Category Archives: Story Psychology

“Illegal” Plot Progressions

A Dramatica user recently noticed that certain progressions of the Signposts and Journeys that define a Dramatica plot were “illegal.” That is to say, they never came up, no matter what the storyform structure that was created.

Here is the reply I sent off in response.

NOTE – this reply deals primarily with psychology and the mechanism behind the Dramatica software’s Story Engine. For most writers, this tip will not be very practical, but I thought the amateur detectives among you might like to get the grit.

Why Certain Signpost & Journey Patterns are “Illegal.”

Here’s another clue for you all…

The model of the “Story Mind” in the Dramatica software is intended to represent a model of an actual mind. But, if we are looking at a mind, from WHERE are we looking? To see this model, we must adopt a point of view. Even though we wish to be “objective” about looking at the Story Mind, the moment we actually observe it, we are seeing it from a perspective.

In other words, in the very process of making a model of the mind, we have to adopt an angle from which to come at the actual truth. In Eastern philosophy it is akin to “The Tao that can be spoken is NOT the Eternal Tao,” which simply means that if you ever arrive at a definition (or model) of something it must, by definition, be incorrect. Why? Because the only true and complete definition of anything is that thing itself. No model of it can actually BE it. Yet, we can come close…

When we conceived of the notion that every story was a model of a mind – a Story Mind – we soon came to realize that we must choose a perspective from which to portray it, or rather, that if we were to portray the concept at all, we could not do so without looking at it. And, if we look at it, we have adopted a perspective.

Perspective, by its very nature, amplifies some things and diminishes others. Perspective can make some things completely invisible and create mirages of other things that are not really there but seem to be.

The trick, then, for us, was to find a way to ensure that if we MUST be saddled with a perspective, that perspective was evenly applied evenly to EVERYTHING in the model so that dramatic decisions in one area would have an accurate impact on decisions made elsewhere.

The problem authors often have is that we shift our perspective while writing. This helps us involve ourselves in the personal nature of the story, but also causes us to lose our objectivity. For example, we might come to a story with all kinds of interesting ideas, all of which fit compatibly within the same subject matters, yet cannot work together in the same story structure. Dramatica was created to eliminate this problem by adhering to a single perspective in which all dramatic decisions must be considered by the same standards. Only in this way could the holes be certainly seen, rather than covered up and hidden from ourselves by our fancy mental footwork as authors, shifting perspectives to make the holes disappear.

Unfortunately, when you use a single perspective from which to view something, you lose the ability to see certain parts of it. One of the ramifications of the perspective we chose from which to observe (to create) the model of the Story Mind is that it does not “see” certain combinations of linear progressions (signposts and journeys).

If we were to “force” the Story Engine to “allow” these combinations, then they would create plot progressions that didn’t match any of the dramatic structures visible from the overall perspective of the Story Mind model. In such cases, then, the plot progression would create an audience impact that would not relate to any structural meaning the model might develop. Such a situation would have the plot progression no longer working like the scanning lines on a TV picture which make sense in and of themselves, but also form a larger picture as the sum of the parts. Rather, the plot progression would create one message that would have nothing at all to do with the “big picture” or “overall” message of the story’s structure. To make a complete argument, the flow of experience must operate in the same “reality” as the overview of the story’s larger meaning. If it doesn’t, the story simply seems “broken.”

Now, what perspective did we choose? Well, the human mind has four major areas – Knowledge, Thought, Ability, and Desire. These areas work together in a dynamic interrelationship, and in fact, there is no real dividing line from one to the next. Rather, they are like the names of colors (Red, Blue, Green, and luminosity). They are simply points along a spectrum, yet if you attach the names to equidistant points (like pickets on a fence painted like a rainbow) you can say “here is blue,” and “here is green,” and the divisions will make sense.

The model of the Story Mind as seen in Dramatica is called a “K-based” model, because it sees everything from the perspective of Knowledge, rather than Thought, Ability, or Desire. You can see that this is the case because there are no words like “Love,” or “Fear” in the model. These words would be in the “Desire” realm. But, from the perspective of Knowledge, Desire is the farthest away of the other three (Thought, Ability, and Desire.) So, terms of emotional value are the least represented, in fact are intended to be absent. The emotional side is left to the author to infuse into the structure once its “knowledge-base” has been constructed in a storyform.

