Category Archives: Narrative Science

Narrative Dynamics (Part 2)

Excerpted from the book, Narrative Dynamics

The Narrative Circuit

If you are familiar with deep Dramatica theory, you know that all the output of the Story Engine is not made available in the Dramatica software.  In fact, the Story Engine generates quite a bit more information about a story’s structure than it makes available to a user.  What information, and why suppress it?  I’ll answer the second question first.

We suppressed information that was so detailed and dramatically “tiny” that it was beyond the scope or magnification in which authors work.  And, even if someone wanted to work with structure to that microscopic micromanaged level, that information had such little impact that it would almost certainly be lost in the background noise of the storytelling.  In other words, the granularity of that suppressed information was smaller than the resolution of an audience’s understanding.  In short – it would be lost in the translation from structure to finished story.  So, to keep from overcomplicating the story structuring process and having the author do work that would never have a practical impact, we decided this kind of material should not be provided by the Story Engine.

Still, just because authors can’t really apply this suppressed information in a useful manner doesn’t mean the information isn’t accurate, especially when using the Story Engine for psychological analysis rather than just for fictional constructs.  So, here’s a brief description of this information, shared here for the purpose of illustrating the limits of the current structural model at its farthest edges, and then being able to further describe what the developing dynamic model can bring to the table.

What is suppressed: PRCO and 1234.  What the hell does that mean?  PRCO stands for Potential, Resistance, Current and Outcome (or Power).  1234 is the sequential order in which the four items in a quad will come into play.  You see this last part in the sequence of the Signposts and Journeys for each of the four throughlines in Dramatica, but the engine only shows you the output for the “type” level or plot level of a story’s structure – the equivalent of the topics each act will cover in each of the four throughlines.  It is suppressed for all the other levels and all the other quads.  (Though some additional sequential information is also available in the Plot Sequence Report in Dramatica.)

In truth, EVERY quad in the structure appears in every story structure, but some, like the Signposts, are the focus of the story.  And yet, if you watch a story unfold, you’ll see that EVERY SINGLE QUAD in a completely structured story will unfold in a predictable sequential manner.  As a side note, the manner in which we discovered this is an intriguing story I may write about someday, but for the purposes of this article, suffice it to say that every quad in a structure at every level will have a 1234 sequence attached to it, and those sequences will differ from one storyform to another.

But what about the PRCO?  Well, consider ever quad as a little dramatic circuit – not a static thing except in the sense that an electronic circuit is static – a battery, a resistor, a light bulb and some wire – but the electrons flow through it and the bulb generates light.  Similarly, in a dramatic circuit – a quad – the four items will act as Potential, Resistance, Current and Outcome (Power) and form a flow that moves one moment into the next and generates energy that sparks the next scene or sequence or act.

Now I could go into great detail about how all this works (it is built into the Story Engine after all) – BUT, that’s not the point.  All you need to know for this article is that in the process of “winding up” the dramatic potential of the story at large, the model is (conceptually) twisted and turned like a Rubik’s cube so that quads are misaligned in a way that creates the tension that drives the story forward.  Or, in terms of psychology, it describes the conflicting forces that are at work in the mind.

And so, every item in every quad will be assigned a 1234 and also a PRCO.  This means that sometimes a scene will begin with a Potential and other scenes will open with a Resistance or Current or Power.  In other words, 1234 and PRCO are independently assigned because they are not tied together psychologically, nor in terms of fiction.

Back to the dynamic model.  The structural model can only tell you if something is a potential or resistance and the order in which it will come into play.  But, only a dynamic model could tell you how MUCH potential or resistance was present and how long its span of time in the sequence will last: its duration.  Plus, the dynamic model could tell you how the intensity of that potential might be changing and how fast it is changing and whether that speed of change is accelerating.

Stepping back then, it is pretty easy to see the usefulness of this both in charting the collective dramatic intensity of an unfolding story upon an audience’s head and heart, and also the manner in which motivations and decisions, effort and activities reach a flash point or recede in real world individual and group psychology.

Read Narrative Dynamics

Available in Paperback and on Kindle

Narrative Dynamics (Front Cover)

Narrative Dynamics (Part 1)

Excerpted from the book, Narrative Dynamics

by Melanie Anne Phillips

Introduction

When Chris Huntley and I originally developed the Dramatica Theory of Story back in the early 1990s, we opted to implement our model of narrative as a structure, driven by dynamics.

In such a manifestation, the structure takes center stage, and its components are rearranged according to dynamic rules that reflect the unique potentials of any given narrative.

In this book I present a series of articles I’ve developed about a whole different way of looking at the Dramatica theory – in terms of dynamics, rather than structure.  In fact, the dynamic model is a counterpart, not an alternative, to the existing structural model with which you may be familiar.

As an illustration of the difference between the two, if you think of the structural model as being made of particles, the dynamic model is made of waves.  If the structural model is seen as digital, the dynamic model is analog.  If the structural model describes a neural network, the dynamic model describes the biochemistry, If the structural defines the elements of a story (or psychology) and how they relate, the dynamic model defines how the elements transmute or decay into other elements and how relationships among elements are changing.

In usage, the structural model can tell you, for example, that a main character is driven by logic; the dynamic model can tell you how strongly they are driven and how the intensity of that drive changes over time.  The structural model can predict if a story will end in success or failure; the dynamic model can tell you the degree of success or failure.

In a nutshell, the structural model documents the fixed logic of a story’s structure, the dynamic model charts the ebb and flow of its passions.  Cognitive and Affective, Yin and Yang, Space and Time.  Head and heart.

Read Narrative Dynamics in Paperback or Kindle

Narrative Dynamics 7 – Dynamics Quads

The last couple of days I’ve been thinking about what elements would be in quads of dynamics.  In the current Dramatica structural model, dynamics are only in pairs, such as Timelock and Optionlock.  So, if these two items were in a quad of dynamics, what would the other two items be?

Today, I have my answer, and its ramifications and implications range much farther than I thought – all the way into new perspectives from which to appreciate the existing Dramatica structural model.  In fact, it turns out that every structural quad already contains shadows and influences of dynamic quads inherent within and integral to their functioning.  In other words, the structural model would not operate at all, if it did not already include reflections and harmonics of the dynamic model which had not yet been developed.

Think of a hologram as opposed to a photograph.  if you cut a photo in two, each has only half the object.  But if you cut a hologram in two, each half sees the whole picture but only from half the points of view.   In the current model of Dramatica we only have the half of the hologram, yet it sees the entire nature of narrative, just from a portion of the available perspectives.

In fact, just as in the Dramatica model itself, there are four points of view from which to explore narrative – a Structural view of Structure, a Structural view of Dynamics, a Dynamic view of Structure, and a Dynamic view of Dynamics.

The current model provides only the first of these – the Structural view of Structure.  But wait a minute….  How then is it possible that it contains dynamics at all?  Because the nature of a quad of anything is that three of the four items will appear to be of the same family while the fourth item will seem a bit out of place – out of left field – as it sort of belongs halfway but has a foot in another camp.

In fact, this is true.  Quads are not truly all part of the same plane, but a squashed helix.  They are a flat projection onto a two dimensional plan of a 3D phenomenon – like looking at a Slinky toy end-on so that it appears to be a circle.

From this perspective, we perceive one circuit around the helix as a family passing through four quadrants – like going through 90, 180, 270 and 360 degrees in a cartesian plane in trigonometry.

But that vertical rise that is flattened out doesn’t disappear, it is just swept under the carpet as we mentally try to make the first three items in a quad appear as much as possible as part of the same family so we can get a mental grip on them – ascribe a common umbrella understanding to the group.

Still, by the time you get to that last item in the quad family, you have all this left-over vertical rise in your pocket and you have to shove it into the quad before you move on to the next.  And so, the last item in the quad picks up all the slack which moves it halfway between belonging in one family and half way into belonging to the next by nature, by meaning.

This is the structural view of a quad.  A more accurate view would see each element as moving 1/4 of the way toward the next family, but then the whole quad could no longer be treated as a single family unit.  So what’s wrong with that?  Only by grouping four perspectives (the Mass, Energy, Space and Time of a thing) into a single family, are we able to understand the structural nature of the thing as it exists.

