Category Archives: Narrative Science

Narrative Dynamics 5 – The Interface Solution

Sometimes the solution to a problem comes from a most unexpected source.  Often, there is no relationship between the subject matter of problem and solution, but rather a dynamic resemblance, an analogy of system or operation.

A case in point is when I solved the mystery of the erratic sequential patterns that were created when plotting the order in which acts and scenes progressed through the four items of the quad.

The problem was that while we had it right that all four dramatic items in each quad would show up by the end of a story, when we drew that order on the quad it made one of three patterns: a U or C shape, an N or Z shape, and a hairpin shape.  And what was worse, the sequence could go in either direction along the pattern.

We struggled with this for weeks – trying all kinds of ways to predict which pattern and direction combination would show up and not making any progress at all.

And then, one weekend I took my daughter to L.A.’s Museum of Science and Technology where they had a display of line of twenty-one bar magnets in a row, end to end, each on a spindle on a board.  By turning the first one at just the right speed, you could get it to turn the one next to it, and if you continued this process, with a little practice, you could get all twenty-one moving at the same time.

And then it hit me – the sequences in Dramatica shouldn’t be plotted on the fixed structure.  Rather, the structure was actually mobile – the elements twisting and rotating in response to the tensions of the story.  The pattern was actually linear, but when the quads all wound up like a Rubik’s Cube, that straight line was warped and distorted into the three patterns we had observed.

Ultimately, this lead to the whole set of algorithms that allowed the pressures upon a story structure to determine predictively the order in which elements needed to be explored in order to accurately reflect the tensions involved.  In other words, seeing that simple display of magnets in the children’s area of the museum became a whole new theory of how space and time relate in the mind.

Well, that is also how I came to crack the problem of the Interface Conundrum of Narrative Dynamics.  And here is how it happened, and then its ramifications:

Teresa and I were hiking near our home in the mountains.  She was describing how her father was a strict authoritarian and she wondered if her sister (whom she had not seen in many years) had raised her children the same way or had taken the opposite tack.

We began to speculate as to what it was that determined if a child would act as a parent or do the opposite in all kinds or areas, from child rearing to career choice, to lifestyle.  And then Teresa said that perhaps it had to do with memory – if we hold on to our memories we do the same, if we let them go, we do the opposite.

This didn’t ring completely true to me, so I suggested that even if we let go of our memories consciously, that doesn’t mean we also let them go subconsciously.  So we have four combinations in which one lets go or does not consciously couple with those same two states subconsciously.

As we continued to talk, I began to wonder though, what was the force that would actually propel one to change, especially in a situation where one let go of memory in one realm only to be counterbalanced by holding on to it in the other.

Now it began to really bug me, because this harkened back to that incredibly frustrating question that had bugged me since I was four or five years old (as described in “The Interface Conundrum) in which I wondered if there was nothing, would it be black because there was no light or gray because there was also no dark?

In the decades that followed, this question evolved into wondering what determined the exact moment when a light switch changed from being “off” to “on?”  And, of course, this led to Schrodinger, Zeno, event horizons, the uncertainty principle, and all sorts of binary states.  And here I come up against the damned thing again – my nemesis and old friend.

What was worse, I was hot in the middle of trying to understand the relationship between structure and dynamics in a narrative model of psychology so that I could expand Dramatica into a new analog, passionate, and time-based model.

As documented in The Interface Conundrum, one can think of reality as if it were a field of standing waves on a flat plane, as illustrated simply below:

peaks and troughsStructure is like a pane of glass that cuts through the mountains or the troughs horizontally, parallel to the plane, thereby creating slices of each tower or well that appears as a circle.

These circles are the particles we see from a structural perspective in which we seek understanding by looking at the patters of circles.

Dynamics is a vertical slice of the same set of standing waves so that we see the familiar wave forms such as sine waves, sawtooth or square waves of various amplitudes and wave lengths.

