By Melanie Anne Phillips

Here are two ways to approach the craft of writing. The first is to step into the role of each character and write it very personally, as if you were an actor portraying a part. The second is to consider what each character must do to fulfill its purpose in the story, then orchestrate their interactions as if you were directing a movie or stage play.

Each of these methods has its own advantages and disadvantages.

On the plus side, the Writer-Actor exudes passion. His or her characters are alive with a personal perspective with which the reader or audience can instantly and deeply identify.

Each character is seen through the eyes of all the others, so the reader/audience feels as if they come to know the characters, not just as players in the Big Picture, but as real people who not only love and hate, but are loved and hated as well.

This creates a rich emotional fabric to a story. But the benefits of being a Writer-Actor don’t stop there. Indeed, even the narrative itself benefits from this approach. Small experiences and individual observations illuminate the environments through which the characters pass.

A Writer-Actor’s narrative is likely to be filled with sensory descriptions as to the temperature, background sounds, colors, textures, tastes, and smells that are present in each scene. In this way, not only do the characters feel real, but so does the world in which they move.

But what about the downside of such a personal approach? The greatest danger of allowing oneself to actually become a character while writing is that one loses site of the needs and structure of the overall story.

Characters tend to take on a life of their own and almost demand that they move in certain directions, even if those are in conflict with the purposes of the story at large. In addition, the benefits of some unifying overview are often lost in the cacophony of individual voices.

Having briefly explored the pros and cons of the Writer-Actor approach, let’s examine some of the benefits and drawbacks of the Writer-Director’s method.

In the plus column, the Writer-Director produces a vision. The characters take on a grand importance as pawns in a larger scheme, a greater meaning.

Each character is seen as a cog in an elegant machine, inexorably moving forward like clockwork toward a specific purpose which will ultimately be revealed. The natures of their interrelationships are discovered and defined as understandable threads in the tapestry of the tale.

In addition, characters are tied directly to plot, theme, and genre, integrating them into the story as a whole, illustrating their interdependence with the forces that shape their world and, by inference, ours as well.

But in the negative column, a Writer-Director tends to objectify characters, leading them to come across more as puppets than people. All the beats of character growth are precisely hit, yet the overall flow can feel forced and formulaic.

What’s more, the stage on which the characters strut can seem more Machiavellian than organic, and the story plods along in some sort of Calvinistic pre-destination rather than an unknown realm in which anything might happen.

If you have begun to think that perhaps neither of these approaches, by itself, is sufficient to the task of creating a passionate story that leads to a well-defined message, you are correct.

And that is the point of this exercise. By nature each of us tends to be one of these two kinds of writers. As a result, we excel in half of what readers/audiences are craving, yet fall short in the other side of their needs.

The solution, of course, is to learn to employ tools in the areas in which we do not have natural ability or inclination. That is, in fact, the concept behind learning the craft of writing. We study and exercise not to make ourselves more talented, but to supplement our effectiveness in those areas in which we are not as innately gifted.

So, the first step of the task at hand is to identify which kind of writer you are. The second step is to practice writing with the other method as well.

To this end it is pretty easy to determine whether you are a Writer-Actor or a Writer-Director. Just sit down to create a character from scratch. Pick a name, a gender, and age, and a job or vocation. Then try each of the following.

Based only on that limited information about that character try to put yourself in the character’s shoes. Imagine you are them, they are you. Then see if you can come up with a problem in their lives, a description of how it affects them and what they are thinking of doing about it. Who are the other people in their lives, and how are they affected at a personal and/or emotional level by the problem and by the potential solutions?

If you found that exercise easy, perhaps even fun, then you are a Writer-Actor by nature. If you found it tedious, uninspiring, and fruitless, you’re a Writer-Director.

To be sure, try the other method: Start with the same bare-bones information about the character. Ask yourself, who are the other characters with whom this person would be interacting. What kinds of conflicts might occur among them. What kinds of problems would result from this conflict, and what would it lead your character to do?

If this was the easier one, then you are a Writer-Director without doubt. You see, both approaches are trying to get to the same place, but they come to it from a different creative mind set. And in so doing, they miss different things along the way.

The remedy is obvious. To enhance your abilities as a writer, you need to be fluent in both approaches, using them in a complementary fashion to fully ignite the fires of passion within a solid logistic framework. And even if you have a great built-in sense of one or both of these, it can only help to fine tune them so that your story development and storytelling become even more powerful.