This is why the circle seems closed, why it becomes a closed system as a quad, why it appears to create a family, why it seems structure, why it seems as if each family is a closed unit within that circle that make it a structural element in an even larger quad.

What we lose, however is the vertical aspect – the vertical quad as the helix continues upward through the Z axis through four iterations – for levels – a quad of dynamics which represent that we cannot see any thing from all four perspectives at once.  We can only take one point of view at a time.  To see all four, we must shift from one to another, and that takes time, as represented in the vertical axis.

Essentially, this accounts for the fact that by the time we have seen all four perspectives, what we are observing may have changed, or we may have changed in the process.  Again, this creates a new quad – the the Object is the same and We are the same, the Object is the same and We are changed, the Object has changed and We are the same, the Object has changed and We have changed.

That was the structural view of those four relationships.  The dynamic view would be:  The Object and Observer do not change each other, the Object changes the Observer, the Object is changed by the Observer, the Object and the Observer change each other.

If the Dramatica chart were only seen in the flat projection, the whole vertical progression – the structural view and therefore also first step toward  a dynamic view of narrative – would be all we had.  But, since the Dramatica model can also be seen in  a three-dimensional chart (the familiar four towers) – the nature of the helices can be seen in the progression around the quads, families of quads and so on, from the bottom of the model to the top, or from the top down.

With this in mind, we can see that the flat projection, the 3D projection, and the sequence of progression through the elements along the helices are three parts of another quad family in the current model.  What is the fourth part?  The eight dynamic questions themselves.

These questions are the part of the model that is most out of left field, most different from the other three, and the one that picks up all the slack of the journey toward a purely dynamic model.

The eight dynamic questions function to twist and turn the model, whereas the other three aspects are passive, structural, positioned by their “natures” as opposed to their functions.

Keep in mind, now, that every element of the Dramatica model actually represents a process of the mind.  These are not elements so much as named processed.  For example, in truth we don’t have faith, rather we are engaged in the process of being faithful.  The mind is a machine made of time; every gear and pulley is a process, not an object.  These functions must be continuously  in process or they cease to exist.  If the mind stops, it dies.  But, from a structural view, if we see a process perpetually ongoing within the span of our observation, such as the Red Spot on Jupiter, we treat the process as an object and call it a storm or even a feature.  So, from this perspective, the dynamic questions differ from the rest of the structural model by describing the processes the twist and turn the model into different arrangements.  In other words, dynamics in the current model are the processes that arrange the other processes.

Simply put, if the structural model can be seen as fractals of families within families – quads within quads – then each element or item in the model can be seen as a variable in which the value is the intensity or power of each process.  Change the power and you fill a different number in the variable and get a different kind of iteration from one fractal level to the next.

The dynamic questions then, are not changing the value of the variables, but the value of the operations in the equations.  In other words, dynamics are changing the value of the functions in the equations – which operations will be employed in which order, which changes not the nature of the iterations, but the nature of the iterator.

Now this is pretty much what we already knew.  But I was always plagued by wondering why the dynamics were in eight pairs rather that eight quads.  I had tried to combine these sixteen values into four quads of four, but they never fit.  It was like each pair was half a quad.  But why would that be?

My best guess was that, like the four item in any quad, you can only see one foot, while the other is in a different family.  So, from a structural view of structure, you can only see half of each of the dynamic quads.

Now that just motivated me.  While I realized that for the structural view of structure, the Dramatica model was complete and, therefore, both accurately analytic and predictive, but it was only one fourth of the capital “T” truth.  I wanted to know what was in the other three fourths – especially that final fourth – that last of four complete models that is the dynamic view of dynamics – the one that will contain four aspects of its own and the very last one will half one foot in the next family – the family beyond mind, beyond universe, a hint of something outside our own existence, just as the dynamic questions are a hint of what lies beyond structure.

I’ll probably never see it through that far in my lifetime, but that tantalizing possibility keeps me working, every day, on trying to get there, to catch a glimpse of that Great Unknown before I shuffle off this mortal helix.

Which brings me (at last) to the subject of this article: my new discovery that finally allows me to bridge the gap from the dynamic questions (the fourth aspect of the current structural model, the current super class, to the next super class: the structural view of dynamics.

It began, as stated, with my recent ponderings as to what dynamic quads would contain.  Specifically (as my mental example for a thought exercise) if the current pair of dynamics of Timelock and Optionlock were in a quad, what would the other to items be?

I tried a number of different candidates, but all of them were insufficient to the task; they did not meet all the requirements of a truly balanced quad.  But of late, there was one pair that seemed, at least initially, to satisfy all the test I know for determining if a potential quad is fully functional.

This part isn’t much of a revelation – just the first step to some really astounding discoveries, but it is an essential step….   So, here’s were the best candidates I had: the promising pair of dynamics was Constricting and Loosening.

Simply put, while the current pair of Timelock and Optionlock describe narratives that are brought to a conclusion by running out of time or running out of options, the new pair   describes narratives that, at the conclusion, finds time or option (space) constrictions to be becoming tighter or looser.  In essence, are time or space opening up into more possibilities or are they closing down into fewer?

Now at first, this didn’t ring quite true.  There was something about it that bothered me….  From a purely structural view of structure, this new pair should be simply Tighter or Looser at the end, not becoming Tighter or Looser.

But then I realized that I had it right the first time.  This is no longer the structural view of structure super class.  We are now in the structural view of dynamics super class.  And so, just as a piece of the hologram has the whole picture but only part of the perspectives, for the first time in my quarter of a century of Dramatica theory development, I had to engage in the one cardinal sin of narrative model construction – “never shift perspective.”

Chris and I drilled that mantra into ourselves all of these years so that the current super class is all K-based (Knowledge based) while the other three super classes would be T, A, and D based (Thought, Ability and Desire).  KTAD are the mental equivalents of MEST (Mass, Energy, Space and Time).  They are the mental harmonic of the physical world, for any dynamic system that is generated from a structure will reflect the same patterns as the structure from which it is born.  In other words, form and function follow each other, just as our mental dynamics lead us to reorganize the universe in our image, structurally.

But in this case, we have actually moved for the first time into a new super class – the T (Thought) super class.  And therefore, while the development of this new model would also require a consistent perspective, it would, naturally, be a different perspective.

So, recognizing that the structural view of structure could only see half of the quads of dynamics in the pairs of dynamics, then the other pair of dynamics in these quads would need to be seen from the T super class perspective.  And, from that point of view, processes cannot be seen as states (as having tightened or loosened by the end) but as processes (tightening or loosening by the end).  Subtle but essential, for wherever one might begin to pull a loose thread to unravel the new dynamic model, all that follows will grow from these first seeds.

(As a side note, I expect that in the final super class (the dynamic view of dynamics), it will require a continuously shifting perspective within the model itself, rather than a consistent one, as it must represent, ultimately, the rate at which the nature of change is changes as one process iterates into another.)

Back to the subject at hand, there is a second thought exercise I had been cogitating upon yesterday while making the 90 minute drive back to my home in the mountains from a meeting at Write Brothers (the company Chris – co-creator of Dramatica – co-owns with Steve – programmer of the Dramatica engine).

This thought exercise was: If we think about something round and round in circles, such as worrying about the potential outcome of something, our anxiety grows and grows.  Why does this happen, and how is it reflected in the dynamic model I’m building?

This thought came about because we had to re-register our car in California when we moved back here from Oregon for the project I’m doing with Write Brothers Incorporated (WBI).  I had been putting the smog check off right to the last possible minute before the deadline because the more I thought about the ramification of it possibly failing the text (money, inconvenience, perhaps the need to buy a whole new car), the more anxious I became.

And yet, there was no new information – just running around the same mental circle over and over.  Still, with every circuit my anxiety grew.  How is that reflected in the current model?  It isn’t.  Clearly it is a dynamic, so how would it be reflected in the dynamic model?  Didn’t have a clue.

Then, this morning, I put two and two together and combined my thoughts about Tightening and Loosening with the problem of increasing anxiety from an unchanging mental process endlessly repeated.  And it hit me.  Mental processes don’t operate in a vacuum as it would appear in the structural model.  Rather, they generate results.  They create product, they manufacture yield.

