divided into 8 parts. Enjoy!

Origins of the Dramatica Theory – Part 1 of 8

Origins of the Dramatica Theory – Part 2 of 8

Origins of the Dramatica Theory – Part 3 of 8

Origins of the Dramatica Theory – Part 4 of 8

Origins of the Dramatica Theory – Part 5 of 8

Origins of the Dramatica Theory – Part 6 of 8

Origins of the Dramatica Theory – Part 7 of 8

Origins of the Dramatica Theory – Part 8 of 8