Dramaticapedia

A story without a clear indication of success or failure is a failure with your readers or audience. You need to work out exactly how the audience will know the goal is achieved or not.

This might seem obvious in an action story, but may be much more difficult in a story about character growth.

Success and Failure don’t have to be binary choices; they can be matters of degree. For example, the effort to bring back a treasure may fail, but the adventurers discover one large ruby that fell into their pack. Or, someone seeking true love might find love but with someone who is rather annoying.

Whether either of these examples is a partial success or a partial failure depends largely on how you portray the characters’ attitudes to the imperfect achievement. To ensure a sense of closure in your readers/audience, make sure they know exactly how things end up on the success/failure scale.

A goal is what the characters chase, but what chases the characters? The consequence doubles the dramatic tension in a story by providing a negative result if the goal is not achieved.

Consequences may be emotional or logistic, but the more intense they are, the greater the tension. Often it provides greater depth if there are emotional consequences when there is an external goal, and external consequences if there is an emotional goal.

Your story might be about avoiding the consequences or it might begin with the consequences already in place, and the goal is intended to end them.

If the consequences are intense enough, it can help provide motivation for characters who have no specific personal goals.

The achievement or failure to achieve the goal is an important but short moment at the end of the story. So how is interest maintained over the course of the story? By the progress of the quest toward the goal. This progress is measured by how many of the requirements have been met and how many remain.

Requirements can be specific, such as needing to obtain five lost rubies that fit in the idol and unlock the door to the treasure. Or, they can be nebulous, such as needing to reach three progressive states of enlightenment before the dimensional portal will open.

The important thing is that the requirements are clear enough to be easily understood and “marked off the list” as the story progresses.

Sometimes the goal is spelled out right at the beginning, such as a meeting in which a General tells a special strike unit that a senator’s daughter has been kidnapped by terrorists and they must rescue her.

Other times, the goal is hidden behind an apparent goal. So, if your story had used the scene described above, it might turn out that was really just a cover story and in fact, the supposed “daughter” was actually an agent who was assigned to identify and kill a double agent working in the strike team.

Goals may also be revealed slowly, such as in “The Godfather,” where it takes the entire film to realize the goal is to keep the family alive by replacing the aging Don with a younger member of the family.

Further, in “The Godfather,” as in many Alfred Hitchcock films, the goal is not nearly as important as the chase or the inside information or the thematic atmosphere. So don’t feel obligated to elevate every story point to the same level.

As long as each key story point is there in some way, to some degree of importance, there will be no story hole. You may still have a lot of interest in that story point, however. A character’s personal goal, for example, may touch on an issue that you want to explore in greater detail.

When this is the case, let your imagination run wild. Jot down as many instances as come to mind in which the particular plot point comes into play. Such events, moments, or scenarios enrich a story and add passion to a perfunctory telling of the tale.

One of the best ways to do this is to consider how each plot point might affect other plot points, and other story points pertaining to characters, theme, and genre.

For example, each character sees the overall goal as a step in helping them accomplish their personal goals. So, why not create a scenario where a character wistfully describes his personal goal to another character while sitting around a campfire? He can explain how achievement of the overall story goal will help him get what he personally wants.

An example of this is in the John Wayne classic movie, “The Searchers.” John Wayne’s character asks an old, mentally slow friend to help search for the missing girl. Finding the girl is the overall goal. The friend has a personal goal – he tells Wayne that he just wants a roof over his head and a rocking chair by the fire. This character sees his participation in the effort to achieve the goal as the means of obtaining something he has personally longed for.

And how does your story goal exemplify or affect the moral message of your story as part of the theme? When you see the story goal mentioned in your story synopsis, see if you can incorporate aspects of theme, and when you see theme, try to add a reference to the goal.

In Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain has the boy cooking up some food for Tom Sawyer. He puts all the vegetables and meat in the same pan and explain that his pop taught him that food is better when the flavors all “swap around” a bit.

The same is true for stories. Don’t just speak about goal, speak about goal in reference to as many other story points as you can.

In the space below, first describe how you will reveal the goal to your audience so you are sure you’ve at least covered that base. Then, describe as many other scenarios as you can where goal impacts, influences, or affects other story points.

  A Writer asks…

What changes within the Story’s structure when you switch the Limit from Optionlock – to Timelock or vice versa?

My reply…

The story’s Limit (Optionlock or Timelock) determines whether your story will draw to a climax because the characters run out of options or run out of time.

The quick answer to your question is that the story’s Limit, like most Dramatica story points, is not dependent on only one thing, but on several. So, there is not a one to one correlation between Limit and any other single story point. In other words, there is no simple answer to the question, “What happens to the story overall if you change the Limit from Optionlock to Timelock.

In fact, in some storyforms, the choices you make for other story points may create a condition in which a Limit of either Option Lock OR Time Lock will equally satisfy the contributing story points.

In such a case, the Limit becomes a “dealer’s choice” for the author, and one may select either option or time without impacting the overall storyform in any way, other than to determine the “feel” of the constraints imposed directly by the kind of Limit to the story’s scope. You have clearly created such a storyform.

In other storyforms, the choices for other story points would create conditions in which Option Lock or Time Lock will be predetermined by the collective impact of the contributing story points. In those cases, you would not be able to simply change from one kind of Limit to the other directly, but would need to unravel the entire group of story points that determined the choice for you.