Every process manufactures something.  In the case of my smog check, the yield was increasing amounts of anxiety.  The more I thought about it, the more anxious I became.  In the dynamic half of the Timelock/Optionlock quad then, it wouldn’t be about process but about yield.  Essentially, are the result of the narrative such that the constriction of time or options is becoming tighter or looser?

Extending this, might not the whole next super class – the structural view of dynamics – be looking as the results or yield of a narrative – the increasing or decreasing forces at play?  I think so.  I believe this perspective defines the nature of the new dynamic model – how building or diminishing forces influence one other in a series of ups and downs by every point measured until the end of the narrative is defined by reaching an equilibrium – not a fixed state as in the structural model in which all processes of change have ceased and all potential is gone – but in a stability of ongoing processes in which, collectively, all forces hold each other in check and no further increasing or decreasing of any of them will occur.

Well, then, what does this mean to the current model and how does it fit in with my other recently published speculations about the nature of narrative dynamics?  The first thing that came to mind was a recent article I’d written describing how new patterns can be formed in the mind and then locked in place impervious to any internal ability to change them, and how external forces can be applied to the mind to affect change from the outside.

The mind is a closed system, just as narratives are closed systems.  They deal only with the elements within the narrative, which is the scope of the story, and make the assumption that no other forces outside that scope have any impact on the narrative.

In real life (which narrative seek to document), our minds are constantly assaulted by forces outside our own internal cogitations.  How others respond to us or act for or against us and physical maladies that have nothing to do with the nature our mental processes yet greatly affect their operation are both examples of why our minds are not truly closed systems.

While the operating systems of our mind may be closed barring physical damage to the brain, just as the structural view of structure never changes in an unbroken narrative, forces outside the system will determine the patterns into which it falls, just as the dynamic model (the structural view of dynamics super class) works outside the current structural model to determine how the structural operating system of the narrative is twisted and turned.

The eight pairs of dynamics in the current model are not the outside forces of change themselves – just the tip of the iceberg – the interface between structure and dynamics as seen from the structural side, the other half of the interface being seen from the dynamic side in the additional eight pairs of dynamics, such as Tightening and Loosing, that will complete the quads of dynamics – complete the hologram.

In my previous speculative article, I compared mental “states” (or patterns of cognition and/or affection [emotion]) to standing waves – ongoing forces that have reached an equilibrium within the mind.  But why would such patterns maintain themselves (as commitments and responsibilities, as obligations and rationalization) in the face of external pressures that should alter them.  How do patterns of the mind end up fixed in place, like prejudice or fixation, like a black hole in space that exerts gravity but will not open up regardless of the outside environment?

In the article, I used a personal experience of an acquaintance to describe how we initially respond to our environment to achieve equilibrium with it.  But these are merely standing waves of processes, like the new dynamic model, that are easily undone when our environment changes.

But if the external forces that established these standing waves are suddenly removed (like moving out of a family due to an argument or like having a sudden relief of anxiety) it is like compressed gas in a can being suddenly released – it chills all that is around it and freezes things in place – in this case mental patterns.

If the release of pressure is gradual, there is no chill, no freeze, and the standing waves realign.  But if it is fast enough, the effect will range form a firming up into slush (increase in resistance to change) to a complete freeze (maximum resistance to change) and that pattern will remain until another outside force melts that which has been frozen.

To unfreeze new pressure must be brought to bear on the mind with sufficient speed to create heat – heat enough to melt the previously frozen patterns.  This compression can happen quickly for a flash-thaw (which is the equivalent of a leap of faith where a character changes its nature in an instant) to a slow thaw in which a character is gradually warmed into flexibility.

And, naturally, these processes can completely fix in place or remove patterns of mind, but may also only serve to make them slushy.

And so, we return to the new dynamic model (the second of the four super classes) in which Tightening or Loosening are the dynamic side of these interface quads.  While the current structural view of structure model describes how forces completely freeze or melt patterns of mind, the new structural view of dynamics model describes how patterns of mind are made more sluggish or more slushy.

If the current super class is focused on determining position, the new dynamic model will focus on velocity.  The third super class (dynamic view of structure)will center on changes in velocity and the final super class (dynamic view of dynamics) will explore changes in the rate of change of velocity.

So, it all ties in together – structure, dynamics, a fluid mind or one firming up through the four quads of justification (as seen in the current structural model as progressing from Knowledge, Thought, Ability and Desire to Can, Need, Want and Should, through Situation, Circumstances, Sense of Self and State of Being to Commitment, Responsibility, Rationalization and Obligation).

Next step – figure out the other halves of the other seven dynamic quads and then use that information to iterate into a complete dynamic model of identical size and resolution to the current structural projection.

Oh, and the car passed the smog check.

Melanie

 

 

 

“Sweet Spots” in Time

Got a new kitten two days ago. Vet said that it needed two vaccinations – Distemper and Leukemia. The used to give them two weeks apart so they wouldn’t interfere with each other. But, they discovered they also didn’t interfere if you gave them both at the same time. But if they were given at different times closer than two weeks together, they’d interfere.

Imagine that! Two processes, one for the Distemper vaccination reaction and the other for Leukemia. Two processes that need to be separated or simultaneous or they interfere…. Nodal points in time the same way we get standing waves in space. Peaks and valleys and slopes of different steepness all around.

Consider harmonics in music or in vibrations. Two different frequencies and combine as fractional harmonics at different points – sevenths, fifths, thirds, and others can create resonance or dissonance. It is why music can pass through discordant moments on the way to another conjunction that satisfies, or why a song that ends discordantly creates an unsettled mood.

Think of dramatics – rising tension, trials one must overcome, tragic endings vs. triumphant ones. Embrace the chemistry of characters as processes that mesh in repetitive undulations or clash in perpetual static.

In the real world, such oscillations can lead to bridges that shimmy until they collapse. In electronics, the relationship between the components of a circuit and the metal box that holds them can create a phantom capacitor between the two, which in turn becomes part of the circuit and even appears in the schematic as such.

Now, consider that just as a tennis racket (a spatial construct) have a sweet spot, so too can a narrative (a temporal construct) have a sweet spot. Sweet spots in time… what would they be?

They would be story points. Specifically, dynamic story points.

In Dramatica, story points (such as Goal, Main Character Problem, and Benchmark) are all spatial story points – sweet spots in space that represent the harmonic conjunction of point of view and item being observed. Consider – the Dramatica chart is a periodic table of story elements, but not story points. Each element is an item that might be examined, such as Memory or Hope or Conscience.

These elements are not objects but processes. For example, “Hope” is not really a thing but rather the process of “Hoping.” And so we see that the Dramatica chart categorizes these processes of the mind into families and sub-families, just like the periodic table of elements in Chemistry or Physics.

But when one of these items is seen as a Goal (such as a Goal of Memory, which might be trying to remember or trying to forget) suddenly we are looking at it from a particular point of view – as the story’s Goal. This contextualizes the process element by combining its nature with how it is being perceived. This blending of object and observer, item under study and pint of view – this creates perspective. And perspective is a nodal point – a spatial sweet spot.

Think now of Dramatica’s story dynamics – Change or Steadfast, Linear or Holistic, Start or Stop, Action or Decision to name a few. These are nodal points in the temporal flow: sweet spots in time. Each represents a point at which the processes and forces in the progression of a narrative combine in conjunction and define the nature and direction of the resultant vector of the dramatics. Each define a wave form and together define the complex wave form of a narrative’s dynamic fabric.

Now turn to Dramatica’s Signposts and Journeys – these are the nodal points between space and time. In other words, these are the sweet spots between structure and dynamics, between structural and dynamic story points – between spatial and temporal narrative sweet spots.

Looking forward – we know that there must be as many temporal or dynamic story points as there are spatial or structural story points. We just haven’t identified them all yet, save the eight that are currently in the Dramatica model. (Eight are the minimum requirement to align structure and dynamics so that the spatial structure and temporal progression of a story can be tied to one another – meaning tied to the order of events – change the order of events and the meaning changes, change the meaning and the order of events must change, just like a given pattern of a Rubik’s Cube require a certain sequence of moves to achieve it.