Here are two plans to help you find both. Well call this strategy, “Hats and Charts”.

A surprising number of authors actually wear different hats while writing different characters. I’m not speaking metaphorically here, they actually wear physical hats. This helps them imagine themselves as a given character, such as a cop or a chef.

Not surprisingly, the extension of this is to wear costumes – the clothing you expect your character might brandish. It can be as simple as a scarf, the way you comb your hair, your make-up, perfume or cologne, or all the way to a full wardrobe.

It is really not as silly as it sounds. Do you not feel differently depending upon the kind of clothing you wear on a given day? Does not a uniform influence the way a person thinks? It is not any less true that a writer’s work will very depending upon what he or she is wearing while creating.

Try music that a character might play, put on a television show or movie your character might watch. Tack pictures your character might have in their home to a cork board in your line of sight as you write. Perhaps add pictures that seem like the realm in which they move – a desert island, a ship, the dark dungeons below the Vatican.

All of these ideas grow from the “Hats” concept. You can and should give some time to thinking about other similar ways of making yourself feel like your character feels.

To become a better Writer-Director, you need a completely different plan – “Charts”. The idea here is to objectify your characters – to see them as components in the store, elements with which you will build the tale.

You can begin my making a chart of each character and listing as many details about them as you can. For example, where did each character go to school? What hobbies does each have? What are their religious affiliations, if any? To what political party do they belong? How strongly do they subscribe to the philosophies in these groups? What are their physical abilities/disabilities? What are their hair colors, skin texture, skin color, weight?

Create a time-line graph for each characters’ emotional journey through the story. Use different colors for different moods or feelings and plot the intensity of those emotions. By examining these passions analytically, it helps you see patterns and uncover skipped or missed beats in the flow.

Using index cards and colored yarn show all the relationships among your characters including familial, professional, historical, philosophical, and so on.

Try writing a description of each character as if you were a private detective hired to follow them for a day. You have no personal interest in the character, but your job is to document everything they do (and even how they act) in as much detail as possible.

Each of these exercises helps you step out of a character’s shoes and see them in a functional manner, both as themselves and also how they interact with others.

As you have no doubt surmised, the perspectives of the Writer-Actor and Writer-Director are so divergent that it is virtually impossible to do both at the same time. In the writing process, therefore, you should use them in succession.

Begin with the approach to which you are naturally inclined for this will provide you with the greatest raw inspiration. When you have finished a section or your Muse comes up for air, use the opportunity (which would otherwise be wasted down-time) to apply the exercises from your secondary approach to the material you have just written.

By revisiting the material while it is still fresh in your creative spirit, but from an alternate point of view, you can reprocess the material and fill in the gaps left by your initial creative burst.

Once you have finished the complete story, go back and run it through both approaches again to ensure that not only do the individual scenes sing like a Spring bird, but that the entire work unfolds smoothly, like the passage of a fine season.

In the end, if you take the time to learn, practice and employ both methods of developing characters, your stories will be far more well rounded and well received.

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By Melanie Anne Phillips

Way back in the early 1990s, my writing partner, Chris Huntley, and I published a book on narrative structure entitled, Dramatica: A New Theory of Story.

It begins:

“Part of what makes a story great is its underlying dramatic structure and part is the manner in which that structure is related to an audience, often called “storytelling”. Therefore, this book is divided into two principal sections: The Elements of Structure and The Art of Storytelling.”

When I wrote that paragraph, I thought it was pretty self explanatory. But over the years I’ve been surprised by how many people, though they agree with the the way that sounds, don’t actually understand the real difference between those two facets of a story.

Why is it important to differentiate the two? Because structure can only be solidly built if you see it for what it really is – the framework that holds up the story.

Part of the problem is that people lump all aspects of a story other than the words they use to tell it into a single glop they think of as the structure. This means they see a character’s name, its job, age, gender and so on as structure. They see the setting, time frame and genre as structure. They see all the events that happen and all the moralizing as part of the structure. Yet none of these are structural elements at all. They are, in fact, part of the storytelling.

In this article, I’d like to spend a little time illustrating the nature of and differences between story structure and storytelling, and provide some techniques for using this new clear view of both to enhance the soundness of your story and your creative experience as as a writer.

What we’re going to do is break a completed story into four parts, rather than just structure and storytelling. Those other two parts will provide some parallax – a baseline you want mentally walk along to get a better angle on separating story structure and storytelling.