As you may imagine, there are three other model projections which might be created – Thought, Ability, or Desire based models. At first, you might think that a D-based model would simply be a structure that had Love, Hate, Happiness, and Sadness as the classes, rather than Universe, Mind, Physics, and Psychology, but this would be wrong. In a true Desire-based model, the model would be experiential, rather than structural. So, an author might make dramatic choices by matching undulating color progressions to ever-morphing flow of colors.

Why did we choose a K-based system? Because our primary market – American Authors – works within American Culture. That culture is almost completely K-based. Which is why most rooms have four straight walls, why language is linear, why products are put in boxes on shelves, why definitions are important, why contracts are created, why laws exist. A D-based system would not have rooms with walls, it would have thickets where people congregated. It would not have laws, but tendencies. The worst punishment would not be death, but exile and isolation from the group experience.

If this sounds a little like the difference between a male world and a female world, that’s not far from the truth. In the Dramatica software, in each story, there is a Main Character, and to get a storyform, you must determine whether that character is Male or Female mental sex. But have you ever wondered what Mental Sex the Story Mind was itself? Male minds have direct access to K, T, and A, but synthesize D. Female minds have direct access to K, A, and D, but synthesize T. Yes, that’s right, female minds synthesize logic just as male minds synthesize emotions. So, the farthest thing from a male mind is the D-based system (though male minds can relate directly to D, they cannot get there from K, T, or A) Similarly, the female mind can appreciate T, come up with and entertain Thoughts, the female mind cannot “derive” thought by interacting K, A, and D together.

In the male mind, K is the foundation, and T and A are the tools. In a female mind, D is the foundation and K and A are the tools. American culture is based on the needs of the male mind. Men (who are more oriented toward spatial external views inherently, built the American Culture, in fact most of Western Culture, in its own image. Only when a female mind looks at the unspoiled landscape, untouched by billboards, sidewalks, buildings, and the like, does she experience the world without seeing it thought a filter of the male mind.

Law, Religion, Science, Grammar, and all other constructs of Western Culture, reflect a male Mental Sex view of the world. But, it is not the T perspective which women must synthesize, it is the K perspective which essentially calls for Structure.

So, women are able to access all the benefits of a K-based society, even though it is not in their native tongue of D. In fact, one might say that many women do not even know how to speak D because they were educated wholly in K. Ironic that so many Elementary teachers are women, providing instruction on how to be K when they, themselves, have a D operating system!

As a result of all this, we decided to make the first model of the Story Mind that would be created to be cast in the K-based standard of our culture. Effectively, the Story Mind is Male Mental Sex. And as a result of that, certain dramatic combinations (including the “illegal” signpost and journey combinations) simply cannot appear without violating that perspective and giving the overall story a split personality.

If you’d like to know more about this aspect of the “hidden” workings of the Story Engine, visit my Mental Relativity Web Site.

(Mental Relativity is the name Chris and I gave to the psychology of the Story Mind itself.)

Male vs. Female Problem Solving

All too often in stories, relationships and interchanges between characters of different sexes come off stilted, unbelievable, or contrived. In fact, since the author is writing from the perspective of only one of the two sexes, characters of the opposite sex often play more as one sex’s view of the opposite sex, rather than as truly being a character OF the opposite sex. This is because the author is looking AT the opposite sex, not FROM its point of view.

By exploring the differences in how each sex sees the world, we can more easily create believable characters of both sexes. To that end, I offer the following incident.

I was at lunch with Chris (Co-creator of Dramatica) some time ago. I had ordered some garlic bread and could not finish it. I asked the waitress if she would put it in a box to take home, and she did. On the way past the cashier, I realized that I had forgotten to take the box from the table. I said, “Rats! I forgot the bread!”

Chris said, “Go ahead and get it, we’ll wait.”

I thought for a moment and said, “No, it’s not that important.” and started to walk out.

Chris: “It’ll only take a moment.”