Therefore, these dynamic or temporal story points – these nodal points in the confluence of processes – these nexuses of convergent waveforms – these sweet spots in time – are out there, waiting to be discovered. This is part and parcel of my ongoing work in identifying and documenting the process elements in a model of narrative dynamics – the other side of the Dramatica coin – the side that represents the passion of story, rather than its logic, the ebb and flow of dramatics, rather than their structure – the waves to Dramatica’s particles, with the entire combined model forming the predictive interface between the two.

Much like signposts and journeys enable the translation of narrative meaning to narrative sequence, such a model would hold insight into the relationship between time and space, the smallest sub-atomic particles and the world of quantum theory across that bridge from matter to probability.

All made possible because of a new kitten in conjunction with a random bit of information about the functioning of vaccinations.

And that, children, is how new theory is created.

Melanie Anne Phillips
Co-creator, Dramatica

Conversational Inertia

Sometimes, no matter how one tries, a conversation cannot be turned.  Illustrating this in  conversations among characters is a way to illuminate the degree of power that is driving the conversation in a particular direction, or perhaps the magnitude of the potential behind it.

For example, my daughter is seven weeks pregnant and just posted the following note on Facebook with several additional responses:

Mindi (my daughter):  I thought pregnancy and pickle craving was a myth. I’ve nearly gone through a whole jar since yesterday.

My reply:  A jar of pregnancies?

Someone else’s reply:  pickled pregnancies?

Another person’s reply: Not even pregnancy made pickles taste good to me.

I tried to throw this conversation into a new direction, a new context, but the inertia of the social fabric drew the linear topics back to the original issue.  This is an initial indicator that those who follow my daughter on Facebook are likely not as interested in the branch in the process I moved down and are more interested in the more obvious subject of the original comment.

Conversational inertia is a hint – a whisper – that, while not definitive, is indicative of larger currents at work that move a conversation in a particular course no matter what winds blow across the surface.  The stronger and deeper the current, the greater the drive behind it.

Conversations may be between two people, in which case the inertia illustrates each individual’s underlying motivations.  In such a case, each may be speaking at cross purposes, as if two different conversations were chopped up and their pieces alternated linearly.  Such mechanisms can often be seen in the conversations between the Main and Influence characters as they each press forward with their own paradigms like two oarsman alternately rowing toward different destinations.

Conversations may be among several people in a group, in which case the inertia illustrates the underlying motivations of the larger Story Mind in which each individual represents a facet.  In such a case, there may be a single individual at odds with the group mind or the number of individuals may be split on which topic to follow, indicating that the Story Mind is literally of two minds, which functions as an analogy to our own individual mind’s when we can’t decide between two priorities or are torn between to equally attractive or equally unattractive alternatives.  In other scenarios, each individual may try to hijack the group conversation in his or her own desired direction, fragmenting the Story Mind and indicating that the collective is pulled in many direction or is simply directionless, is exploring or is going to pieces.

As a final thought for you Theory Hounds, this process is part of the Dynamic Model – the wave-driven undulations of narrative dynamics that give rise to growing motivations and repress or dissolve others.

You see it in your interactions with others and in the tides and eddies of your own mind and, therefore, you see it in stories as well.

Melanie Anne Phillips
Co-creator, Dramatica

The Dramatica Structural Model

Here’s an article I wrote about fifteen years ago that described the reason for and functioning of the Dramatica Table of Story Elements.  Though our understandings have refined over the years, the underlying concepts remain unchanged.

The Model of Dramatica

by Melanie Anne Phillips

An Introduction to Quad Structure

Just as the physical Periodic Table of the Elements is divided into families, such as the noble gasses or rare earths, so too is the Dramatica Table of Story Elements. Families occur in groups of four called Quads.

A Quad is much more than just a framework to hold story points. In fact, there are a number of relationships expressed by the quad form. By itself, the bare quad represents a linear equation. Each of the four smaller squares in the Quad represents one of the variables in the equation.

In addition, if one moves through all four variables in a Quad in a particular order, it adds a non-linear aspect to the Quad’s list of functions. Also, by comparing and/or interacting the variables in the Quad, a relativity is described in which an overall equilibrium must be maintained keep the value of the Quad as a whole within prescribed limits.

So, a Quad functions in four ways simultaneously:

1. As a physical expression of linear equations.

2. As a temporal expression of non-linear equations.

3. As a conceptual expression of relativistic relationships.

4. As a framework for Appreciations, much like a Periodic Table of Elements.

To illustrate these four functions, we can assign an arbitrary name to each of the four variables so that we may write the forms of their relationships.

The Linear Form

Using these variables, the linear equation expressed by the Quad reads:

A/B = CD

There are two ways to read this equation: as an objective description of the processes of the mind and alternatively as a subjective description of the experience of engaging in those processes.

The Objective interpretation of the equation reads (in conversational terms): When “A” is considered against “B”, their relative value is measured against the product of “C” and “D” combined. Simply stated, this means that logic and emotion are co-dependent, for reasons we shall see later.

The same equation interpreted Subjectively reads: When “A” is held separate from “B”, “C” and “D” will be blended. Simply stated, this means that the mind must blur the distinction between some items in order to define others.

Clearly, both interpretations are similar, but each casts the meaning of the equation in a slightly different light. Just as clearly, we are not using mathematical symbols in the same way one might in standard Algebra. In fact, the verbal description of the equation sounds more like a chemical function than a mathematical equation. As we shall soon explore, the Mental Relativity model of self-awareness describes the binary nature of neural firing as it relates to the biochemical impact of the environment surrounding neurons. Therefore, the mathematical model requires a symbolic means of expression that can accommodate both.

The Non-Linear Form

Rather than looking at a quality pertaining to a single Quad as we did with the linear form, we will be examining the permutation of a single Quad through several iterations which describe the non-linear form.

For reference, examine the following figure which illustrates the fully developed model as a whole once the Quad has gone through all of its iterations, which according to theory, ultimately bring it back to its initial values.

The above model is made up entirely of Quads in a multi-dimensional matrix. The matrix is constructed by representing the spatial, fractal nature of Quads in the vertical plane, and by representing the temporal, frictal (dynamic fractal) nature of Quads in the horizontal plane. It is the interference pattern created by the intersection of the fractal and frictal relationships which expands to fill three dimensional space in the model. Each position in the matrix, therefore, represents a different blend of fractal and frictal influences, and the matrix itself, therefore, forms the visual equivalent of a relativistic formula.

The non-linear nature of each Quad is seen in the iterations through the horizontal plane. For example, if we take our sample Quad of A,B,C, and D, we can move it through four iterations which effectively create a Quad of Quads, as illustrated below:

1 

4                                        2

3 

Graphically, the first iteration is achieved by flipping the physical Quad like a page in a book from left to right. The resultant Quad still represents the form of the initial linear equation, A/B = CD, but the values of the variables have changed so that the equation now reads C/D = AB.

Iteration number 2 flips the new Quad over from top to bottom, arriving at a third set of values for the equation which now read B/A = DC.

Iteration number 3 flips the newest Quad from right to left creating a final, fourth set of values such that D/C = BA.

Iterations of Iterations

If we were to proceed through the final iteration (number 4) the Quad would return to its original position such that A/B = CD. At first it might appear that we have come full circle. But in fact, although each individual variable is back in its original place, their relationships have not returned to the original. This is because going “once around the track” with the position of the variables has actually changed the nature of the equation itself.

In fact, the equation has also gone through the first of four iterations such that it now reads:

A/C = DB

Whereas the initial equation compared diagonal relationships between variables (called Dynamic Pairs), the new equation compares horizontal relationships (Companion Pairs) between variables as illustrated below:

Initial Equation

Iterated Equation

The matrix of the model is constructed by representing this new equation as the first Quad in a new Quad of Quads, as illustrated below:

Once again, the new Quad flips from left to right, top to bottom, and right to left, filling in the matrix until a second complete Quad of Quads is formed from equations which compare the horizontal variables.