The problem is, that to get a complete view of either structure or dynamics, one must move the pane of glass through the standing waves like a scanning line until we have picked up the full width, depth, breadth and shape of each.

The bigger problem is that the universe is not really made of standing waves, but of waves of variable stability and duration, so that between any two moments, some are rising while others are falling, and at different rates.

Therefore, neither structure nor dynamics can see the true nature of reality, and even taken together, they are insufficient to describe this common interface between the two.  Hence, the “interface conundrum.”

In part four of my Narrative Dynamics articles, I outlined this and ended by saying that rather than trying to determine the nature of reality by exploring it through structure and dynamics, the only possible solution that would truly reveal the truth of the matter was to consider the nature and functioning of the interface itself, directly.  An entity from which both structure and dynamics (both space and time) are only byproducts, not building blocks.

And now we come back to my conversation in the woods with Teresa.  I thought about the patterns that became frozen in one’s mind due to the manner in which our parents raise us.  And then I expanded my thoughts to any kind of fixed pattern to which we have become mentally locked.

What is habit, what is selective filter, what truly is the nature and function of the preconscious that have already described in Dramatica theory as the fixed filters of our minds that are built half of instinct and half of experience, but freeze in place so that they mask observation before we perceive it?

A prejudice is like a black hole.  Energy enters but does not emerge, and once it is in place, it never dissolves but only grows to encompass and warp more of what it around it, farther and farther from the center of the original issue.

And yet, in the mind, people do change.  In stories they have leaps of faith.  I actually observed a leap of faith in myself for the first time about six months ago.  I was considering changing my mind on an issue.  But to be sure it was the right choice, I kept looking into that potential new point of view farther and farther to see as many of the likely ramifications as I could before deciding if I would commit to it or not.

And then, I suddenly realized I had leaned so far into examining that new perspective that I had actually adopted it while I wasn’t looking.  I never had the chance to make the choice, yet once I recognized it, I could not return to the old point of view.  In essence, it was like looking over the edge of a cliff to see the rocks below until one has unthinkingly passed the balance point and is now on the bottom with no way to return to the top.

This provided me with a case in point to something I had for some time suspected.  That no binary state can ever change from within – it requires another force from outside the system.  When does the light switch shift from off to on?  When the finger flips it.  What happens at that magic moment when it can be considered on instead of off?  Incidental, it is just a matter of the standard by which one chooses to measure the process.  In other words, there is no “off” or “on” merely the perception of one over the other.

Off and on are binary structural considerations.  The direction of the switch and its speed are dynamic.  The finger is chaos, as far as the closed system of the switch is concerned.  So, how do we determine whether a child will raise their children in the same or a different manner than a parent, if a character will take a leap of faith, if an individual will change, or if the answer is black or gray?

And then it hit me – just like the eureka moment with the magnets so many years ago.  The mind is a closed system like the switch.  It is stuck in one position by experience.  When the force that molded it remains consistent, that pattern freezes in the mind just like that plane of standing waves.  Even when the child grows, they are gradually weaned from that pressure so that the mold remains solid.  This is how it sets.

But if other life experience puts pressure on the closed system of the mind, it is like compressing a gas.  Think of this pressure as emotional tension created by inequities outside the home.  If it increases fast enough, it heats up the mind, just like a gas, thawing the frozen standing waves and softening them, making them pliable again – malleable – perhaps even liquidic at which point one would have no preference, no opinion, no bias in a particular mental realm.

Imagine then that a new interference pattern is created and sustained in such a matter that creates a new plane of standing waves.  These would naturally erode unless, pressure is suddenly removed to the overall mind, in which case, like a gas, the standing waves will freeze in place and remain, like another black hole – another bias – another preconscious filter – another complex motivation – another pattern of behavior.  And its shape and nature channels the forces that flow through the mind, generating both structure and dynamics as a byproduct.

