Category Archives: Dramatica

Using Dramatica Theory for Interactive Fiction (IF)

My response to a Dramatica user who had questions about using Dramatica Theory for creating narratives for interactive fiction:

Here’s the gist of using Dramatica for IF (we have made a number of presentations on this to various companies over the years, but never resulting in a contract for consulting, as of yet).

At the most basic level, consider how a story appears to an audience after it is completed. It ceases to be a linear experience and becomes a networked experience in which all dramatic elements of the storyform are appreciated at once, rather than revealed over time. Further, when you separate the storytelling sequence of linearity from the story structural temporal progressions of growth, for example, you can appreciate that growth in all its stages at once, after the story has been experienced.

Once an audience leaves a story, though they may replay certain sequences in their minds, they tend to consider the story as a whole – a world in which things happened rather than a pathway that was followed.

Consider, then, the first-person player perspective in a game is not necessarily to provide experiences in a sequence that will bring the MC to the point of potential change, but rather to explore all corners of the Story World until the nature of how all the elements and dynamics at work in that particular storyform are identified and understood.

Also consider just because the player is in first person in the game does not require that the player be the main character. In many stories there is a narrator. Narrators can be passive or active. The player, by choosing in what order to explore the world is much better put in the position of narrator, the interlocutor who determines for himself or herself the order in which the components of the story world are to be explored – much as one might make multiple trips to a buffet table or select items in dim sum and choose the order in which to consume them.

Sure, if one insisted the player were the MC, then you would be locked into a linear experience of being impacted by events and by the Influence Character in a particular order. But an IF in which the player is actually the narrator, then the MC appears from time to time in the story world, having experienced things in the proper order for him to make a choice, but likely in a different order than the player. For example, the MC in the story world shows up and the player says – “Let’s work together and head up to the badlands.” The MC replies, “Already been there, just before the big explosion. Change me in ways I’d rather not talk about, but it made me realize there may be another way of looking at the morality of this whole conflict.” And then he disappears back into the battle.

In this manner, the MC is separated from the Player and can go about his journey of discovery in the proper order.

So, while eliminating the MC may be a technique (as described in some of the propaganda entries in your message thread), I feel that for IF you simply don’t want your player as the MC but definitely want him in the game with the player as self determining narrator.

But, your questions go beyond this in two specific areas: One, how does one handle multiple narratives (storyforms) within the same narrative space and, Two, what about open-system IF worlds in which there is no fixed narrative, just a fixed subject matter story world in which the narrative is either open-ended (never-ending) or is closed but constantly reorganizing itself into a different form.

As for the first question, narratives are fractal by nature (see my articles and videos on narrative psychology). Even within a single narrative there are two fractal dimensions – that of the group mind and that of the individuals within the group mind. As you know, story structure came to be because storytellers were trying to document what goes on in our heads and hearts and also how we relate to one another. Each of us has certain built-in attributes such as Reason and Skepticism (as seen in the Reason and Skeptic archetypes). We use the full complement of these to solve our individual problems. But when we come together in a group to solve or explore an issue of common interest or concern, we immediately begin to specialize so that the individual best at reasoning becomes the Voice of Reason for the group. The most skeptical becomes the group’s resident Skeptic. In this manner, all the fundamental attributes of any individual mind are replicated and represented by individuals in the group mind. In this manner, group issues are explored from all essential sides and in greater depth by the specialists than could be achieved by a group of general practitioners who are all trying to do all the jobs at the same time.

This tendency to form group minds made up of specialists is what was observed by storytellers and documented in the conventions of story structure and is also what forms the basis for the fabric and framework of social interactions.

So, the first fractal dimension is the mind of the individual that is then replicated in the second fractal dimension of the group mind. But, one is not solely a member of a single group. We have one narrative role in our business, another perhaps as a parent, or in our political party, a proud resident of a state, of the nation, or even just as a fan of a particular television program or of a rock star.