When the equation in the new Quad of Quads finally returns to its initial orientation, it has once again been altered by the process. Now, although the variables still remain in their initial positions, the equation now compare them vertically, as shown below in Dependent Pairs:

Through its four iterations, this new equations adds another Quad of Quads in the “B” position of the horizontal plane. When it returns to its original orientation of variables, the equation has changed one final time. So far, the following three iterations have been explored:

What pattern remains for the final Quad of Quads? Actually, there are two patterns remaining:

The equation on the left serves to examine the four variables as individual elements, ignoring (for the moment) their similar qualities as a family. In this way, the unique qualities of each may be explored. Conversely, the equation represented on the right looks at nothing but the family characteristics, ignoring individual deviations entirely.

Just by looking at the relationships expressed by these two Quads, we can see a tangential difference in the internal dynamics compared to the pairs of the first three styles. In fact, this indicates a completely different set of functions performed by these Quads than we have previously seen.

For example, in the Quad on the left, we have already compared the value of the variable “A” to “B”, “A” to “C”, and “A” to “D”, in the original three Quad forms by virtue of the pair relationships created in A/B = CD, and all of it’s permutations. As earlier mentioned, this was an “Objective” reading of the equation.

Also, as we have already seen, in a “Subjective” interpretation, “A” and “B” are held separate, while “C” and “D” are blended. For example, “A” is compared to “CD”, to “CB”, and to “BC”, and “B” is compared to “CD”, to “AC”, and to “AD”.

In each case, the notion of an Objective and a Subjective view is accepted as a given, and rather than being built into the Quad is held as a responsibility of the Observer. Having fully explored the Quad relationships with this given, it is time to turn the tables on the Observer and compare the Objective to the Subjective. This is why the Quad dynamics appear quite unlike what has come before.

Let us examine the meaning held by each of these new Quad forms. We’ll begin with the Independent Quad:

The first iteration of this perspective is to see how “A” relates to the combined influence of “B”, “C”, and “D”. There are two ways to calculate this influence. One way puts “A” outside of the product of “BCD” as illustrated below:

This is a pseudo-objective relationship, illustrating that the observer at “A”, seeks to approach Objectivity by excluding self from the equation. Clearly, from the previous Quads, we can see that “A” influences the other three variables in many ways. Therefore, rather than being a truly Objective view in which the Observer can actually stand apart from that which is observed, the Observer is always impacting the observation.

To carry it a step farther, as we read this page, we assume we are taking an Objective view of the Quad Dynamics without affecting them. If we accept the point of view of the reader as true Objectivity, then the view from “A” is pseudo-objectivity, and more like a Subjective view of the Objective.

In contrast, the Subjective component within the Quad itself appears as follows:

Here, the Observer combines the influences of “AB”, “AC”, and “AD”, and as a result, “A” is given equal weight with the product of “BCD”. This is a pseudo-subjective view, for the truly Subjective view does not look outward at all. In a sense, the Observer at “A” examines how everything relates to him or her, but is not actually examining his or her self. So, rather than being truly Subjective, this approach is more like an Objective view of the Subjective.

The three-pronged pseudo-subjective pattern is referred to as a Splay, and the closed pseudo-objective pattern is called a Display.

Each Quad in the fourth and final Quad of Quads in the overall model represents both views. By the time it has gone through all of its permutations, each of the independent variables has been compared to all combinations of the other three, both Objectively and Subjectively, and the final Quad has been completed.

Still remaining is the Collective view, illustrated below:

This view has only one interpretation: we are no longer seeing the variables as individual units, but instead see only the result of the entire equation, all internal relationships taken into account. This Collective view essentially defines a family in which the Quad belongs. It is both the sum of the parts and an umbrella which covers all considerations falling under its heading.

Since we have already explored four Quads of Quads for a total of sixteen, we can project a pattern of sixteen family names, each of which describes and represents one Quad. In the model, these family names form a second level in the three-dimensional matrix, as illustrated below:

(Click on the image to navigate through the structure.)

The sixteen family names at the second level are called Variations. Each Quad of four Variations functions just like the Quads of Elements at the first level. Also each Quad of Variations is described by single family at an even higher level made up of family names called Types, represented in the third level up from the bottom of the model. Finally, each Quad of four Types culminates in a single family name called a Class.

It should be noted that by the time we have moved up four levels, the Collective approach to the Quad has been explored to the same degree as the diagonal (Dynamic) , horizontal (Companion), vertical (Dependent), and Independent comparisons, balancing them in an initial equilibrium.

This can be seen in the “weight” carried by the Collective iteration, not by how many elements it contains. To illustrate this, note the fact that although there are sixty-four Elements, there are only sixteen Variations, and four Types in a single Class. Here’s why: Each Variation, being a collective, has the same “weight” as four Elements, because in fact it is composed or comprised of four Elements. So, sixteen Variations weigh as much as sixty-four Elements. Similarly, four Types also weigh as much as sixty-four Elements, which is the same weight as sixteen Variations. And finally, a single Class also has the weight of sixty-four Elements, or sixteen Variations, or four Types.

From this explanation, we can see that each level can be taken separately as another temporal iteration originating with a single quad at the Element level and carrying it to it’s ultimate extent. In fact, it is a closed system from this perspective, though as we shall see later, from other perspectives it will appear to be an open system, best described as a quad-helix.

To recap then, we have iterated a single quad into a horizontal arrangement of sixty-four elements, then jumped into the vertical dimension and worked upwards from a wide particulate view to a singularity. In doing so, each iteration has not only carried the process along, but has also built up a “weight” which really represents “pre-processing” of future iterations. In other words, part of the substance of future iterations along the linear progression is accomplished in advance as the product of earlier iterations.

That this should exist is essential to the model. It represents a relativity among the operations so that no event which takes place in the iterative progression does so in a vacuum. Rather, it has a more holistic impact, not unlike the effect of gravity or the effect of the biochemistry of the brain as a medium across which the impact of a neuron firing is eventually felt by another neuron even though they have no direct synaptic connection.

In the model, the iterations from quad to quad of quads to set of sixty-four elements creates a progressively stronger impact on the next “step” to come. Therefore, with each iteration, there is less “control” available to that next iteration because the values of its variables and the natures of its operations have already been “weighted” to fall within certain limits.

Now, this would then give more weight to the earlier iterations than to the later ones, except for another essential component of the model, and that is bi-directionality. Rather than beginning at the bottom and working up, we could begin at the top and work down to create the structure.

In this approach, we start with a single item from a quad, such as the variable “A”, which we have used in our generic representation of A, B, C, and D. If, rather than combining discrete particles into larger units we “deconstruct” an Elemental particle into smaller units, we move in an opposite direction.

The single Class item at the top of the iterative tower is exactly the same as an Element in any one of the quads in the structure, including the quad which began the original iteration at the bottom. The only difference among the quads is the arrangement of Elements within the quad, and the arrangement or contextual position of a given quad in the overall matrix (representing it’s relativistic qualities in the structure as a whole).

So, beginning with a single item at the Class level, we can break it down into four component pieces represented by a quad containing a full complement of A,B,C, and D. From this, we can deconstruct each of the four components of the Type quad into four Variations each, also representing A,B,C, and D. Finally, each Variation can be broken down into four Elements, A,B,C, and D.

What we did originally when working up was to take a temporal or progressive view of the structure and follow the iterations to a point of singularity. What we have now done is to start with a singularity and take a spatial or component view of the structure, breaking each piece into smaller and smaller components as we work our way down to indivisible pieces.

Why are the Elements indivisible? Because when you start at a Class item and work your way down to the bottom level, one of the four Elements will be identical in nature and quality to the Class item itself. So, for example, starting with a Class item with a quality of “A”, we find at the bottom Element level a quad with an A,B,C, and D in which the Elemental “A” has the same nature as a starting point of iteration and the same contextual quality of position as the Class item A. In other words, the temporal and spatial qualities, or put another way, the progressive and relativistic qualities are identical between Class “A” and Element “A”.

When looking at a single Class “tower”, we can easily see each of the two “A”‘s a being starting points. But, it does not at first appear that they share identical context. This becomes clear, however, when take into account that there are actually four Class towers (or matrices), each one beginning with a different Element at the top. So, there is an “A” Class, a “B” Class, a “C” Class, and a “D” Class, each at the top of a different matrix.