Me: “Yes, but I have to go all the way back, and I probably won’t eat it anyway, and it probably won’t reheat very well, and…”

Chris then said in jest, “Sounds like a bunch of excuses to me.”

In fact, they really did sound like excuses to him. But to me, the reasons I had presented to him for not going back for the bread were not rationalizations, but actually legitimate concerns.

At the heart of this difference in perspective is the difference in the way female and male brains are “soft wired”. As a result, neither women nor men can see into the heart of the other without finding a lack of coherence.

Here is a line-by-line comparison of the steps leading from having too much bread to the differing interpretations of my response to forgetting the box.

Melanie thinks:

That’s good bread, but I’m full. I might take it home, but I’m not convinced it will reheat. Also, I’ve really eaten too many calories in the last few days, I’m two pounds over where I want to be and I have a hair appointment on Wednesday and a dinner date on the weekend with a new friend I want to impress, so maybe I shouldn’t eat anymore. The kids won’t want it, but I could give it to the dog, and if I get hungry myself, I’ll have it there (even though I shouldn’t eat it if I want to lose that two pounds!) So, I guess it’s better to take it than to leave it.

Melanie says:

“Waitress, can I have a box to take the bread home?”

Chris understands Melanie to mean:

I want to take the bread home.

The balance sheet:

To me there was only a tendency toward bringing the bread home, and barely enough to justify the effort. To Chris it was a binary decision: I wanted to bring it home or not.

Melanie says:

“Rats! I forgot to bring the bread!”

Chris says:

“Go ahead and get it, we’ll wait.”

The balance sheet:

I’m thinking, “How does this change the way I feel about the situation?” Chris is thinking, “How can she solve this problem.”

Melanie thinks:

Well, I really don’t want to be tempted by it, this unexpected turn makes it easier to lose the weight. If I go back I’ll be tempted or give it to the dog. If I don’t go back I won’t be tempted, which is good because I know I usually give in to such temptations. Of course, the dog loses out, but we just bought some special treats for the dog so she won’t miss what she wasn’t expecting. All in all, the effort of going around two corners while everyone waits just so I can get an extra doggie treat and lead myself into temptation isn’t worth it.

Melanie says:

“No, its not that important.”

Chris says:

“It’ll only take a moment.”

The balance sheet:

I’m thinking that since I was right on the edge of not wanting to take it in the first place, even this little extra necessary effort is enough inconvenience to make it not a positive thing but an irritation, so I’ll just drop it and not pay even the minor price. Chris is thinking that since I made up my mind to take the bread in the first place, how is it that this little inconvenience could change my mind 180 degrees. I must be lazy or embarrassed because I forgot it.

Melanie says:

“Yes, but I have to go all the way back, and I probably won’t eat it anyway, and it probably won’t reheat very well, and…”

Chris says:

“Sounds like a bunch of excuses to me.”

The balance sheet:

I’m trying to convey about a thousand petty concerns that went into my emotional assessment that it was no longer worth going back for. Chris just hears a bunch of trumped up reasons, none of which are sufficient to change one’s plans.

I operated according to an emotional tendency to bring the bread home that was just barely sufficient to generate even the slightest degree of motivation. Chris doesn’t naturally assume motivation has a degree, thinking that as a rule you’re either motivated or you are not.

The differences between the way women and men evaluate problems lead them to see justifications in the others methods.

Making sense of each other:

Now, what does all this mean? When men look at problems, they see a single item that is a specific irritation and seek to correct it. When they look at inequities, they see a number of problems interrelated. Women look at single problems the same way, but sense inequities from a completely emotional standpoint, measuring them on a sliding scale of tendencies to respond in certain ways.

Imagine an old balance scale – the kind they used to weigh gold. On one side, you put the desire to solve the problem. That has a specific weight. On the other side you have a whole bag of things that taken altogether outweigh the desire to solve the problem. But, you can’t fit the bag on the scale (which is the same as not being able to share your whole mind with a man) so you open the bag and start to haul out the reasons – biggest one’s first.

Well, it turns out the first reason by itself is much lighter that the desire to solve the problem, so it isn’t sufficient. You pull out the next one, which is even smaller, and together they aren’t enough to tip the scales. So, you keep pulling one more reason after another out of the bag until the man stops you saying, “Sounds like a bunch of excuses to me.”