Within the narrative space of our lives, we may belong to more than one group mind and these group minds may occupy completely different areas of the narrative space, may move through the narrative space gradually shifting the subject matter with which they deal, may share a sub set of content that is affected by both, may move through each other like galaxies colliding, may pass each other close enough to alter the storyform of each almost gravitationally (dynamically) even though they never actually share the same space, and some narratives may be satellites of other narratives or may be connected in additional levels of fractal association.

On that last point, for example, one may may be a member of a clique that is part of a club that is part of a movement that is part of political organization within a state that is in a collective effort within a country. Like nested dolls, all of what is at the top is determined by all that is at the lower fractal levels, but the top also defines the largest parameters of the group identity and therefore the personal identity of all individual members at the bottom of the fractal hierarchy, while each lower dimension contributes more refined subordinate traits to the lowest level individuals, defining them but also identifying them as different in some ways than other branches within the same general organization.

And so, people become groups and act as archetypes within them, then several groups band together within a larger group mind in which the smaller groups act as archetypes and so on, in a fractal manner, until the group reaches the maximum membership and number of levels it can sustain before collapsing from beneath due to the intrinsic differences of the lowest level members in which personal needs may outweigh allegiance and conformity to group ideals.

As for your second inferred question, storyforms can alter in an unlimited manner due to forces external to the storyform but in the same narrative space. And so, if you begin with a structure and that defines the nature and extent of the narrative, it provides an initial psychological matrix in which the player of an IF might come to be drawn into a game. But even after exploring a small portion of the initial storyform, you can provide choices to your player that would alter the storyform to create a new complete narrative that invalidates the old one. In the real world, we are always tearing down narratives and replacing them with new ones that better fit changing situations in a chaotic world. We may hold onto certain structural relationships in all of our narratives because we have found by experience that there are truisms worth maintaining. But much of what we hold as the principal driving stories of different aspects of our lives (and with different group minds) can be altered by brute force from the outside by a hostile take over, a powerful sub-group that rises to a position of leverage, or even by a change in circumstances such as an earthquake that destroys the power grid.

By nature, we try to maintain as much of the previous narrative as we can, for that is our experience base, but new rules come into play. And so, we accept the new that cannot be changed, then using that as a seed, go on to build a new narrative beginning with the elements from the old that are still possible within the new reality and that are most important to us. We add in as many of our most important narrative pieces as we can within the constraints of the new elements that have been imposed, and then make the best possible remaining new choices to create a new narrative. For without a narrative, we have no framework by which to evaluate our lives and ourselves or even to measure if things are getting better or worse.

So in conclusion (for now) consider that narratives are constantly creating new fractal dimensions at both the top when they form a new larger group mind and at the bottom when an individual department has grown so large it must cease to be an individual and become a group mind by sub-dividing into smaller departments. In addition, they are constantly affect by other narratives in the same narrative space, even to the point of having some of their elements and relationships altered so that the narrative must reform in a new form. And so, the ongoing expansion and contraction of fractals and cascading reformation through forces outside the limits of the closed system of individual narratives creates a vibrant and energetic dynamic environment in which IF can flourish.

Thanks for asking some interesting questions and pointing to an interesting message thread.

Melanie
Storymind

How do you import a Word document to Dramatica?

Quick answer:

You can copy and paste text from any Word document into any question in Dramatica.

But, having said that, there is no reason to import a complete story or Word document into Dramatica.

Dramatica is not a word processor and it doesn’t “read” your story.  In fact, you aren’t supposed to write creatively in Dramatica.  So what does it do?

1.  Dramatica finds holes and inconsistencies in your story’s structure.

2.  Dramatica makes suggestions for how to fill and fix them.

In short, Dramatic ensure perfect story structure.

How does it do this?

Dramatica is built around the world’s first and only patented Story Engine.  It is a model of story, similar to how the double-helix is a model of DNA.

Simply put, Dramatica’s model of story contains all the elements necessary in a complete narrative and also has built-in “rules” on how these pieces can go together so that your story both makes sense and feels right to your audience.

These rules weren’t artificially created and imposed on your story, but were derived from narrative itself – what it is, how it works, how it affects readers or audiences.

So how do you use it?