What a simple and elegant solution.  The complex forces the press upon our minds create waves.  If overall pressure upon us decreases quickly, those wave will freeze in whatever pattern the pressures have maintained them.  If pressure is quickly increased, it will melt that motivating, guiding pattern to be moldable again.

Let us carry it to a slightly deeper level of sophistication.  Patterns may be not fully frozen but merely made slow-moving, like molasses, in any degree from wholly fluid to completely stiff.  Or patterns may be stiffened making them more resistant to change, or lock them into full blown high-amplitude fixations, or locking them into calm flat planes of no motivation that cannot be moved through any ordinary forces, placid until outside pressures increase fast enough to melt them.

Just like the magnets that needed to be at just the right speed, any other speed (of increase of decrease of pressure) only gets part of the job done.

Wow.  That’s what I thought, “wow.”  But what I didn’t consider was that while the mind (or a storyform Story Mind, for that matter) is a closed system, in the real world (in both physics and psychology) there is always a larger system in which a closed system exists.

No closed system is ever truly closed or it could never change.   It would establish either a stasis or eventually, if it exists long enough, establish a repetitive cycle, even if it is extremely complex.

This is good, for without influence from outside, there could be no finger to flip the switch and binary states could never change except alternately in cyclic repetition.

But here’s the rub.  The realm outside the closed system is not homogeneous which, if it were, would equally affect the entire interior of the closed system with a consistent pressure increase or decrease from all side equally and simultaneously.

It is because there are many closed systems in physics and many individual minds, that the pressures brought to bear on the standing waves within the system are not equally applied.  Rather, one area of our minds’ standing waves may be softening while other areas are stiffening.  And, in fact, counteractive forces from outside may cancel out each others effects in a single given standing wave area, or mitigate the effect of one or the other.

And so, we do not have just one complex motivational pattern that is freezing or thawing, but a multitude, an infinity, not limited to the number of our brain cells but to the almost limitless analog undulations of the biochemical and emotional systems of our minds, ever in flux, with currents and eddies, like weather patterns of different courses, strengths and durations which wash up against our neurons, easing the firing or inhibiting it as the standing waves rise and fall.

And so, in the end, the interface solution resolves the problem of the paradox of black or gray, because it is structurally black and dynamically gray.  And it solves the problem of a mind that cannot choose between two mutually exclusive but equally valid solutions by invoking the forces from outside the closed frame of reference for the thought problem by realizing that each solution is the only one, depending upon the external context.

While this addition to the theory (to my satisfaction) proves once and for all that there is no true certainty because there is always a higher or smaller closed system, it also provides a model of the nature and function of the interface itself, allowing us, for the first time, to determine exactly the operation and effect of one closed system (which is, in fact, truly open) and its surrounding external environment (which is, in fact, truly closed) upon one another.

In short, it describes how any closed system can be taken in conjunction with its surround open system to create a new closed system, and vice versa into the microcosms within the closed system as well.

And lastly (and I truly hope finally as well), the entire model indicates that none of this means anything without defining if a system is open or closed.  But since each system is both open and closed (depending on context), it is really a mater of perception.  And this infers that both the laws of psychology (and by extension, physics) simply do not exist without the mind, which must contextualize them.

In my usual arrogant audacity, I believe this model, this entire line of inquiry provides the essence of a Unified Field or Grand Unifying Theory of Everything:

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

Melanie Anne Phillips
Co-creator, Dramatica

Birth of a Story Mind

For those of you familiar with Dramatica, you know the term “storyform” means a complete narrative structure – the logical framework that makes a story make sense.

But where do storyforms come from?  How do they begin, how do they form, and for that matter, how do they end, dissolve or die?

A strange thought, to be sure, until you consider what narratives really are.  Simply put, they are rather precise models of the way people actually organize themselves in real life.

How does that work?  Again, very simply, each of us has certain qualities that come in pairs and often play against each other like our initiative vs. our reticence, intellect vs. passion, conscience vs. temptation, skepticism vs. faith.