To the man, it becomes quickly obvious that there aren’t enough reasonably sized pieces in that bag to make the difference, and anything smaller than a certain point is inconsequential anyway, so what’s holding her back from solving the problem?

But the woman knows that there may be only a few big chunks, but the rest of the bag is full of sand. And all those little pieces together outweigh the desire to solve the problem. If she went ahead and solved it anyway, everything in that bag would suffer to some degree, and the overall result would be less happiness in her consciousness rather than more.

This is why it is so easy for one sex to manipulate the other: each isn’t looking at part of the picture that the other one sees. For a man to manipulate a woman, all he has to do is give her enough sand to keep the balance slightly on her side and then he can weigh her down with all kinds of negative big things because it still comes out positive overall. For a woman to manipulate a man, all she has to do is give him a few positive chunks and then fill his bag full of sand with the things she wants. He’ll never even notice.

Of course if you push too far from either side it tips the balance and all hell breaks loose. So for a more loving and compassionate approach, the key is not to get as much as you can, but to maximize the happiness of both with the smallest cost to each.

All too often, one sex will deny what the other sex once to gain leverage or to use compliance as a bargaining chip. That kind of adversarial relationship is doomed to keep both sides miserable, as long as it lasts.

But if each side gives to the other sex what is important to to the other but unimportant to themselves, they’ll make each other very happy at very little cost.

Dramatica Class: Mental Sex

The following is a transcript from an online class in story structure presented by the co-creator of Dramatica, Melanie Anne Phillips signed on as Dramatica:

Dramatica:  Okay, we move on to Mental Sex…

This question is not about the gender of the main Character. And, it is not about their sexual preferences, AND, it is not about masculine or feminine. It is about problem solving techniques,linear, or holistic. More often than not, if you have a male gender, they are male mental sex, and female gender is female mental sex. Sometimes this is not true. Ripley, in the original Alien, was male mental sex. In fact, the part was written for a man,they just changed the names and gender references, but kept the problem solving techniques intact.

That’s why it is so odd when she goes back for the cat! Not that a man wouldn’t go back, but just that they had not given male reasons to, they just assumed she was a woman, so she would go back,but they had created her as male mental sex.

Now, men or women can easily learn to respond in the opposite sex techniques, but underneath it all is a tendency or bias to adopt either spatial or temporal problem solving techniques.

Clarisse Starling in Silence of the Lambs is another male mental sex character, whereas, Tom Wingo, the Nick Nolte character in Prince of Tides, is Female mental sex. Again, most often, go with what you expect.

PGThomas : Wasn’t Ripey saving the cat meant to build horror suspense, regardless of “mental sex”?

Dramatica : But be aware that it will have an influence on the way your main character goes about solving the problem, not the conclusions they come to.

PGThomas : How could they have established that action for Ripley?

Dramatica : Yes, PG, that is the author’s intent, but if the action is out of place to the established character, even though it may build tension, it rings untrue.

Dan Steele : how do linear/holistic relate to spatial/temporal? not clear.

Dramatica : Well, Dan, female mental sex tries to hold it all together, male tries to pull it all together, female tries to “tune-up” the situation with leverage,male determines steps that lead to the desired outcome. And so on, women look at things holistically, because they think with the time side, men look at things in sequence, because they are using the space side to think with.

PG, all they would have needed to do, is to have Ripley have said to Jonesy, the cat, at some earlier time, that no matter what, she would never leave him.

PGThomas : Gotcha

Dramatica : Then, she would have made a commitment, and that is a male contract.

PGThomas : “Commitment” a male contract? Don’t tell my girlfriend that!

Dan Steele : But there are time sequences ie., do a then b then c; and men do that.

Dramatica : Yes, men stand on space to see time, women stand on time to see space.

William S1 : What?

Dramatica : It all goes back to inside the womb in the 12th to14th week of pregnancy…There is a flush of testosterone or estrogen over the brain of the developing fetus. Testosterone boosts serotonin, the neurotransmitter that is an exciter. Estrogen boosts dopamine, the neurotransmitter that inhibits. This does not affect the body, which is controlled by XX and XY chromosomes, but just the foundation upon which the mind is built.

