Category Archives: Story Structure

Secrets of Story Structure – Free Online Audio Program

Secrets of Story Structure

This four hour 43 part audio program is now available free!

Just click on the links below to hear it all, or go to the

Table of Contents

 Volume One presents a whole new way of
looking at and writing with story structure

Part 1 – Introduction

Part 2 – The Story Mind

Part 3 – Story Perspectives

Part 4 – The Twelve Essential Questions

Part 5 – The Obstacle Character

Part 6 – James Bond & Character Change

Part 7 – Character Growth

Part 8 – Direction of Character Growth

Part 9 – Main Character: Do-er or Be-er?

Part 10 – Main Character Mental Sex

Part 11 – Your Plot: Action or Decision?

Part 12 – Your Plot: Time Lock or Option Lock?

Part 13 – Your Plot: Success or Failure?

Part 14 – Positioning Your Reader/Audience

Part 15 – The Four “Classes” of Stories

Part 16 – Your Story’s “Concern” and “Range”

Part 17 – Your Story’s Disease

Volume Two covers the structural side of characters
from archetypes to complex operatives

Part 1 – Characters and the Story mind

Part 2 – How Stories Improve Real Life

Part 3 – Four Points of View

Part 4 – Protagonist is NOT Main Character

Part 5 – Should Your Main Character Change?

Part 6 – Should Your Main Character Start of Stop?

Part 7 – What is Your Main Character’s Approach?

Part 8 – Your main Character’s Mental Sex

Part 9 – Introduction to Archetypes

Part 10 – Archetypes in Star Wars

Part 11 – Internal / External Character Elements

Part 12 – Four Dimensional Characters

Part 13 – Complex Characters

Part 14 – Objective and Subjective Characters

Volume Three provides a complete pathway to developing
your story’s plot through signposts and journeys.

Part 1 – What is Plot?

Part 2 – Plot vs. Storyweaving

Part 3 – Justifications, Problems and Inequities

Part 4 – Levels of Justification

Part 5 – Characters and Justification

Part 6 – Fore Story and Back Story

Part 7 – Character Growth and Plot

Part 8 – Context, Bias and Story Structure

Part 9 – Signposts and Journeys

Part 10 – Acts in Television Series

Part 11 – Pair Relationships in Plot

Part 12 – Elements of a Scene

Click here for more free programs on writing…

Discover the Secrets of Story Structure!

Discover the Secrets of Story Structure
for your overall story, characters & plot

Click here for details or to order for just $9.95

This downloadable three-hour 43 part audio program (mp3 format) is presented by Dramatica Theory co-creators Melanie Anne Phillips and Chris Huntley in their only published seminar as co-instructors. 

Volume One presents a whole new way of looking at and writing with story structure, including all the following topics: 

  • Part 1 – Introduction 
  • Part 2 – The Story Mind 
  • Part 3 – Story Perspectives 
  • Part 4 – The 12 Essential Questions 
  • Part 5 – The Obstacle Character 
  • Part 6 – James Bond & Character Change 
  • Part 7 – Character Growth 
  • Part 8 – Direction of Character Growth 
  • Part 9 – Is Your Main Character a Do-er or Be-er? 
  • Part 10 – What Is Your Main Character’s Mental Sex? 
  • Part 11 – Your Plot – Action or Decision? 
  • Part 12 – Your Plot – Time Lock or Option Lock? 
  • Part 13 – Your Plot – Success or Failure? 
  • Part 14 – Positioning Your Reader/Audience 
  • Part 15 – The Four “Classes” of Stories 
  • Part 16 – Your Story’s “Concern” and “Range” 
  • Part 17 – Curing Your Story’s Disease

Volume Two covers the structural side of characters from archetypes to complex operatives, including all the following topics:

  • Part 1 – Characters and the Story Mind 
  • Part 2 – Two Perspectives of Characters 
  • Part 3 – Four Points of View of Your Characters 
  • Part 4 – Your Protagonist Does Not Have to Be Your Main Character 
  • Part 5 – Should Your Main Character Change? 
  • Part 6 – Should Your Main Character Start or Stop? 
  • Part 7 – What is Your Main Character’s Approach? 
  • Part 8 – Defining Male and Female Mental Sex 
  • Part 9 – Archetypes – How the Dramatica Theory was Created 
  • Part 10 – Archetypes in Star Wars 
  • Part 11 – Internal and External Elements of Archetypes 
  • Part 12 – Writing with Four Dimensional Characters 
  • Part 13 – Complex Characters 
  • Part 14 – Objective and Subjective Characters

Volume Three reveals a whole new way of structuring your plot using signposts and journeys, including all the following topics:

  • Part 1 – What is Plot? 
  • Part 2 – Plot vs. StoryWeaving 
  • Part 3 – Justifications, Problems and Inequities 
  • Part 4 – Levels of Justification 
  • Part 5 – Characters and Their Justifications 
  • Part 6 – Fore Story, Back Story and Justification 
  • Part 7 – Character Growth and Plot 
  • Part 8 – Context, Bias and Story Structure 
  • Part 9 – Plot Progression: Signposts & Journeys 
  • Part 10 – Acts in Television Programs 
  • Part 11 – Pair Relationships in Plot 
  • Part 12 – The Elements of a Scene

A Tale is a Statement

A Tale is a Statement

There are two forces that converged to create story structure as we know it today. 　One was an attempt to document our motivations and behaviors, the other is to affect motivations and behavior.