When we try to solve problems on our own, we bring all of these into play to look for the solution with all the mental tools we have.  When we gather together in groups to solve a common problem, we’ve learned to specialize so that, for example, one person focuses on the intellectual component and becomes the voice of reason for the group.  Another focuses on the passionate aspect of the problem and comes to function as the group’s heart.

Whenever enough people come together with a common purpose, they will automatically self organize into kind of a group mind (we call it a Story Mind) in which each person comes to represent a single facet of all the different perspectives we employ in our own minds.

The end result is that groups naturally evolve into an external projection of our own internal minds.  The relationships among people in such a group function dynamically in a very similar manner to the way each of these perspectives relate in our own minds.

And authors throughout history, seeking to understand the nature and mechanism of human society, established the characters and conventions of story to parallel those very same aspects of the Story Minds we see every day in the real world.

So narratives are not just fictions that have no real bearing on human nature.  On the contrary, narrative structure and dynamics are perhaps the most accurate representation of how actual people organize and interact in the actual world.

While that, in and of itself, is both intriguing and practical, it begs the question, “If authors create structures for stories, how do such narrative Story Minds come to be in the real world?  In other words, can we understand the birth of a Story Mind?

Absolutely we can!  Let me lay it out.  It happens like a solar system forming.  People, in volume, are like the gasses and dust from which a solar system forms – independent units with no pattern to their movements.  When they gather together, they begin to organize, much like the dust collecting into particles.

First they form relationships of two.  And, like the force of gravity, the gregarious nature of human attraction draws other to join them until the gathering, like a collection of particles, forms a growing mass.

Naturally, there isn’t one mass, but a lot of different ones of different shapes and sizes scattered throughout the dust and gas or throughout the population.  From time to time they converge, sometimes changing each other’s course without directly coming into contact, and occasionally (and more rarely), they actually collide.

Depending on the size and shape of the two masses (or two groups of folk), they may combine, have parts stolen by one of the other, lose mass as it is calved off by the force of the encounter, or they might just shatter each other back into the dust, gas, or general population from whence they originally came.

In time, the number of conglomerate groups will decline as more and more smaller ones are absorbed into a handful of larger masses.  And meanwhile, most of the gas gathers more and more densely in the center until it reaches a critical ratio of frictional heat and material until it ignites in a ongoing sustainable reaction that generates energy from the center of the solar system outward to the planets.

Societally, this is when a central identity, a sense of common self, forms in the middle of all the society groups so that while each has its own identity, the is a collective identity as well, such as in a political party made of factions or all the states in the United States feeling a national identity as being part of America.

Since societal organization mimics the mind, projected outward, then this sun at the center of the solar system must also have some parallel in the human mind.  And it does.  It is our sense of self – the “I” in “I think, therefore I am.”

That self-wareness that resides in each of us is not a facet like our intellect or passion.  Rather, it is the energy source at the center that holds all of our facets in stable orbits and around which they all revolve.

And, in a Story Mind in the real world, it is the group’s collective identity that functions as its sense of self so that all members feel a commonality as part of the whole.  I am a Virginian, or I am an alumnus of USC, or I am a Sci-Fi fan, are all statements of sharing an umbrella identity with all other members of the same group.

Naturally, a person can be a member of several groups at once.  And so, they shift between one sense of identity and another whenever their activities or involvement move from one realm into another, just as the moon orbits the earth but also revolves around the sun and also around the galactic center.

When these multiple allegiances are nested, it functions rather smoothly.  In terms of the birth of a Story Mind, people from the general population form groups.  And then, these groups come to work together on an even larger issue, each group will eventually specialize so that one group becomes the voice of reason for the confederation while another evolves into the passionate voice of the confederation.  In time, a star will form at the center of the confederation, creating its own identity as well, so that one may be a Virginian and also an American simultaneously.  In this example, each state will have its own Story Mind, its own narrative, and they will also each be part of a larger narrative of the nation and its Story Mind.  We call this phenomenon fractal psychology, as it describes how the dynamic structure of a single mind is replicated in a series of nested psychologies of progressively larger confederate groups.