To do this, we’ll use an analogy.

Think of a story as a body. There’s the skeleton, the soft tissue, the clothes and lastly the haircut, jewelry, make-up, facial hair, cologne and so on – four different parts of what we see as a complete person.

The skeleton is the structure, the soft tissue is the subject matter, the clothes are the exposition and the finishing touches are the storytelling.

Structure (a story’s skeleton) is the fixed framework that defines the basic shape and function of the thing. For example one story might have a goal of Obtaining a particular item. Another story might have a goal of Becoming a different kind of person. Obtaining a thing is completely different from Becoming a new person, so those two structures would be completely different.  But a story about Obtaining stolen times or Obtaining someone’s love are structurally the same, because they are both about possession.

Now on to the soft tissue of story, the subject matter. Using the above example, in the Obtaining story the goal might be to obtain a treasure, a diploma, someone’s respect or the answer to a riddle. Clearly each of these stories would feel completely different, even though they are all Obtaining stories because the subject matter is different, just as a person of one weight, musculature and fitness is going to seem completely different than someone who varies in those areas, even through they have the exact same skeletal structure.  So, they are structurally the same, but differ in what’s attached to that structure – the subject matter.

In another example of how different stories can strike a reader or audience as being different, even though the structure is the same, a goal of “Becoming” might be becoming more honest, becoming more self-sufficient, becoming more passionate or becoming more considerate. And so, each of these would seem like a different story, even though, structurally, they are all about Becoming something one currently is not.  In short, a single structure can manifest itself in many different ways.

So now that we have a pretty good grip on a very fundamental understanding of the first two parts of a story, the structure and the subject matter, let us consider the clothing, which is the equivalent of Exposition in a story – what of that structure and subject matter is immediately visible, and what is held back.

In stories, as in clothing, exposition is the way the thing is revealed. How much do you show up front? How long does it take to see more? What are you shown, and in what order? And when do you get to see it all?

Authors do well to remember that while they know their entire story from beginning to end and everything in between, their audience or readers don’t. So the job of exposition is two-fold. One, to make sure you find a place in the unfolding of your story to convey everything you want the audience/readers to know. Two, to consider how best to unveil the details of your story like a striptease artist, enticing your audience/readers to build in them the greatest possible interest.  That is the essence of the third of our four perspectives.

Finally, we come to our fourth and final angle on our story – the storytelling style – the fancy dancy primps and preens that give the whole package pizazz, just as a person has a certain kind of haircut or hairstyle, adopts a rhythm to the way they walk and move, and develops their own voice – the way the turn a phrase.

In terms of stories, consider that though you may have completed the first three stages in developing your story (built a structure, developed the subject matter, and worked out the exposition and reveals, you haven’t actually written a word! So this last stage, storytelling style, is (surprisingly enough) where you actually tell your story!

The structure determines what it is, the subject matter determines what it means, the exposition determines how it shows itself, and storytelling determines how it feels. In other words, in four steps you’ve moved clear across from a fully logistic approach to the elements of structure to a purely passionate experience in the art of storytelling.

Now earlier I promised to describe why all this is useful to a writer, because a lot of insights into story, while intriguing, don’t necessarily immediately suggest how you might apply them to your advantage in story development.

In terms of practical application, we shouldn’t think about the four stages when we are creating – to do so would move us into an analytical frame of mind and smother our Muse. But once we have run short of inspiration for a bit, then we would do well to look at our story more objectively – to examine it logically to make sure we haven’t missed a beat, gone off track, failed to communicate or lost the passion.

A completed section of your story may mask problems in one of the four aspects by something really cool in another aspect. This creates a hidden problem in one area behind the  flash in another. Alas, in the end, while it might “wow,” it won’t sustain.

Conversely, a story might be so balanced among all four perspectives that it becomes bland to the point of being impossible to swallow, yet seems quite complete to an author. So by separating the four stages, you can see where your storytelling might not have enough oomph and needs to jiggle its booty a bit more to entice.

By putting structural considerations out of your mind while you creatively write, it frees your Muse to pursue any creative path that appeals to her. Then, by putting creativity out of your mind while you analyze, you can see clearly where the problems are and how to go about fixing them.

In the end, if you are aware of elements of structure and practice the art of storytelling, you’ll write with maximum productivity and have a more pleasant creative experience as well.