Functionally, Dramatica is a series of questions about your underlying structure that are connected to the Story Engine. Every time you answer a question by making a choice about how your structure is or how you want it to be, the Story Engine cross references that choice with all the other choices you have made to do three things: One, ensure you aren’t working against your own structure and Two, points out where you have holes and inconsistencies in your story’s structure and Three, makes suggestions for how to fill the holes and fix the inconsistencies by using the rules of narrative to project the direction your narrative needs to take to most strongly support the story your answers have shown you wish to tell.

So, in Dramatica you are not working with the text you wrote for your story, but are answering questions about the reasons behind why characters do things and feel as they do, how that relates to the events in your plot, your them and the structural demands of your genre.

When you are finished, you will have a full understanding of all the dramatic elements in your story, how they work together, and how to unfold them so they make sense to your reader or audience. To help you with this, after you have completed your structure, Dramatica generates about 100 pages of explanatory reports about many different aspects of your story that you use as reference while you write and make revisions on your story in your word processor.

Melanie Anne Phillips
Co-creator, Dramatica

Dramatica – Part 1

Introduction

To understand story structure we must understand writers, for it is they who created it.

Story structure represents our quest for truth and meaning. In this regard, it reflects the structure of music and art as well. What’s more, as story structure transcends language and culture, it illuminates the mental processes involved in that quest that are common to us all. And as a result, as we shall see, story structure provides a schematic of the operating system of our own minds.

But that concept is a long way from here. And to fully embrace it, we must start at its beginnings.

To be continued in Part 2:

The Origin of Story Structure

Learn all about Dramatica’s StoryGuide feature…

Click on the links to see streaming video demonstrations of the StoryGuide:

The Story Guide

Part 1 – Introduction

Part 2 – Navigation

Part 3 – The HelpView System

Part 4 – Answering Questions

Part 5 – HelpView in Action

Part 6 – Answering Structural Questions

Part 7 – Answering Storytelling Questions

Part 8 – Creating Scenes or Chapters

Part 9 – Avoiding Story Holes

Dramatica Theory vs. Practical Application

My response to a Dramatica consultant who lamented the gap between the theoretical concepts of our narrative model and its practical application:

Yeah, its tough to get a handle on this stuff, mainly because there’s a big difference between the model and the results it produces. The model is as far away from narrative or even psychology as you can get. It’s physics, really. That’s pretty far afield from writing story. The next level down from understanding how and why the model works is to understand how to use it and its results for narrative (or real world) analysis. That is the realm of the Dramatica consultant. Why it works isn’t important and how it was created is even less important than that. But, to know what each of the story points really means, how it differs from its brothers, and how to apply it in a practical way in the construction and deconstruction of stories is where the value is for almost everyone except those few nerds who must know the why and wherefore, including myself in that socially inept, detail worshiping gang of misfits.

Dramatica Theory (Annotated) Part 10 “When to Use Dramatica”

Excerpted from the book, Dramatica: A New Theory of Story

For some authors, applying Dramatica at the beginning of a creative project might be inhibiting. Many writers prefer to explore their subject, moving in whatever direction their muse leads them until they eventually establish an intent. In this case, the storytelling comes before the structure. After the first draft is completed, such an author can look back at what he has created with the new understanding he has arrived at by the end. Often, much of the work will no longer fit the story as the author now sees it. By telling Dramatica what he now intends, Dramatica will be able to indicate which parts of the existing draft are appropriate, which are not, and what may be needed that is currently missing. In this way, the creative process is both free and fulfilling, with Dramatica serving as analyst and collaborator.

Annotation

Now this passage in the original theory book is just the tip of the iceberg.  In the twenty some-odd years since we wrote this, I’ve discovered a whole bucket of insights and practical tips that can really leverage Dramatica (both the theory and the software) to far greater power in their application.

Speaking of Dramatica software, this is one of the few passages in the theory book that references it when it says, “By telling Dramatica” and “Dramatica will be able,” which clearly are not speaking of the theory by itself.

While I’m on this topic, let me hold forth a bit about the relationship between theory and software so we can clarify that issue, be done with that, and move on.  First of all, the theory is a conceptual construct that accurately describes the function of the forces that make up narrative.  In other words, the theory really sees narrative as a collection of dynamics that are interrelated, rather than seeing narrative as a structure made up of story points.