Sometimes, in the real world, things build from the grass roots up, starting with individuals, then creating associations, factions, movements, parties, local governments, regional governments, and ultimately national governments.  Even the planet as a whole is a Story Mind Narrative with its own global sense of self in which we all share.  And the nations of the world jockey to specialize as the different aspects of a single mind’s problem solving psychology, thereby establishing their own national identities and also contributing its unique spin on the issues that affect all of humanity.

Other times, in chaotic social environments such as after natural disasters, war, or revolution, Story Mind narratives may form at several levels at once.  But in either case, until that critical mass is reached in which the central star ignites in any group, thereby establishing a common sense of self for all its members, there is no organized functional narrative – no Story Mind.

Still, we can see the elements of a potential future mind begin to congeal as individuals and factions form into stable, definable attributes of the mind – the building blocks at an elemental level that will ultimately gather into families of like components that we recognize as the high-level aspects of psychology from faith to temptation.

In simple terms, Dramatica theory includes something of  Periodic Table of Story Elements called, not surprisingly, the Dramatica Table of Story Elements.  It had four levels.  The top level names the largest aspects of our minds into which we tend to categorize our thoughts – essentially, the biggest families of thought that go on in our heads.

Each of these is subdivided in the next level down into the smaller cognitive components that make it up – sub-families within each top-level family of cognitive function.  By the time we get down to the bottom level of the table, we are dealing with the elements – specialized mental functions that are the smallest we can perceive within ourselves as separate definable kinds of thought.  These elements are the tiniest building blocks of a story mind that have any real meaning for us as a comparative to our own internal attributes and processes.

So, in a chaotic social environment, we will first see the formation of elements within any potential Story Mind at whatever level we are exploring (from local to national).  Until all these essential elements are represented by some individual or group, even if the individual or group represents more than one, until they are all present there cannot be a complete narrative.

Yet, we can watch the elements form, and see the larger families form and those above them as well.  As they do, we can begin to get a sketchy sense of what the final nature of any potential Story Mind will be as more and more components gather and firm up into lines of energy that define dynamics that hold all the particles together into a narrative structure that is analogous to our own internal mental system.

But just as we can be member of multiple narrative minds when we are both interested in sci-fi an also Virginians or USC grads, so too in a chaotic social environment proto Story Minds may move through each other like galaxies colliding, disrupting (or perhaps enhancing) the storyforming process in each.

It is not until a Story Mind reaches that point of ignition that the gravity within it is sufficient to keep it stable against only a direct encounter or even a near encounter from another Story Mind, proto or complete.  Then, simple physics come into play to predict the result.  From psychology to physics in one sentence.  Sounds speculative.  And yet, it rings true to our understanding of both.

The specifics of how all this can unfold, the applications of how we might employ it to understand and perhaps even guide the emergence and evolution of narrative storyforms at all scales within our world – these are intriguing and powerful lines of inquiry.

But, for now, my purpose here was no more than to describe the birth of a Story Mind in the real world, and how that process is closely analogous to the formation of solar systems with the planets as characters and the star as the Main Character – the Story Mind’s sense of self with whom the audience identifies, through whom the audience experiences being in the story, and in the real world which provides the force of commonality that binds a narrative together.

Melanie Anne Phillips
Co-creator of Dramatica

Narrative Dynamics 4 – The Interface Conundrum

Unlike my usual articles, this piece is not intended to document an existing part of the Dramatica theory nor to reveal a part newly developed.  Rather, I will be sharing my speculations on a life-long thought problem of mine and, toward the end, provide a new way of looking at some old issues.