Arthur says:

I’m a great Dramatica fan so I’m a bit reluctant to take up Melanie’s challenge to refute the Dramatica Theory. My question was virtually identical to Armando’s but he put it better. Theory without practical application is not very helpful. Let’s try another. Supposing you wanted to create a story or play about a gifted female whose unique ability was “supreme self-confidence” and her critical flaw was “sophisticated self-deception.” How would dramatica help you arrive at those characteristics in order to get a Storyform? It can’t, can it? I refute the theory thus.

 

Okay, so I’m halfway into a deep consideration of this issue when suddenly it hits me…

“Wait just a cotton pickin’ minute!” I yell out loud to no one in particular.

Then, no one in particular shouts back, “What’s biting you?!”

I reply with recovered aplomb, “Did you notice the example in Arthur’s question?” “Yeah, so what?” no one taunts. “Think about it.” I bark bemusedly, “Arthur describes “a gifted female whose unique ability was supreme self-confidence and her critical flaw was sophisticated self-deception.” Sound like anyone you know?”

“Sounds like both of us,” No One replied thoughtfully, “but , we’re both the same person and you realize, of course, that you are having a conversation with your self – and out loud, I might add.”

“True, but in fact, you are my Self-Confidence, and I am your Self-Deception (and pretty sophisticated too, “I” might add!”

“I guess that makes ME “supreme” then! Wink wink, nudge nudge, say no more—PLEASE say no more!”

“Ah, but that would prove Arthur’s point, wouldn’t it?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, if your self-confidence is undermined by my self-deception, then the Dramatica theory is refuted!”

“Whoa, hold on there, pardner! First of all, I believe it is quite the contrary. My Confidence is only bolstered by your self-deception. I mean, think about it. The more Self-Deceived “we” become, the more our confidence grows.”

“Blimey, but you’re right!”

“I was confident I would be…”

“Okay, that was “first of all,” so is there more?”

“But of course!” Suppose Arthur was serious in his question (though I seriously doubt it). Then, the first point he makes is almost to say that a theory is invalid if it isn’t useful.”

“Now just hold on…. He didn’t exactly say THAT.”

“True, but since he was setting up a refutation of the theory, he established a context in which the “value” of a theory is tied to its practical usefulness. Then, by shifting the subject of the question to the validity of the concepts there is an emotional carry-over that appears to strengthen the logistic contention.”

“Oh.”

“So, second of all, there are lots of theories that are almost totally wrong and still have a few concepts of practical value. And there are also a lot of esoteric theories which are almost certainly true, yet have no practical application at all. In conclusion, the ability to USE a theory has absolutely nothing to do with its validity.”

“I’ll give you that one, even though I don’t think it is self-deceptive enough.”

“Fine, let’s press on…. I think we’ve already dealt with the central contention that self-deception is a critical flaw to confidence. Arthur then asks a seemingly rhetorical question, “How would dramatica help you >arrive at those characteristics in order to get a Storyform? ” The rhetorical answer is, since that combination doesn’t work, Dramatica will not provide such a conjunction of story points.”

“’Scuse me…. but isn’t there ANY time in which I, self-deception, might undermine your self-confidence as a critical flaw?

“Sure, but not in a direct manner. In fact, a number of other writers on this list proposed very serious descriptions of how the “feel” Arthur was describing was quite achievable and in much more depth and nuance than his example would seem to indicate. Perhaps one of the most interesting came from Bill, who said:

“- Since the story is about this person, are these two attributes really the Unique Ability and the Critical Flaw? Perhaps self-deception is the Problem and self-confidence is the Focus. (Or some other combination like that.) Consider this mix of appreciations, straight from the Story Engine:

PROBLEM: Non-Accurate
SOLUTION: Accurate
FOCUS: Expectation
DIRECTION: Determination
UNIQUE ABILITY: Experience
CRITICAL FLAW: Fantasy

(It’s interesting that the self-deception gets sort of a double-whammy with the problem being Non-Accurate and the Critical Flaw being Fantasy.)”

“Well, Ms. “Supreme Self-Confidence”… I suppose you’re pretty pleased with yourself.”

“But of course! Still there are yet two remaining points to be made.”

“Pray tell, what are they?”

“First, Arthur responds to his rhetorical question, “How would dramatica help you arrive at those characteristics in order to get a Storyform? ” with “It can’t.” That’s not quite accurate….”

“Ah, so this is where self-deception comes into play?”

“Sort of… It’s not that Dramatica “can’t” help you do arrive at that combination. It’s that it “won’t.”” If it did, it would be leading you right into an invalid storyform.”