“What about the Dramatica Chart?” you might ask.  “That’s made up of all kinds of structural points including some called ‘elements’ – you can’t get any more structural than that.”  Well, now, that’s not exactly true.  It’s how it appears, to be sure, but that not really what it is.  (Notice how I’m diverging farther and farther away from practical tips here, but I promise: I’ll get to those down near the bottom of what now appears to be one freaking huge annotation….

Every item in the Dramatica Chart (AKA the Dramatica Table of Story Elements) is actually a process, treated as an object.  WTF?  Okay – imagine you make a list of chores for the day that includes washing the dishes, paying the bills, and going shopping.  Each of those is really a process, isn’t it?  But on the list, they are all treated as things: chores.  By thinking of a complex process at a thing, the complexity kind of melts away so that you can begin to see how one “thing” relates to another.

The Dramatica Chart is, essentially, a map of how all the processes that make up narrative relate to one another.  By treating them as objects, we can see those relationships more easily (and some of them are so subtle that you can’t see them at all until you create a chart in that manner and get rid of all the complexity).

Now for the software…  We took all these relationships among narrative processes that we found and discovered they had a pattern – think the DNA of story.  Every story has its own genome or perhaps “memnome” (playing off the word “meme” which is like a gene or cultural awareness).  But, they all use the same bases and there is an underlying deep structure to the way they are assembled.  (In DNA it is a double helix, in Dramatica it is actually a quad helix, which is why the “objects” in the Dramatica Chart are arranged in quads.)

So, we described this model of structure mathematically.  We realized that the way these elements could go together could be described by algorithms and these algorithms became a computer implementation of the model of DNA of narrative that is the story engine in Dramatica software.  Everything else in the software – the tools, features, interface and questions – are all just ways of accessing that algorithmic model.

The idea is to treat the model like a big piece of marble.  Michelangelo said, he just chipped away anything that didn’t look like what he was trying to portray and what was left was the image he was going for.  That’s how you use Dramatica: answer the questions so it sculpts the model to gradually look more and more like what you have in mind for your story.  Eventually, you’ll enter enough information about your mental image, that the model with all its DNA-style algorithms can determine that the unseen in-between impact of all your choices on each other can pre-determine what other potential choices must be if they aren’t to work against or undermine what you’ve already said you want to do narratively.  In plain language.  The more information you put into the model about your story, the more you limit what your other options are, without working against yourself dramatically.  Simple as that.

You can see this at work in the story engine feature in the software.  Every time you make a choice, the number of other options is reduced.  In Dramatica Story Expert there is a feature that shows all the choices you explicitly make in blue, and when enough information is input that other choices can be made by the model, these implied choices show up in red.  Interestingly, it never take more than about twelve explicit choices to know enough about your story to generate more than seventy other implied choices.  Pretty weird, huh?  But accurate as great-grandpa and his spittoon.

Now back to the title of this original section in the theory book, “When to Use Dramatica.” Well, to use Dramatica you really need to know what your story is about before you start.  Oh, you can use it without a clue, but then every choice you make is rather arbitrary.  Of course, you might go into the process with no story idea at all and then answer questions like, “Is your overall story about a situation, activity, attitude or manner of thinking,” and that might actually help you gravitate toward one kind of a story rather than another.  And, as you continue answering such questions as “Is your Main Character a Do-er or a Be-er” then you build up elements of the framework of a story, just like in 3D printing until you have a complete structure.  It won’t have any subject matter yet – it will just be a bunch of girders and pulleys.  So, you’ll then follow through the storytelling section of the software to describe what kind of subject matter in your story is going to fulfill each of those structural requirements.  For some folks, that’s the best way to go.

But for me, and writers like me, I’m more like ol’ Michelangelo.  I want to know what I’m trying to get at first, then use Dramatica to chip away at that block of Muse-provided marble until I can see the structure at the heart of the story I want to tell.  Doing it this way, I already have all my subject matter and a story concept in mind.  Dramatica then becomes a way of finding the dramatic center of all that material, the way you might find the geographic center of a country.  It brings clarity and gives you a pivot point around which to build and balance your story.