Dan Steele : hmm, going to run into my resistance on these views of male/female intelligences, but not going to make issue.

PGThomas : Does this flush determine the sex of the baby, or vice versa?

Dan Steele : The stand on space to see time thing versus time to see space is too vague for me without clarification, can’t buy it

Dramatica : One sees easily the arrangement of things, and works to figure out how things are going (paths). That’s seeing logic and figuring the emotions. The other sees emotions clearly, which give meaning, but need to work to see what the mechanism is. Again, its only an influence, and training can counteract it, though not eliminate it.

PGThomas : So a male baby could conceivably get an estrogen flush? And vice versa?

Dramatica : Yes, PG, that is true.

Dan Steele : are you saying that basic difference this theory builds on is that men see objects, logic, order, and women see emotion, reasons?

Dramatica : More precisely, Dan, that is just an aspect of the theory, only one of perhaps 80 questions, and it is not exclusive, it says men see linear logic more clearly, and women see holistic logic more clearly, and they lead to different approaches to problem solving. This is always the controversial question, but we found it in our model and can’t deny it.

Dan Steele : Am still bothered by definition of “holistic logic” and the contrast. Is stereotyping people too much I think. But dropping issue now so we can move along.

William S1 : Relax… for the most part males think in male patterns, and females think in female.

Dramatica : Tell ya what Dan, I’ll email you a whole article I wrote on the subject for our newsletter, that can go into more detail than I can here.

Dan Steele : Sure, helpful.

Dramatica : How about an easy question?

PGThomas : Is it possible to have a character equally male AND female mental sex?

Dramatica : PG, when a character switches between the two, they move from problem solving to justification, And that is, in fact what hides problems from the main character, creates a blind spot, and winds up the engine of potential. Its not a sex issue at that point, just like saying things are rotten now, but the reward is worth it, or I don’t care if this leads anywhere, I’m having fun.

William S1 : Don’t we all think in some parts male and female?

Dan Steele : Ah – men tackle problems head-on, women work around them. Confrontational versus nurturing.

Dramatica : There are four levels of the mind, and this only affects one of them. The other three questions about the Main Character, create dynamics for the other three levels. What’s nice is, once you answer enough questions to determine the shape of the message your working toward, Dramatica, the software, starts to see that pattern, and limit out choices that would no longer be consistent with the direction you have chosen. Eventually, it fills in the rest of the blanks, and tells you things about your story you didn’t tell it, and the things “feel” right! This could be formula,but you can start with any question and take any path through them, so there is no bias built into the software at all.

William S1 : What impact does Dramatica have on the intuitive creative process?

Dramatica : That depends on the particular author, Willam, first of all, some writers like to use it right off the bat, to figure out their dramatics so they know where they are going. But others like to write a draft first, then go to Dramatica to look for leaks and inconsistencies. And for the “chain of consciousness” writer, since they are not consciously trying to convey any overall meaning,but are just exploring a path and leaving a trail, then Dramatica has no value to them at all.

Identifying a Story’s Problem

When we seek to classify something, we try to narrow its definition, such as when we ask if something is animal, vegetable, or mineral. When classifying problems that might be of concern to the Story Mind, the first thing we might want to know is if the problem is an external issue (such as an intolerable situation) or an internal one (such as a bad attitude). External problems occur in the Universe (or environment), Internal problems occur in the Mind.

Further, some problems don’t have to do with states of things (an external situation or an internal attitude) but are processes that have gone awry. An external process falls in the category of Physics, which simply means physical activity of some kind. An internal process which results in a problem has to do with Psychology, which simply means a manner of thinking. Note that a manner of thinking (Psychology) is different than a fixed attitude (Mind). Psychology describes problems like spending too much time with details, whereas Mind problems would be more like a prejudice.

Having identified four categories by which we might classify the nature of the Story Mind’s problem, we can arrange them in a quad pattern, much as we did earlier with the Character Elements.

Since these four categories classify the problem, Dramatica refers to them as CLASSES.