“Is that it, are you FINISHED YET!!!”

“Almost. The final line of Arthur’s post reads, “I refute the theory thus.”

“So?”

“So you don’t refute a theory by refuting an application of it.”

“Meaning?”

“Let’s start at the beginning… Dramatica starts with a hypothesis: Every complete story is an analogy to a single human mind, trying to deal with an inequity.” The hypothesis says “what” but not “how.”

“Go on.”

“The “theory” of Dramatica describes a structure and the dynamics which manipulate it. That winds up the model with dramatic tension.”

“Gotcha.”

“Now, each of the story points is “mapped” onto that structure. Each is determined by a separate formula, each is a separate application. “

“So are you saying some of the algorithms in Dramatica some of the formulas might be wrong?!”

“Sure, they “might” be. I personally don’t think so (remember I AM self-confidence), but of course it is possible. You see, the real value of the theory is to look at every story as a SINGLE mind in which the characters, plot, theme, and genre are but aspects: families of different kinds of thought which interact so as to mimic the internal processes of the mind coming to a solution—it makes them TANGIBLE, so we can watch our own internal mechanism to learn how to best respond under different conditions.”

“Whoa! That’s a mouthful!”

“You bet it is, but it’s really what Dramatica is all about. If writers can just start looking to each story as a complete mind, as a person with a personality (genre), methods (plot), value standards (theme), and driving forces (characters), then the parts of stories would start to work together SO much better!”

“And if some of the particular formulas DO turn out to be in error?”

“Then they need to be re-written so they are more accurate. You see, the “theory” of Dramatica can’t really be proven or disproven. Either stories can be understood as a model of the mind or not. But if they can, then the applications and formulas of the theory need to be constantly questioned, amended, discarded, and added to. The advancement of practical applications and understanding of the theory is an ongoing process which will likely never be completed. After all, how much is there to learn about the mechanism of the mind? The key to improving the theory is to call every suspicious formula into question, lay it out for public viewing. The theory will only “advance” into more practical use if others more skilled than “you” (self-deception) or “I” (confidence) contribute our efforts.”

“That’s quite a concession, Confidence, to admit there are others more capable and you.”

“Hey, you know as well as I do that in spite of our self-deception to believe we are some sort of next-gen Einstein, we’re really just a couple of smart cookies who worked with ol’ Chris for a few years, tripped over a new concept (the Story Mind) because we were too intellectually inept to know better, and then spent the better part of a decade putting in good old-fashioned hard work to try and document it and make something out of it. Truth of the matter is that we’ve gone about as far as we can go! In your heart, you know its true. You keep thinking of yourself as 18, but just because we’re both 46 doesn’t mean we’re each 23!!!”

“Yeah, you’re right. I, of all people, can’t deceive myself on that one. It’s time to hand it off to those with degrees, and practical experience. Time to put it out there, let the world have it and make of it what they will.”

Then, both halves of myself joined in unison, both confidence and self-deception in Greek Chorus “singing”:

“We’ll meet again, don’t know where, don’t know when…”

“Stop it!” I shouted to both of them.”Shut up!”

“And now, the hour is late, and I have reached the final curtain…”

“I said SHUT UP!!! I still have a lot of good, creative years in me. LOTS…. REALLY!”

“Cat’s in the cradle and the silver spoon, little boy blue and the man in the moon…”

“WILL YOU PLEASE SHUT UP!!!!! I know, I’ll show you! I’ll come up with a whole NEW theory. Something even more extensive and complex than Dramatica! I’m not dead yet!”

“It’s a dead man’s party…”

“Ah, the hell with it.”

The time I hate most as a writer is when I get a good idea that just can’t wait. It is like I get tied to Moby Dick and must let the damned thing pull me all over “creation” until I finally cut my way free by getting it all out of my system and onto paper. It’s a lot easier when I just sit down to write something because I want to. But this creative frenzy stuff if for the birds!

Writer’s block is never a problem for me. If I can’t make any progress, I just write something else. There’s always going to be something that is ready to flow. Of course, the problem then becomes the backlog of 50,000 partially finished stories and nothing complete. Completion is the hard part for me. I get interested in a new project or just run out of interest in an old one and have a devil of a time forcing myself to ride it out to the end.