The subject of this line of inquiry is that “magic moment” when one binary state changes into another.  To illustrate, consider a light switch.  We can tell when it is on and when it is off.  We can recognize when it has changed state from one to the other.  But what happens at that moment between the two when it is neither on nor off, or perhaps both?

This is really a restating of the uncertainty principal or even of Zeno’s Paradox or Schrodinger’s Cat, for that matter.  It touches on the potential for faster than light travel, black holes, and synchronicity.  But for me, personally, it is at the heart of the issue that has driven me since childhood with a specific curiosity that led to the development of Dramatica and still propels me today into my ongoing work on narrative dynamics.

For me, the quest began at age four or five – sometime before kindergarten – while I was on my swing set in the backyard of our home in Burbank.  This would be, perhaps, 1957 or early 1958.

I remember the moment as if it were yesterday, for it has motivated (plagued) me since it occurred.  It was a seamlessly gray overcast, that day, and as I was swinging I wondered if I could get high enough so that my entire field of vision was filled by nothing but that flat gray sky – no trees, no birds, not the neighbor’s houses nor the edges of my swing or its suspending chains.

So, I set about rocking myself higher and higher to the point I became fearful the whole contraption would collapse upon me, assuming I didn’t just fly off into space from the force.

Nonetheless, I persevered, and finally (fortunately) I rose high enough at the apex of the arc and for just one glorious instant I achieved my seamless gray experience.  As the swing set was by that time wobbling menacingly, I quickly brought myself back to rest.

And I sat there for a bit when a question arose in my young mind: If nothing existed at all, would it look black because there was no light or gray because there also no dark?  This is, of course, just another version of “if a tree falls in the forest,” but I had never heard that one, so this was news to me.

I pondered the question for a long time (for a child with a short attention span), thinking about it from both sides.  And then I had the thought that has haunted me and pretty much cast the cut of my jib for the remainder of my days (so far).  This unbidden query rose into my conscious mind: “Why can’t I figure out which it would be?”

Now that’s an awful thing for the universe to do to such an innocent kid –  a carefree (until then) child who might have just breezed through live with a 9 to 5 and weekends to play.  But once that thought was there, it would not leave.

I kept thinking about it, for days on end.  My first assessments were along the lines of, “Well it must be either black or gray.  Okay.  But why can’t I figure it out?”  You see it wasn’t the paradox itself that bothered me but the very concept of paradox – that my mind was not capable of discerning the answer, for I was sure there must be one.

In later years, I began to speculate whether God knew the answer to whether it would be black or gray.  Surely he must; He’s God, after all!  But if he does, then why did He make me in a limited sort of way, unable to see the truth of it.  And if that is the state of affairs, then how can I be sure of anything, for I’m not graced with the whole picture!  What good is it, then, to try and know anything, to try and find any meaning at all, for it is all based on a partial access to the capacity to understand the universe and therefore any conclusions are inherently suspect and likely to be overturned if we are given full access to reality when we die and go to heaven.  (Which was where my young mind took me at the time.)

Seeing the truth after death was my only hope, because if that was not the case, then I was by nature locked in a limited mind incapable of truly understanding the universe in which it existed.  Obviously, I paraphrase, but those exact lines of reasoning were coursing through my brain to me continual dissatisfaction.

So, being rather enamored of my own cognitive abilities at the time (a trait I’ve seen no reason to alter over the years), rather than imagining myself as a hero with super powers, I imagined myself as a hero with mental powers – the one individual in the history of the planet with the capacity to answer that blasted question: “Why is it that our minds are not capable of resolving paradoxical questions?”  Which later evolved into “What is the difference between observation and perception,” “How do logic and emotion affect one another,” “What is that magic moment between one binary state and another,” and, currently, “What are the physics of the interface between structure and dynamics?”

And so, you see, the same insidious line of inquiry vexes me yet today in my attempts to develop the dynamic side of the Dramatica theory and to describe how the two sides impact one another and work together – an analog of our reason and emotion, and the holy grail (as I see it) of both universe and mind and, quite naturally by extension, of the relationship between universe and mind.