More Resolution

So far, we have been able to roughly determine that a problem might be an external or internal state or process, represented by the four Classes. Already we can get a more refined view of the problem we will be describing in our story. We need only consider which of these four Classes best describes the problem about which we want to write.

For example, if we have an idea for a story about people trapped underwater in a sunken ship, that would be an external problem, best described as a state of things. An external state is the definition of a Universe problem, so this story idea takes place in the Universe Class.

If we wish to write about a harrowing trek through the jungle to a lost city, we are describing a Physics problem: an external activity from which difficulties arise.

A story exploring a father who will not let his daughter marry below her station in life is best described as a Mind problem, for it stems from a fixed attitude.

And finally, an author who wishes to comment thematically on a group of friends manipulating each other would select Psychology as his Class of problem, for the thematic issue at hand is changing one’s manner of thinking. Again, this differs from changing one’s Mind (about something).

It is important to note that ALL FOUR Classes will ultimately play a role in every complete Grand Argument Story. As we shall explore a bit later, each Class will describe the problem as it appears from a different throughline.

From the Dramatica Theory Book

Characters’ Internal Paradigms

Characters hold onto outmoded views because they have built other views upon the outmoded ones. In fact, this is how we learn. We see something as an unerring truth, stop considering it every time we see it and accept it as a given. Then, we assemble our givens, look for patterns and accept the relationships between givens as being givens in their own right. Layer upon layer we weave an intricate web of interconnections, some based on the order in which things are expected to occur, some based on items or activities we associate as always occurring together.

Strength in Paradigms

When we encounter something at the top level of the most recently determined givens, it can be a relatively small feat to rethink our conclusions. If one of our base assumptions was wrong, however, there may be no way to reconcile the occurrence with our understanding without completely dismantling the foundations of our whole belief system. Not an easy task! It is much easier to discount the variance as an exception. Even more important, because we have not added the unusual incident to our knowledge base, but simply let it bounce off, the next occurrence of the same “new” truth will meet with the same strength of resistance as the first. We can hold onto our old paradigm unless so many different new truths hit us all at once that it becomes easier to create a new paradigm than to try and dismiss them all.

From the Dramatica Theory Book

Character Assumptions

We cannot move to resolve a problem until we recognize the problem. Even if we feel the inequity, until we can pinpoint it or understand what creates it, we can neither arrive at an appropriate response or act to nip it at its source.

If we had to evaluate each inequity that we encounter with an absolutely open mind, we could not learn from experience. Even if we had seen the same thing one hundred times before, we would not look to our memories to see what had turned out to be the source or what appropriate measures had been employed. We would be forced to consider every little friction that rubbed us the wrong way as if we have never encountered it. Certainly, this is another form of inefficiency, as “those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

In such a scenario, we would not learn from our mistakes, much less our successes. But is that inefficiency? What if we encounter an exception to the rules we have come to live by? If we rely completely on our life experience, when we encounter a new context in life, our whole paradigm may be inappropriate.

You Idiom!

We all know the truisms, “where there’s smoke, there’s fire,” “guilt by association,” “one bad apple spoils the bunch,” “the only good (fill in the blank) is a dead (fill in the blank).” In each of these cases we assume a different kind of causal relationship than is generally scrutinized in our culture. Each of these phrases asserts that when you see one thing, another thing will either be there also, or will certainly follow. Why do we make these assumptions? Because, in context, they are often true. But as soon as we apply them out of context they are just as likely false.

Associations in Space and Time

When we see something occur enough times without exception, our mind accepts it as an absolute. After all, we have never seen it fail! This is like saying that every time you put a piece of paper on hot metal it will burn. Fine, but not in a vacuum! You need oxygen as well to create the reaction you anticipate.

In fact, every time we believe THIS leads to THAT or whenever we see THIS, THAT will also be present, we are making assumptions with a flagrant disregard for context. And that is where characters get into trouble. A character makes associations in their backstory. Because of the context in which they gather their experiences, these associations always hold true. But then the situation (context) changes, or they move into new areas in their lives. Suddenly some of these assumptions are absolutely untrue!

Hold on to Your Givens!