As it turns out, the choice of Limit is determined by a great number of interrelated factors, so it is not really practical to list the scores of arrangements that would choose one or the other. Rather, if you find in a future storyform that the Limit (or any other story point) is “locked in” and cannot be directly changed, it is better to open a new storyform file and select the Limit (or other story point) first. That way you will be sure to get the one you want. Then, “re-make” the choices you had originally selected.

Of course, since you have now changed the Limit, you will find that the exact same combination of other choices will no longer be possible. Therefore, it is best to prioritize your choices, so that you begin with the story point most important to you and work your way down to the ones that are less important. In this way, you will get all of your key dramatic elements exactly as you want them, and will only encounter the constraints caused by the different choice for Limit when you are down to less important items.

1. Goal

We are all familiar with the need for a central unifying goal to drive the plot forward. This goal can be a shared objective, such as the desire to rob a casino in Ocean’s 11, or it can be a shared or collective goal, such as in Four Weddings and a Funeral in which all the characters are seeking a satisfying relationship, but not with the same person!

Goal is the primary and most essential story point in your plot, but there are three other plot points that are nearly as crucial to creating a captivating plot.

2. Consequences

If the Goal is what the characters are after, then the Consequence is what is after the characters! If the characters are chasing something, that can be exciting. But if something is chasing the characters as well, it doubles the tension.

Typically, consequences are the bad things that will happen if the Goal is not achieved. But they can also be bad things that are already happening and will continue to happen if the Goal is not achieved.

For example, if the goal is to find a hidden treasure, that can create drama. But if the families of those trying to find the treasure will be sold into slavery if the treasure is not found, that is much more intense drama.

3. Requirements

Having a goal is fine, but if it were something that would be achieved or not in only a moment, the story would be over before it started. Goals can’t just be achieved. Rather, a series of Requirements must be met that will cause the goal to be achieved, or enable the characters to then tackle the goal directly.

Requirements can be a collection of items that must be obtained or endeavors that must be successfully undertaken in any order, like a scavenger hunt. Or, a goal’s requirements might be a series of objects or activities, which must be performed in order, more like advancing through grades in order to graduate from school.

It helps a story move along to spell out what the requirements are before the end of your first act, or opening dramatic movement. This provides a clear idea of where things are heading, and allows your reader or audience to put plot events into context.

This is not to say that complications can’t arise, or that additional requirements might be added (“Bring me the broomstick of the Wicked Witch of the West). But providing an initial list of requirements will create a yardstick against which your readers or audience can judge the story’s progress toward it’s ultimate conclusion.

4. Forewarnings

Just as a goal has requirements, consequences have forewarnings. These can be as simple as cracks forming in a dam or the extent of the rash on a hapless fellow who’s been poisoned.

As with requirements, forewarnings can be a matter of degree (“That’s three people who have quit the program. How many more can you afford to lose before the whole show folds?”) Or it can be a sequence, such as the evil robot breaking past the third of five automatic defense stations.

Without forewarnings, the consequences are just a nebulous threat or existent condition. But forewarnings make the consequence come alive, become immediate, and impending.

All Four Together

All four essential plot points work together to create a web of tension, but long and short term, that can flux and flow. The objective looms ahead as the threat looms in the rear view mirror. And along the way, requirement road signs tell us how far we have to go, while the growing size of the headlights in the mirror forewarn that the consequences are almost upon us.

Will we get to the goal before we are overtaken, or will we be run down from behind just moments before we might have grabbed success? These are the questions that inject tension in your plot, in addition go giving it direction.

Some writers become so wrapped up in interesting events and bits of action that they forget to have a central unifying goal that gives purpose to all the other events that take place. This creates a plot without a core. But determining your story’s goal can be difficult, especially if your story is character oriented, and not really about a Grand Quest.

For example, in the movie “Four Weddings and a Funeral,” all the characters are struggling with their relationships and not working toward an apparent common purpose. There is a goal, however, and it is to find happiness in a relationship. This type of goal is called a “Collective Goal” since it is not about trying to achieve the same thing, but the same KIND of thing. When considering the goal for your story, don’t feel obligated to impose a contrived central goal if a collective goal is more appropriate.

From Dramatica Unplugged

We might spell out the Goal in the very first Storyweaving scene and never mention it again. Hitchcock often did this with his famous “MacGuffin”, which was simply seen as an excuse to get the chase started. Or, we might bring up the Goal once per act to make sure our audience doesn’t lose sight of what the story is all about. In fact, that is another good rule of thumb: even though once will do it, it is often best to remind the audience of each Static Appreciation once per act. As we shall later see, this concept forms the basis of The Rule of Threes, which is a very handy writer’s technique.

Another thing we might do with a Static Appreciation is hint at it, provide pieces of information about it, but never actually come out and say it. In this manner, the audience enjoys the process of figuring things out for itself. Since we are obligated to illustrate our structure, however, we better make sure that by the end of the story, the audience has enough pieces to get the point.

For each kind of Static Appreciation author’s have created many original way in which they might be woven into a scene through action, dialogue, visuals, even changing the color of type in a book. We suggest making a list of all your appreciations and then peppering them into your scenes in the most interesting and non-cliché manner you can. Even if you aren’t overly clever about some of them, at least the structure has been served.

From the Dramatica Theory Book