Sorry.  I hadn’t intended to go into such a detailed back story, but my decades long frustration with this pesky query oft gets the better of me.

Having set the stage, let’s get down to the heart of the matter.  What can we know about this limit line or interface between structure and dynamics beyond which neither can venture yet which also connects them both so that they influence one other across that great divide?

peaks and troughs

Let’s visualize the interface.  Imagine one of those 3D computer images that shows a flat plane with peaks and troughs on it, like mountains and gravity wells – essentially round-topped cones like stalagmites and stalactites, above and below the plane.

Structure takes a horizontal cross section of the cones, as if a pane of glass were placed above or below the plane.

This cross section results in a flat image with a number of circles on it.  Each circle is seen as a separate object and its edges define its extent.  Taken together, the circles form a pattern, and it is that arrangement by which structure seeks understanding.

Dynamics takes a vertical cross section of the cones as if a pane of glass were placed perpendicular to the plane.

This cross section results in a flat image with linear wave forms on it.  Each curve is seen as a separate force with its line defining its frequency.  Taken together, the wave forms create harmonics, and it is that arrangement by which dynamics seeks understanding.

So on the structural side we have patterns made of particles and on the dynamic side we have patterns made of waves. Particle or wave, digital or analog, on or off, gray or black.  Between the two sides of any paradox is an interface that generates both and created by both.  Yet neither side can see the whole of it.

Just as if you look at a scene with one eye and then the other, you now have all the information you need to create 3D, but neither eye can see it alone.  In fact, only if both eyes are looking at the same moment at the same thing (space and time in synchronicity) can the  whole of the thing be appreciated.  But even then, it is only an approximation of the true three dimensional nature of what is being viewed, made up of a left and right slice merged together.

And herein lies the essence of the paradox of mind that has hung over my head for all of these years: structure gives us one partial view of a larger Truth and dynamics give us another.  Neither view is wrong; each is incomplete.

So what are we to do?  Or, more personally, how am I ever going to resolve this durn conundrum?  The answer is to create a model of the interface itself, incorporating both structure and dynamics not as a synthesis between alternative views but as full-bodied model of the true critter, inclusive but not limited to structure and dynamics.

Fine.  So how do we do that?

Well, you’ll just have to wait for “Narrative Dynamics – the Interface Solution,” coming soon….

Melanie Anne Phillips
Co-creator, Dramatica

Learn more about Narrative Science

Predicting Human Behavior with Narrative

By Melanie Anne Phillips
Co-creator, Dramatica Theory of Narrative Structure

Human behavior cannot be predicted by observation alone.  No matter how deep the statistical database, no matter how sophisticated the algorithms, accuracy derived from observation falls short because it is unable to see the inner mechanism of the mind itself.  All that can be catalogued is simply the external impact of internal mental processes, and therefore observation can only chart the progress of ripples in the pond and speculate as to the nature of the pebble that produced them.

Human behavior cannot be predicted solely by internal self-examination.  No matter how deep we focus our inner eye, no matter how extensive our thoughts, accuracy derived from self-examination falls short because it is unable to see the mechanism of its own sentience.  All that can be grasped is simply the results of inner mental processes, and therefore self-examination can only map our attitudes and speculate as to the nature of the feelings that produced them.

To predict human behavior, a true model of the mind is required – one not derived from external observation nor internal self-examination.  The question arises as to how such a model can be created.  The answer is that such a model already exists.  It is called Dramatica and it was discovered in the structure of narrative.

The creation of narratives – both as stories and in the real world – is a uniquely human endeavor with two primary purposes:  one, to move an audience to adopt an attitude or point of view and, two, to describe human truth as best we can, so that we might better know ourselves and understand our relationships with others.  The first purpose is directed toward subject matter – the real world issues about which an author might wish to move an audience.  But the second purpose is accomplished below the level of subject matter for it documents human nature itself.