Why doesn’t a character (or person) simply give up the old view for the new? There are two reasons why one will hold on to an outmoded, inappropriate understanding of the relationships between things. We’ll outline them one at a time.

First, there is the notion of how many times a character has seen things go one way, compared to the number of times they’ve gone another. If a character builds up years of experience with something being true and then encounters one time it is not true, they will tend to treat that single false time as an exception to the rule. It would take as many false responses as there had been true ones to counter the balance.

Context is a Sneaky Thing

Of course, one is more sensitive to the most recent patterns, so an equal number of false items (or alternative truths) is not really required when one is aware he has entered a new situation. However, situations often change slowly and even in ways we are not aware. So context is in a constant state of flux. If something has always proven true in all contexts up to this point then one is not conscious of entering a whole new context. Rather, as we move in and out of contexts, a truism that was ALWAYS true may now be true sometimes and not true at other times. It may have an increasing or decreasing frequency of proving true or may tend toward being false for a while, only to tend toward being true again later. This kind of dynamic context requires that something be seen as false as often as it has been seen as true in order to arrive even at a neutral point where one perspective is not held more strongly than the other.

From the Dramatica Theory Book

An Example of Problem Solving

A Simple Example of Problem Solving

Imagine a waitress coming through the one-way door from the kitchen into the restaurant. Her nose begins to itch. She cannot scratch her nose because her hands are full of plates. She looks for a place to lay down the plates, but all the counter space is cluttered. She tries to call to a waiter, but he cannot hear her across the noisy room. She hollers to a bus boy who gets the waiter who takes her plates so she can scratch her nose. Problem solved! Or was it justification?

What if she could have solved the problem just by shrugging her shoulder and rubbing her nose? Then there were two possible solutions, but one was much more direct. Rationally, either one would serve as well in that particular context, yet one was much more efficient and therefore more emotionally satisfying because it required less unpleasant work than the other method.

There’s a Problem In Your Solution!

If the waitress could not use her hand to scratch her nose, then using her shoulder was another potential solution to the same problem. However, trying to find a place to put down the plates is a generation removed from solving the original problem. Instead of trying to find another way to scratch her nose, she was using her problem solving efforts to try and solve a problem with the first solution. In other words, there was an obstacle to using her hand to scratch her nose, and rather than evaluating other means of scratching she was looking for a place to get rid of her plates. When there was a problem with that, she compounded the inefficiency by trying to solve the plate problem with the solution devised to solve the problem with the first solution to the problem: she tried to flag down the waiter. In fact, by the time she actually got her nose scratched, she had to take a round-about path that took up all kinds of time and was several generations removed from the original problem. She made one big circle to get to where she could have gone directly.

But, what if there was a limit: her itching nose was about to make her sneeze and drop everything. Then, going on that long circular path might mean she would sneeze and fail, whereas the only appropriate path would be to use her shoulder to scratch before she sneezes. But what if her stiff uniform prevents her shoulder from reaching her nose? AND what if the extra time it took to try the shoulder actually delayed trying the round-about method just long enough to make her sneeze before the waiter arrived? If she had only taken the great circle route in the first place, she would have had just enough time to solve the problem.

Paying the Price For a Solution

Clearly, problem solving turns into justification and vice-versa, depending on the context. So how is it that achieving results in the rational sense is not the only determining factor as to which is which? Simply because sometimes the costs that must be paid in suffering in a long, indirect path to a goal far outweigh the benefits of achieving the goal itself. When we try to overcome obstacles that stand between us and a goal (pre-requisites and requirements) we pay a price in effort, resources, physical and emotional hardship. We suffer unpleasant conditions now in the hope of a reward later. This is fine as long as the rewards justify the expenses. But if they do not, and yet we continue to persevere, we cannot possibly recoup enough to make up for our losses, much as a gambler goes into the hole after losing her intended stake.

