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Category Archives: Story Development
About Your Story’s Title
A writing tip from Dramatica Story Structure Software What’s in a name? Having at least a working title will help you start your story, even if you ultimately change the title. The title of your story may or may not … Continue reading
Posted in Story Development
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The Story Mind (Part 8) – Writing Remakes
Excerpted from the Book “Dramatica Unplugged“ By Melanie Anne Phillips, Co-creator of Dramatica What happens if you mess up and just alter part of a structure without considering the structure-wide impact that change may have? Here’s an example…. Consider the Bill Murray … Continue reading
Posted in Adaptations & Remakes
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The Danger to Writers from Convenience
“Dramatica doesn’t make writing easier; it makes it harder.” That was opening comment we made in a video interview by the BBC that was intended to show how Hollywood writers were ruining drama by relying more and more on computerized … Continue reading
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Character Development Tricks!
As trite as it might seem, ask yourself “What would a story be without characters?” The answer can help you get a grip on exactly what characters really do in a story, and therefore how to build them effectively. Although … Continue reading
Posted in Building Characters, Writing Synopses, Writing Tip of the Day
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Your Story as a Person
All too often, authors get mired in the details of a story, trying to cram everything in and make all the pieces fit. Characters are then seen only as individuals, so they often unintentionally overlap each other’s dramatic functions. The … Continue reading
Posted in Creative Writing, Novel Writing, Story Development, Writing Tip of the Day
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How “StoryWeaver” Came to Be
When Chris Huntley and I created the Dramatica Theory of Narrative Structure back in the early 90’s, we originally envisioned it as the end-all of story models – the one single paradigm that explained it all. In fact, it was – … Continue reading
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When to Apply Structure to Your Story
In every developing story there is already a fuzzy proto-narrative forming within your subject matter. This proto-narrative occurs because though people think ABOUT topics, they think IN narrative form. Narrative is just a map of all the perspectives we have … Continue reading
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Do You Want to Write a Tale or a Story?
The difference between a tale and a story is that a tale is just a linear step by step progression through plot events and character growth in which the next step can be anything at all, as long it makes … Continue reading
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Story Analysis and Story Creation in Dramatica Software (video)
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Posted in Story Development
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Write a Log Line for Your Story
A log line is just a one sentence description of the core of what your story is about. You probably have a lot of ideas developed and even a potential structure. That’s great, but it also can become a bit … Continue reading
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