When you strip away the subject matter, the structure is laid bare and reveals itself as a model of the mind.  Why should this be?  Because when humans gather in groups to address a common issue, they tend to self-organize into specialties that represent different attributes of the human mind.   For example, one will emerge as the voice of reason while another will express skepticism and yet another might express the considerations of conscience.  In this way, each specialist is able to bring greater depth to the collective discussion than if each individual was a general practitioner, all trying to do the same job – a shallow exploration of every perspective.  It is a simple societal survival technique.

Simple stories, the first stories, addressed this and established the archetypal characters and how the fundamental human attributes they represented interrelated.  In fact, the interaction of one character with another is analogous to the way these attributes interact in the mind of an individual, as if our own mental processes had been projected outward and made tangible in a macroscopic manner.

When groups grow even larger, the fundamental attributes attract additional followers so that they become sub-groups within the larger group.  In this manner, each perspective on the problem is represented by many individuals.  And, when a sub-group grows to a critical mass, it will itself self-organize, just as did the original master group.  One member of the specialty group will emerge as the leader with the others falling into the roles of the other human attributes.   And, similarly, if a number of master groups come together to address and even larger issue of common interest, each master group will shift off center as they all self-organize into specialty roles as well.

As thousands of generations of storytellers documented what they saw in the way people and groups of people organized themselves, though trial and error they gradually refined the conventions of story structure until it accurately represented the functioning of the mind itself.  Recognizing the correlation of structure to the mind, Dramatica further refined the structural elements and the dynamics that drive them.  Conceptually, this model of the mind is the substance of the Dramatica theory and, practically, it is re-created in the Dramatica software.

Dramatica’s model of the mind is comprised of two principal components.  The first is a periodic table of narrative elements in which the nested nature of human attribute self-organization is presented as families within families, much as the periodic table in physics gathers elements into families such as the rare earth elements or the noble gasses.  The second is a set of algorithms that describe the manner in which these mental attributes interact and interrelate.

In combination, the algorithms describe mental dependencies in which the action of every human dynamic has impact or influence upon other closely related dynamics.  The dynamics form a web that can be interpreted to reveal the tensions and forces at work in the mind and how they warp the shape of the mind and focus motivation in predictable directions.

In conjunction with the table of narrative elements, these algorithms of dynamics can pinpoint the sources of motivation and, conversely the location of blind spots into which one’s own consciousness, or that of a group, cannot see.

The model as whole is able to determine the relationship between a state of mind and the sequential progression of considerations, both conscious and subliminal, which must follow from such an arrangement.  This process is commutative, for if one knows the order in which a sequence of considerations occurred one can regressively ascertain in great detail the mental arrangement that must have existed to drive such a progression.

In theory, if one identifies in the real world an individual or group mind of any number of nested levels of sub-groups, one can accurately determine the drives, areas of focus, purposes and methods of that mind.  By applying the sequential algorithms, one can also predict the progressive behavior of the mind under study.

In practice, both individual and group minds are constantly coming into conjunction, in conflict or collusion.  Since they are not joining in a common purpose for a sufficient period of time, they do not reach the flash point at which they would self-organize into a single predictable system.  Rather, their interactions are only partial facets of a mental model and operate more according to the procession of chaos than an orderly progression.  Nonetheless, the impact of such encounters leaves an identifiable impact upon both parties that enables a revised accurate assessment of each altered mind and its future behavior.

The domain of chaos can be somewhat reduced by the application of those same standard statistical and algorithmic approaches that have been unable to predict human behavior, for they take into account environmental considerations, essentially the subject matter of medium in which the minds encounter one another.

In conclusion, human behavior can be predicted with significant accuracy through narrative modeling.  But when narratives are only partially present in volatile scenarios, statistical modeling can be used in conjunction with narrative to achieve the best possible predictive algorithm.

Contact me about Narrative Science

Learn more about Narrative Science