That, in fact, is why I created StoryWeaver after co-creating Dramatica: to provide tool for generating ideas, zeroing in on subject matter.  In short, to come up with people I’d like to write about before they became character, events before it became a plot, a message before it became a theme, and an atmosphere before it became a genre. Then (after using StoryWeaver to work out my story’s world) – then I go to Dramatica to X-ray the damn thing and see what kind of structural skeleton its got.

So when to use Dramatica (software)?  If you already know what your story is and how its structured, what do you need software for?  If you need inspiration, use StoryWeaver.  If you need structural grounding and guidance, use Dramatica.

When to use Dramatica (theory)?  The theory is an understanding.  It doesn’t generate creative motivation.  But, if you know it, the underlying concepts will open new doors to explore creatively and will almost subliminally guide your efforts so that the more theory you know, the more your stories will seem to be complete, make sense, not drive, and have consistency of outlook and consistency of impact.

And if you use the Dramatica software at least once every few months, you’ll find that our writerly instincts are constantly drifting off true and being warped by new life experiences and old justifications.  Dramatica points to the proper lane on the freeway that will get you there – the corridor of clear thinking.  It doesn’t regiment your Muse but keeps it from running off a cliff like the vast majority of lemming-like writers out there who follow formulas right behind the writer in front until they end up in a broken heap at the bottom of what might have been the best story they ever told.

–Melanie Anne Phillips

Structure your story with Dramatica software…

Write your novel or screenplay step by step with StoryWeaver…

Dramatica Theory (Annotated) Part 9 “Author’s Intent”

Excerpted from the book, Dramatica: A New Theory of Story

Simply having a feeling or a point of view does not an author make. One becomes an author the moment one establishes an intent to communicate. Usually some intrigu- ing setting, dialog, or bit of action will spring to mind and along with it the desire to share it. Almost immediately, most authors leap ahead in their thinking to consider how the concept might best be presented to the audience. In other words, even before a com- plete story has come to mind most authors are already trying to figure out how to tell the parts they already have.

As a result, many authors come to the writing process carrying a lot of baggage: favorite scenes, characters, or action, but no real idea how they are all going to fit to- gether. A common problem is that all of these wonderful inspirations often don’t belong in the same story. Each may be a complete idea unto itself, but there is no greater meaning to the sum of the parts. To be a story, each and every part must also function as an aspect of the whole.

Some writers run into problems by trying to work out the entire dramatic structure of a story in advance only to find they end up with a formulaic and uninspired work. Con- versely, other writers seek to rely on their muse and work their way through the process of expressing their ideas only to find they have created nothing more than a mess. If a way could be found to bring life to tired structures and also to knit individual ideas into a larger pattern, both kinds of authors might benefit. It is for this purpose that Dramatica was developed.

Annotation

Finally, here at part 9, do we come to a section of the book that I think says exactly what it intended to say.  And, in fact, that is what the section is all about – saying what you intend to say.

Having an experience or an insight doesn’t make one an author.  SHARING an experience or an insight does – or at least attempting to share.  How successful you are at communicating the logic and passion of your intent determines how skillful an author you are.  How interestingly you convey that information determines how compelling an author you are.  Together, they determine how good an author you are.

If I were to add anything to this section at all, it would be something the Dramatica book intentionally avoided: giving advice on how to write.  We wanted to focus on explaining our model of story structure (our intent) and that is what we did (success).  But, we had no interest in making it interesting.  Which, by my definition above, means that we weren’t very compelling authors and, overall, were not very good authors.

And so, let me simply suggest that it pays to not only know what you want to share with your audience, but to determine what impact you’d like to have on them, i.e. to scare them, motivate them, inform them, illuminate them or any combination of multiple intents.  In that way, even without a structural road map, you always have a beacon, a lighthouse to guide your communications and the manner in which you present your information.

~~Melanie Anne Phillips

Give your story perfect structure with Dramatica Software…