Fortunately, I’ve had some hard taskmasters in the past, and they have instilled in me the ability to put my personal feelings aside and get the job done. I hate that. So, I use it sparingly, and only when I begin to feel guilty that I’ve gotten so close to finishing something that I’m depriving the world of a wonderful reading experience. (You have to play to your ego, or you’ll never get it finished!) Then, I begrudgingly acquiesce to the demands of my public – that one reader in Iowa who actually cares if I ever write anything again or not – and suffer through the anguish of actually bringing the piece to a close.

Which I think I just did.

No one reads a book or goes to a movie to enjoy a good structure. No author writes because he is driven to create a sound structure. Audiences and authors come to opposite sides of a story because of their passions – the author driven to express his, and the audience hoping to ignite its own.

As an audience, what draws us to a story in the first place is our attraction to the subject matter and the style. We might love a taut mystery, a fulfilling romance, or a chilling horror story. We might be intrigued by the potential applications of a new discovery of science, the exploration of newly unearthed ancient city, or the life of a celebrity.

As an author what brings us to write a story may be a clever concept for an action sequence, a bit of dialog, a notion for a character, a setting, time period, a favorite topic, or a clever twist of plot. Or, we might have a deep-seated need to express a childhood experience, work out an irrational fear, or make a public statement about a social injustice.

No matter what our attraction as audience or author, it is our passions that trigger our imaginations. But passion rides on structure, and if the structure is flawed or even broken, then the passionate expression from author to audience will fall.

When structure is done properly, it is invisible, serving only as the carrier wave that delivers the passion to the audience. But when structure is flawed, it adds static to the flow of emotion, breaking up and possibly scrambling the passion so badly that the audience gets nothing of what the author was sending.

Yet, the attempt to ensure a sound structure is an intellectual pursuit. Questions such as “Who is my Protagonist?” “Where should my story begin?” “What happens in Act Two?” or “What is my message?” force an author to turn away from his passion and embrace logistics instead.

As a result, an author often becomes mired in the nuts and bolts of storytelling, staring at a blank page not because of a lack of inspiration, but because he can’t figure out how to make his passion make sense. Worse, the re-writing process is often grueling and frustrating, forcing the author to accept unwanted changes in the flow of emotion for the sake of logic. So what is an author to do? Is there any way out of this dilemma?

As a teacher of creative writing and story structure, some time ago I worked out an approach to story development that allows an author to retain his passion even while serving the demands of structure, and best of all, it’s completely free.

Called the Master Storyteller Method, this system can be used both before you write to know exactly where things will be going and also after you write to find and refine the structure already hidden in your passion.

You won’t be asked to discard any techniques or approaches you are currently using. Rather, you’ll simply be adding to what you already know, to what you are already doing; extending your understanding of how stories really work and how to write them. So why not embark on an expedition into the heart of inspiration and the uncharted frontiers of story structure.

The price is free, the risks are low, the potential rewards are great, and all you need to carry with you are your own passions.

Check it out for yourself:

Of the Four Stages of Communication, Storyweaving is most like what authors usually think of as the writing process. It is here that we gather everything we know about our story and decide how to present it to our audience.

Some authors are planners and like to work out everything before they write a word. For them, the Storyweaving process is simply determining the most interesting way to relate a story that, for them, is already complete in their minds. Another breed of author consider themselves organic writers, and jump headlong into the writing process, only discovering what their stories are about along the way. Most authors fall somewhere between these two extremes, working out portions of their stories to varying degrees, then jumping in with the intent to become inspired by the writing process to fill in the gaps.

Which technique is best? Whichever works for you. Writing should be a positive experience, not drudgery. If you are having headaches instead of triumphs, you might want to consider changing the balance between your degree of preparation and your spontaneous exploration. For anyone destined to write, the best mix can be found.

Of course, the proper mix of structure and stream of consciousness may change for an author from day to day. Some days may be good for working on the framework of a story. Other days it may be best to simply dive in and write. And the best mix can also change depending upon the subject matter or even the medium or format. Writing is not a science but an art. Still, like any art, science can improve the tools of the trade to make artistic expression more enjoyable and the finished product more reflective of the author’s intent. This is where Dramatica can help.

As aids to structure, the Storyforming and Storyencoding stages of communication describe everything necessary to construct a complete argument. As tools for organic writing, Storyweaving and reception provide techniques that create results. As you approach a story, you will likely want to draw on many of these tools to fashion the story you have in mind in the manner that brings the most creative fulfillment.

From the Dramatica Theory Book