The four matrices are not independent, however, but represent collectively the full extent of “arguing” a single quad down to it’s smallest components – smallest because at the bottom of each matrix, there will be a single quad which is identical in content and alignment to the initial quad made up of the four Class items at the top of the quad-matrix. That quad at the bottom of each of the four matrices is also the beginning point for each matrix in the iterative progression that works from the bottom up.

It all begins to look a little recursive, and from this perspective it is. Again, it only appears recursive when it is perceived as a closed system. In other articles, I describe the dynamics which rearrange the alignment of the items in the four matrices. These dynamics represent the process approach to the model, from which perspective it appears as an open-ended, ongoing iteration which never exactly returns to the point of origin.

Some final thoughts about the structural matrices before we conclude our Introduction to Quad Structure….

Because each of the four Class matrices starts at the top with a different Element as the “seed”, one finds that the alignment of the Elements in each of the quads on the lower level reflects that initial starting point. In other words, one might look at the matrix creation process as being iterative, and if we seed the function with a value of “A”, it will create a matrix that is identical in structure but different in arrangement of content than if we had begun with a value of “B”, for example.

Still, all four Elements, A, B, C, and D must appear in every quad in all four matrices. So, the “filtering” effect of “looking” at the lower levels through the “perspective” of the Element which is the Class item at the top makes itself manifest not in different content (which must still be the four Elements) but in different arrangements of the Elements within the quads.

For example, the quads in the “B” matrix would place the “B” Element in the upper left hand corner of each quad, rather than the “A” Element as in the “A” matrix which we have illustrated in detail. But, just as when the progressive iteration from bottom to top shifts from the Element level to the Variation level and enters the vertical dimension, the nature of the realignment of Elements in the matrix changes when we move from top to bottom and arrive at the bottom Element level.

Note that when moving to the Variation level from the bottom, we indicated that most of the influences had already been pre-determined by the relativistic effects of the earlier iterations. And, in fact, we had already described the Dynamic, Companion, Dependent, and Independent aspects of Elemental relationships, leaving only the Collective relationship to be explored. So, the entire vertical structure, when seen from the bottom up approach pertains only to that last 1/2 of the fourth kind of pairing, the Collective.

Similarly, when looking from the top down, the last level at the bottom pertains only to the final aspect of deconstruction. Down to this point from the top, we have dealt with the arrangement of quads by noting their movement as Elements. But the “perspective shift” that occurs at the bottom Element level shifts for the first time into the binary. Rather than rearranging the quads as four Elements, the shifting occurs among bonded pairs comprised of two Elements each.

These bonded pairs do not rearrange at the Element level within a quad, but within a group of four quads. So, looking at the element levels of each of the four matrices, we see that the make-up of each bonded pair remains the same, but the position of the bonded pairs relative to those in the other matrices is different.

The repositioning of bonded pairs within the quads of quads is the result of the “filtering” effect caused by the iterative deconstruction from top to bottom. Conversely, that each matrix is topped by a Class item that is a different Element, is the result of the shift caused by seeding the progressive iteration with a different arrangement of bonded pairs. Taken together they represent a unified model of the structure of the mind.

But the model is not yet complete. As it stands, the model is fixed and inanimate; hardly in line with the dynamic nature of the mind. In fact, structure is only half of the Mental Relativity model. The other half are the algorithms which describe how the components of the structure are rearranged, much as one might twist up a Rubik’s cube, how this is driven by external and internal stimuli, and how it builds up potential, much like winding a clock.

While the brain may be described in terms of its components, the mind is a machine made of time. Only when both the structural and dynamic aspects of the model are brought together can the mind/brain connection be drawn in such a way as to create a model which can both describe and predict.

In summary, we can see all around us reflections or harmonics of some of these concepts. That we see the external world as being most essentially described at a macroscopic level as being comprised of Mass, Energy, Space, and Time, that we see at a microscopic level the building blocks of existing as being Gravity, Electromagnetism, Strong, and Weak forces, that we see four bases in DNA and that they combine in bonded pairs, that we see a spiral in a Galaxy and in a Teacup, should not surprise us. For in the end, the order we see in the the universe is projected by our own minds, and if we look as deeply as we can at anything, we will ultimately see no more than ourselves staring back. To look most deeply into the universe it to look into a mirror.

At this point, we have fulfilled the purpose of this article, which was to provide an introduction to Quad structure. Other articles describe the mechanism by which the model is dynamically rearranged, how that reflects the functioning of our mental processes, the biologic basis of self awareness, and the practical application of the Mental Relativity theory and model to everyday concerns.

Melanie Anne Phillips
Co-creator, Dramatica

The Coming Global Story Mind

As described in my previous article, Birth of a Story Mind, when  people gather in groups, they self-organize into a group mind in which each individual specializes in one of our mental functions, such as becoming the voice of reason for the group, or the skeptic, or the conscience of the group.  These functions are both cognitive and affective, and for the group mind to form, is must have all of those function at work within it.

In a large population of individuals, many group minds will naturally form as the anarchy begins to settle into organization.  When group minds encounter one another as they move through the population, some will collide and shatter, some will maintain their identity but have their course altered by the encounter and focus on other subject matter, and some will combine to form larger group minds in which each smaller group begins to specialize to focus on one of our mental functions.

So, one group will come to express (or represent) the voice of reason within the larger group, while another will express skepticism, and still other will function as the larger group’s conscience.  Just because a whole smaller group begins to focus or center on reason, as an example, does not mean that it stops having its own voice of reason with it, and its own skeptic and conscience.  Rather, these individuals in the smaller group will still function as the voice of reason within the reason group, while another individual will still function as the skeptic in regard to reason.

In essence, one might say that as a small group specializes within a larger group, the members of the smaller group move with it, maintaining their relative positions within the small group as they all be come consistently biased toward the new thrust of their small group within the larger group.  In other words, the individuals take on the flavor of their group as it evolves as a member group of a larger group mind.

This process is not unlike how solar systems form, gathering aggregate from dust to form small particles that combine into larger particles, rocks, boulders, and so on.  It is also not unlike the way the brain works insofar as neurons in the brain (individuals) gather together into ganglia (little neural networks of a few thousand cells), which then gather into clusters and ultimately into the hemispheres of the overall brain

Like in a solar system, loose gas and dust gathers at the center of this evolving organization until the planets, story archetypes or social groups revolve around it.  Eventually, this gravitational center reaches a critical mass and becomes a star, the Main Character for a story, or the identity of a social group.

When people feel they are members of a tribe, not just of their families, or of their state or nation, not just of their county or neighborhood, it is an primary indicator that one or more larger group minds above them has reached a critical mass and is burning with an energy from which they draw.  In our own minds, this is our self awareness, the “I” in “I think, therefore I am.”

In the brain, the creation of such an identity requires a sufficient number of levels in the hierarchy – neural networks within neural networks, sub-minds and proto-minds within larger minds, following the same physical pattern as the story mind psychology, because the psychology is just a dynamic resonance of the underlying structural (physical) system that spawns and maintains it.

The cognitive functions are driven by the binary firing of the neurons.  The affective functions are driven by the flow of neurotransmitters through the fluid-dynamic system of the brain.  Note that neurons don’t just fire when stimulated.  They fire with the electrical potential between the inside and outside of the neuron’s body (the axon) reaches an action potential of a certain differential.

This potential can be created by sufficient direct stimulation through spatial summation (multiple small stimulations all at once) or by temporal summation (a series of small stimulations that collectively increase the charge faster than the neuron can shed the excess through natural half-life style decay).

But this is just half the system – the binary network of neurons within larger networks, which are components within even larger networks.  The other influence is the biochemical dynamic in which neurotransmitters affect the likelihood of firing.

Normally, neurons such as exciters and inhibitors are spewed out by one neuron’s boutons to be received by another neuron’s dedrites which pass the information to the axon which then may fire if it has received enough information either spatially or temporally.

But not all of these exciters and inhibitors actually make it from the boutons to the dendrites for they must cross a biochemical ocean – a small gap between the physical end of one neuron and the beginning of another.  This gap is called a synapse and it holds one of the two keys to self awareness.