Why is it that we (as characters) throw good money after bad? This occurs because we are no longer evaluating what we originally hoped to achieve but are trying to solve the problems that have occurred with the solutions we have employed. In the case of our waitress, she wasn’t thinking about her nose when she was calling to the waiter or yelling to the bus boy. She was thinking about the problem of getting their attention. Because she lost sight of her original objective, she could no longer tally up the accruing costs and compare them to the benefits of resolving the inequity. Rather, she compared each cost individually to the goal at hand: putting down the plates, calling to the waiter, yelling at the bus boy. And in each case, the individual costs were less than the benefits of resolving the individual sub-goals. However, if taken as a whole, the sum of the costs may far outweigh the benefits of resolving the original problem. And since the pre-requisites and requirements have no meaning except as a means to resolving that original problem, any benefits she felt by achieving those sub-goals should have had no bearing on determining if the effort was worth the benefits. But, as she had lost sight of the original problem, that measurement could not be made. In fact, it would never occur to her, until it was too late to recoup the costs even if the problem came to be resolved.

Does this mean the only danger lies in the round-about path? Not at all. If it were to turn out that there were NO direct paths that could work, ONLY an indirect one could resolve the problem at all. And if the existence of the problem is such that its inequity is not just a one time thing but continues to cause friction that rubs one physically or mentally raw, then the inequity itself grows the longer the problem remains, which justifies ANY indirect method to resolving the issue as long as the rate at which the costs accrue is less than the rate at which the inequity worsens.

Accelerating Inequities!

But let’s complicate this even more… Suppose the inequity doesn’t worsen at first, but only gets worse after a while. Then what may have been the most appropriate response for problem solving at one stage in the game becomes inappropriate at a later stage. In such a complex web of changing conditions and shifting context, how is an individual to know what choices are best? We can’t. That is the point: we can never know which path is best because we cannot predict the future. We can only choose what our life experience has shown to be most often effective in similar situations and hope for the best. It does not matter how often we re-evaluate. The situation can change in unpredictable ways at any time, throwing all of our plans and efforts into new contexts that change their evaluation from positive to negative or the vice versa.

Stories serve as collective truisms, much like the way insurance works. Through them we strive to contain the collective knowledge of human experience so although we cannot predict what will happen to any specific individual (even ourselves) we can tell what is most likely the best approach to inequity, based on the mean average of all individual experience.

Strategy vs. Analysis

Although we have covered a lot of ground, we have only covered one of two kinds of problem solving/justification: the effort to resolve an inequity. In contrast, the second kind of problem solving/justification refers to efforts made to understand inequities so that we might come to terms with them. In a sense, our initial exploration has dealt with strategies of problem solving whereas this other area of exploration deals with defining the problem itself.

From the Dramatica Theory Book

The Process of Problem Solving

So far we have only identified the difference between problem solving and justification in terms of the results they create. From this point of view, no character can tell for sure if he is on the right or the wrong track until he sees the results. This is fine for the characters, but an author will want to fashion a story so that judgment is passed on each action and decision as it is taken. This is what constitutes the theme of the story and builds the emotional side of the story’s argument event by event until (hopefully) the audience is buried under overwhelming evidence to support the author’s message and contentions.

Note the difference between the result-oriented rational argument and the more holistic passionate argument. In a story, when all is said and done, the author hopes to convince the audience of his point of view both in terms of its reasonable nature and that it simply feels good as well. In this manner, the audience members adopt the author’s bias on the issue and are moved to alter their behavior accordingly in their everyday life. In a broader sense, participating in the story has added to the life experience of the audience and will affect their future choices for problem solving.

To carry an emotional appeal to an audience, a story must not only show the results of a method of problem solving, but must document the appropriateness of each step as well. To do this as an author requires an understanding of the process of problem solving and its justification counterpart.

From the Dramatica Theory Book

Character Life Experience

As we are driven by life experiences and since the experiences of each of us are unique, it is no wonder we come into conflict and confrontation over most everything we can think of. Stories are about the incompatibility of two life experiences as they relate to the best way to resolve an inequity.

If a character stands by his life experience, then it stands to reason his approach served him well in other scenarios. Similarly, his counterpart has had different life experiences that served him equally well. In the context of the current inequity in question, each life experience generates an approach incompatible with the other. In one context, each set of experiences was problem solving. In the current context, one will be seen to be problem solving, the other justification.

From the Dramatica Theory Book