As some of these biochemicals drift out of the synapse into the general population of the brain at large, they form currents and eddies and standing waves of varying duration and complexity.  These patterns also hold information, not of the binary cognitive kind, but of the analog affective kind.

When a wave forms at a particular synapse, it is may be more biased toward excitement or inhibition, depending upon its chemical make-up which is in turn determined by the collective impact of sensory stimulation of neurons which had previously fired.

These waves (really just concentration densities of chemicals) are also built from the shedding of potential from neurons that do not fire because they did not reach their action potential threshold.

Functionally, these concentrations can further moderate the effects of spatial and temporal summation so that a neuron which would ordinarily fire due solely to binary network stimulation by not fire because the surrounding biochemical environment lowers the action potential around the axon to the point it is inhibited below the threshold.  Similarly, a neuron which normally would not fire, may do so anyway, because the biochemical environment about it increases the action potential beyond the threshold.

If the point of origin for network stimulation is observation, then the energy produced by the natural decay of neurons which don’t reach threshold is a parallel for internal thought.  Along these lines, chemicals that act to excite can be analogized as our desires, and those that inhibit as our repulsions.

Now this is actually not directly true, for at the level of the whole mind / whole brain, desires and repulsions may be created by either exciting or inhibiting, thereby creating an inequity, which may be positive or negative to the mind at large in an affective sense.  But I used those words to illustrate the fractal similarity of the lower brain function to the higher level psychology, in the first belief that while there are certainly many levels of similar organization in between, the end result is that the lower level functions are fractally layered until they influentially affect larger and larger systems, resulting ultimately in both our cognitive and affective attributes being organized in virtually the same pattern of relationships as the smallest components at the very bottom of the hierarchy.

Now, add this to the solar system model and the fractal psychology model of the organization of group minds and you can begin to get a sense how there is a parallel between a sun beginning to shine, a Main Character representing our own sense of self in a story mind structure, and groups forming and self-organizing into larger groups.

The general population that does not become part of a group is part of the gaseous material that collects in a growing gravitational sense of group identity until it ignites in a sense of self in which, like the biochemistry in the brain, the hierarchical functioning of organizations is moderated to be excited or inhibited by the general population in which they function.

And, as from the smallest interactions of neurons to the largest interactions of our thoughts and feelings, it requires many levels to build a truly functional mind to the point of self-awareness, such as national identity.

Communication among members of the general population is the key to their ability to act as an analog to the biochemical influence in the mind.  Historically, increased communication outside the direct control of the organized neural networks (or socio-political groups) is an essential attribute to the freedom to form complex wave patterns (densities of opinions) which are sufficient to cause a group to act where it would not have by its own internal structure or to not act when it would have.

This is the nature of lobbyists, and of boycotts, and anti-boycotts in which the general unorganized components of society show their support or opposition to what the organization is planning or doing, just as the biochemistry affects the neurons and neural networks.

While communication had previously evolved to the point that many nations were able to achieve national identity, even today some nations have not yet coalesced into the level of self-awareness..

At an international level, everything from the formation of European Union to the Arab Spring illustrate the impact of internet and personal multi-media communication on the formation of identities for nations and even consortiums of nations.

But what of a global identity, a global group mind – the subject of this article?  Clearly, the very same dynamics are at work among nations forming as group minds within a larger global mind – cognitively through channels (network hierarchy) and affectively through the global population (analog to the biochemical) by means of direct global communication among individuals of different nations.

Currently, this process is awaiting the advent of real time language translation that is accurate and effective to the fidelity of resolving idioms of one language into appropriate idioms in other so that the affective content in maintained.

When this happens, communication of analog, emotional information among individuals from all parts of the globe will become a functional dynamic wave-driven system, and with its advent a true global identity will reach critical mass and ignite into what amounts to a planet-encompassing  self-wareness in which the earth itself may ponder, “I think, therefore I am.”

Melanie Anne Phillips
Co-creator, Dramatica

Defining and Identifying Personality Types

Wouldn’t it be great if we could have a list or a chart of all the major personality types in the world and all of their sub-types and variations?  And wouldn’t it be even greater if we had a means of finding specific personality types in the real world?

Why, we could make social networks even more fun and compatible.  We could build communities.  We could better organize our clubs, better target our political parties, better understand our neighbors.  We could improve advertising, more fairly judge punishments in court, predict what our adversaries might do.  In fact, we might even be able to find home-grown terrorist and mass killers before they strike.

Problem is, though there are many theories, classifications and tests for personality, while each sheds some light on the issue, few of them have much overlap.  Even definitions of “personality” show why, though we all can feel what personality is, we have very little understanding of what it is.

From Wikipedia:

Personality is the particular combination of emotional, attitudinal, and behavioral response patterns of an individual.

From Dictionary.com:

1. the visible aspect of one’s character as it impresses others:He has a pleasing personality.
2.  a person as an embodiment of a collection of qualities: He isa curious personality.
3.  Psychology .
a.  the sum total of the physical, mental, emotional, and social characteristics of an individual.
b.  the organized pattern of behavioral characteristics of the individual.
4.  the quality of being a person; existence as a self-conscious human being; personal identity.
5.  the essential character of a person.

From a narrative perspective, I believe that the nebulous appearance of the nature of personality is due to what we call in Dramatica theory the “blending of story structure and storytelling.”

As I often describe it, every story has a mind of its own: its own psychology and its own personality.  Its psychology is determined by the underlying dramatic structure and its personality is developed by the storytelling style.

Well, after all these years, I’d like to revise that a bit.  A story’s psychology is determined by the underlying structure and dynamics.  A story’s personality is developed by the subject matter and style.  A story’s persona is the combination of it’s psychology and personality.

You’ll note here that I have added a few things and rearranged the hierarchy around as well.  To begin with, I added the word “dynamics” to “structure” in defining a story’s psychology because structure only describes the arrangement of elements the drive a psychology, but dynamics describes the potentials, resistances, currents and powers that determine how those elements will rearrange in the course of psychological function.

In addition, I added “subject matter” to “style” for without something to talk about, it doesn’t really matter how you say it.

And finally, I added a whole new level that combines both psychology and personality into the story’s persona.  What is “persona?”  I intend it to mean the sum product of our (a story’s)  nature (structure), nurture (dynamics), experience (subject matter), and learned behavior (style).  In short, it is our interface with the world – in essence, our face to the world.

Here’s how other’s define “persona.”

From Wikipedia:

A persona, in the word’s everyday usage, is a social role or a character played by an actor. The word is derived from Latin, where it originally referred to a theatrical mask.

In psychology the persona is also the mask or appearance one presents to the world.

From Dictionary.com:

4.  (in the psychology of C. G. Jung) the mask or façade presented to satisfy the demands of the situation or the environment and not representing the inner personality of the individual; the public personality.
5.  a person’s perceived or evident personality, as that of a well-known official, actor, or celebrity; personal image;public role.

So, in essence, the persona is our public personality, while our true personality lies within.  But, persona is not devoid of any elements of true personality.  Rather, it is a filter and a manufacturer, hiding some things, creating others, continually adjusting the interface to maintain the least possible conflict with the external world while simultaneously minimizing the resulting internal conflict created between true self and presentation.

Well isn’t that a paragraph worth reading twice, I ask you!  (Yes it is, I tell you).

Suggested by all this is that existing methods of defining and anticipating personalities are insufficient and therefore inaccurate because, while they have the persona down pat, personality and psychology can only be inferred from observation of the interface and not by direct observation.

Now we’d basically be screwed if it weren’t for an extremely fortuitous aspect of Dramatica narrative theory – the concept of fractal psychology.  It holds the key to directly observing a story’s (or a person’s) psychology.  And once that and the persona are both known, the personality can be calculated as the differential between the two.

Bear with me now as I take us on a little journey into the workings of fractal psychology, which will eventually lead us to a means of discovering the true underlying personalities of people both as individuals and in groups of any size.

Fractal psychology is the notion that when we gather in groups for a common purpose or to address an issue of common concern, individuals begin to specialize psychologically in terms of their function within the group.  One will emerge as the voice of reason while another will take a skeptical position, for example.

The value of this specialization is that it brings greater fidelity in exploring the issue than would be achieved by having all members of the group be general practitioners, each trying to look at the problem for all perspectives, including our examples of reason and skepticism.

In a nut shell, each of these specialties is a function we have available in our own minds.  By specializing, an individual gains value and potentially power.  And, the group gains greater insight and capacity.  So, driven by the personal motivations and collective benefits, any group of sufficient size will eventually self-organize into what is, effectively, a functional analog for the operating system and methodology of a single human mind.

And this means, the inner workings of psychology are mirrored in the definable and predicable externally observable world of human social organizational interactions.  Now isn’t that a concept worth savoring!

Obviously there are a virtually unlimited number of applications one might create if you could define that system and use it not only to understand the workings of social groups, but also of individuals as well by projecting the system back into the minds from whence it came.

Nice dream, but how do you actually discover and document the elements of this organizational system?  And even more challenging, how about the dynamics that describe the forces at work in such a system?  They are harder to see, and even more difficult to quantitatively define.

Tough task.  Where should we begin?  Well, fortunately, someone already had started the process.  Who?  Authors and storytellers, as unlikely as that seems.  You see, the reason for fictions is to look at human relationships in the hope of finding some repetitive patterns from which we might draw truisms that we can apply in our own lives.

If human interactions were truly chaotic, this would be a hopeless endeavor.  But, since humans self organize into predictable patterns, these can be documented, and in fact they have been.

Literally thousands of generations of storytellers, in their attempt to reflect the reality of the human condition gradually refined these organizational interactions into the conventions of narrative structure and dynamics that we know today.  And they carried the process quite a way along – but not all they way.

Without the understanding that organized human systems represent or mirror the functioning of a single human mind (we all it a Story Mind), there was no framework upon which storytellers could hang their collection of human elements and drives.  They lacked a unifying perspective that could congeal the components of their understanding into a cohesive functional and predictive model.

And that is where we came in.  Armed with our Story Mind concept, we recognized that framework, and seeing what it was, were able to further refine it into the Dramatica theory of story.

Let’s pause for a moment to take stock.  In documenting the human condition, generations of storytellers identified many of the consistent elements and forces that define the way people relate.  Because people in groups specialize and eventually self-organize into a system functional identical to the psychology of a single human mind, we were able to refine narrative conventions into an accurate model of the mind itself, at the level of psychology, below the level of personality.

Fine.  We have a model of the mind.  Now what does this enable in terms of defining and identifying personality types?  To answer that question, let’s first take a look at the limitations of current approaches and then lay out how the Dramatica Theory can transcend those barriers.

Recall, early on in this article, that I mentioned the triumvirate of psychology, personality, and persona?  Fact is, no one can ever directly observe any of those three except the persona – the mask, or publicly presented face of an individual or group.  Psychology and personality can only be inferred.  But since persona almost always is intentionally or at least unintentionally misleading, any inferences made from it are generally fuzzy and inaccurate at best.

If it weren’t for fractal psychology, for the model of the Story Mind, there’d be no getting around this.  Yet with this model, we are able (essentially) to subtract the Story Mind component from the persona, leaving the pure personality behind.  In plain speak, if you know the mask, and filter out the psychology, what is left is personality.

Now because personality (which consists of subject matter and personal or group interest) is built on top of psychology, it all falls into those cubby holes defined by the psychology.  And this means that personalities fall into types.

The key to understanding how this works is to recognize that we all have the same psychological components, both structural and dynamic, but how much emphasis we give each one, how often we use them, this is determined by the subject matter and our interest in it.

So, while psychology alone can tell you about an individual’s or group’s mind set, and personality alone can tell you about an individual’s or group’s interests, it is the combination of the two that defines the true kind of type we ought to be defining.  In other words, any given mind set (Story Mind) is neither good nor bad until it is applied to a particular real world subject.

Conceptual example: Is it moral to steal?  No, if you are simply greedy; yes, if you are trying to feed your starving baby by taking from a tyrant who is hoarding all the food.  It all comes down to context.  Again, one psychology is neither good nor bad, until it is contextualized by personality (subject matter in which it operates).

And so, if we want to identify who is going to bring a gun into a theater and kill dozens of movie-goers the visible persona mask will not tell us, no matter how much number-crunching statistical data or tracking of purchases we do.  But if we combine the interest in particular subject matter with specific psychologies, we can, in fact, predict the dangerous personality.

Further, if we look back at the historic record of the kinds of personalities we wish to become aware of before they act, we can determine their Story Mind psychologies and independently determine their subject matter personalities, and then statistically determine which combinations of the two appear over and over again in those who eventually act.

My expectation is that such a study and analysis would produce several different combinations of psychology and personality matching, each of which would represent a different “type,” though in the end all of those types might end up acting in the same way.

In this manner, a variety of different templates could be applied to the general population of individuals or even of organized groups, to identify those which may ultimately cause problems for society as a whole.

Preventive vigilance or Minority Report?  You decide.

Melanie Anne Phillips
Co-creator, Dramatica

Narrative Dynamics 6 – The Grand Unifying Theory of Everything

Okay, so this is where I go a little nutso.  Yeah, I know…  But I’m going to be crossing the line that will prevent anyone from every taking my theories seriously again.  Because I can.

Here’s the scoop….

The Grand Unifying Theory of Everything is:

The degree to which something exists is variable, and we perceive this as time.

There.  I said it.  And I believe it with all my heart.  But what the heck does it mean?

It is a recipe for converting space into time and vice versa.  It provides a map of the interface that stands between structure and dynamics, mind and matter, order and chaos, existence and oblivion.  It is Einstein’s equation coupled with the Story Mind.  It is the understanding I have been seeking for more than half a century.  It is the culmination of my life’s work.

Here we go….

Go back to the Greek philosophers.  Is there the prefect form of a things already in our heads, like the shape of a table or the essence of a bed, and we seek to achieve it in the material world, or do we create function in the real world, by building tables and beds, and from this arrive at a conceptual form to enclose a variety of things with similar criteria?  In an overused phrase does form precede function or vice versa?  This is another structural/dynamic paradox, for it depends upon perception: one man’s table is another man’s bed.

As in my last article, “The Interface Solution,” both form and function depend upon context, where one places the line, what one considers inside or outside the group.  In short, we draw a circle around a number of things or attributes of a concept and define all that is inside as being of that nature and all that is outside is not.

Is a bed a mattress, a board, the ground?  Can a table be a bed?  Can a bed be a table?  Of course they can!  It all depends (from one philosophy) on what you use it for, and (from the other) on what you intended it to be.  Both are correct, but not at the same time from the same perspective.

And then there’s the matter of time.  A table may be made of stone or plastic or wood.  Take a wooden table.  One it was a tree.  Some day it will dissolve into its component elements.  When, exactly does it stop being a table?  When you can’t use it as one any more or when you can’t recognize it as one any more?

Nothing exists absolutely.  It only exists to a certain degree.  Similarly, nothing does not exist absolutely.  It always has the potential to become more fully what it has the potential to be.

Hence, the first part of the Grand Unifying Theory, “The degree to which something exists is variable.”

Now, imagine for a moment that time does not exist at all. Rather, there is only an ongoing rearrangement of how firmly anything exists.  Everything has the potential to become anything else or to stop being anything at all.

This smacks of quantum theory which has described quanta as “vibrating packets of probability.”  But as we have seen in my last article, a packet would have to be a closed system and no system is ever truly closed.  Nor is any system ever fully open.  It is all a matter of how we choose to perceive it.

Change, then, from being to not being or vice versa, from falling within a set or outside of it, from being open or closed, is a matter of perception.

Hence, time is not required to exist in the external world.  All that must be is change in the degree to which something exists, which is then interpreted as a pathway that spawns the notion of causality.

Which leads us to the second part of the Grand Unifying Theory, “and we perceive this as time.”

The inference is that there is no time without perception, just as there is no existence.  But perception alone is not sufficient to account for existence, for we must have something to observe in order to contextualize it as this or that, before or after.

The ramifications of this contention are that all we can know is a combination of change and awareness.  We do not exist without the universe and it does not exist without us.

The essence of all this is that it requires both universe and mind, in perpetual equilibrium, ever re-balancing through endless process and endless reconsideration.

Deal with it.

Melanie