In the first case, storytellers simply noted what they saw, both within their own hearts and minds and in society – both individuals and groups. 　When they did, the underlying conventions of story structure emerged as truisms that delineated the basic drives and thought processes we all share in common. 　Any story that missed one had a hole. 　Any story that inaccurately portrayed one had an inconsistency. 　And we see these same problems today when someone says “The plot had a hole big enough to drive a truck through,” or “Why did they do that? 　Nobody in his right mind would do that!”

In the second case, storytellers have an agenda: to change the way people think and/or act. 　To this end, the telling of stories evolved into two forms. 　The first of these is the Tale, which is a linear form of communication. 　Tales begin with one situation and state of mind, then follow the characters through a series of events that leads to another situation and state of mind. 　The message of a tale is “If you follow this path, you’ll end up better off (or worse off) than if you didn’t take the journey.

Tales, like fairy tales, are often cautionary tales, meaning that they describe a set of behaviors that will lead to something bad. 　Message being: don’t take this course in life or you will seriously regret it. 　This is the most simple form of reader/audience manipulation. 　As long as the series of events is unbroken by logical gaps and makes sense AND the emotional/thought processes of the characters follow a real, human linearity, then the reader/audience is likely to buy into the message (unless they have experience to the contrary).

But, if the reader/audience does have contrary experience, then they may reject the author’s contention and argue that other paths exist that might be even better (or worse) than the one proposed. 　To counter that rebuttal to his or her tale statement, an author would need to argue the point by proving (to reader/audience satisfaction) that the rebuttal is not as accurate as the original statement. 　The steps necessary to make that argument lead us into a different form of manipulation communication, the story, which we will cover in the next lesson.

You can view all 113 episodes of this original program for just $19.95

Click here to view nine sample videos for free

Introducing the Story Mind

About this video…

This is the first episode of a 113 part program I originally recorded in 1999 as a webcast, when such events were cutting edge, technologically. All these years later, it remains my best and most complete description of the Dramatica Theory of Story Structure and covers all key concepts and how to apply them to your novel, screenplay or any form of expression in fiction.

Though our understanding of the nuances and ramifications of the theory have grown in time, all the essential notions have remained unchanged, and are just as valuable and useful today as when I sat in front of my massive CRT monitor and shared them with my internet audience from my living room.

With this short glimpse into the past to set the stage, here is a textual exploration of the material covered in this first episode, informed by fifteen additional years of exploration and familiarity with the theory.

Introducing the Story Mind

When we write a story, it takes on a personality of its own, as if it were a real person in its own right. There is a reason for this. Every character represents a different aspect of our own minds, so when they all come together in a story, it begins to act like us, influenced by all those conflicting facets that determine our overall motivation and behavior.

From a theory stand point it is a bit more complicated than that. Each of us has the same basic attributes: reason, skepticism and conscience, for example. We use them all to try and solve problems and maximize happiness in our everyday lives. When we come together in a group toward a common purpose, we gradually self- organize until one person emerges as the voice of reason, another as the skeptic, and another as the conscience of the group.

This is just good survival strategy because if each of use becomes a specialist, collectively the group will be able to see the problem (and potential solutions) far more clearly than if everyone sat around doing all the same jobs as general practitioners.

As it turns out, since member of a group come to play the role of just one part of ourselves, the group as a whole becomes something of a fractal mind – a larger version of what goes on in our own head and hearts.

Our breakthrough that led to the Dramatica theory was a Eureka moment in which we realized stories weren’t just about people trying to accomplish something, but that the full complement of characters created a greater mind – a Story Mind that had just as much of a personality as any individual.

That, of course, is a gross simplification appropriate to this introduction. In truth, it took us three solid years of full-time effort (from 1991 to 1994) to take that insight, use it as a filter through which to examine the conventions of story structure and then document and clarify all of the aspects of human psychology they illuminated.

The end result was a conceptual model not only of story structure, but of the human mind itself. By 1994, we had converted our model into equations and algorithms that described the relationships among human thought processes, and implemented them in software as a Story Engine that became the Dramatica line of story development products.

Very complex, to be sure! But the important element is the simple understanding that in real life,people come together in groups and self-organize as a larger model of the mind in which each plays a role, and that the conventions of story structure reflect this in the individual characters and, collectively, in the overall personality of the story itself.

You can view all 113 episodes of this original program for just $19.95

Click here to view nine sample videos for free

The Four Faces of Narrative

The word “narrative” is bandied about today as a catch all for stories, both fictional and in the real world.  But what does it really mean?  In fact, “narrative” means four distinctly different things that share the same root.

The four faces of narrative can be thought of as Creative Writing, Story Development, Story Structure and Narrative Science.  These labels describe a spectrum that runs from the passion of self-expression at one side to the logic of self-awareness at the other.  Let’s briefly stare into the face of each….

Creative Writing

As human beings, we are all driven by the desire to share our passions and understandings with others.  We want them to empathize with our feelings and follow our logic: to know who we are and to see the world from our points of view.

While these drives are true for any means of communication, creative writing is the process of expressing ourselves through words.  What we create might range from a simple emotional juxtaposition of words intended only to represent what is in the heart (the written equivalent of modern art) to a highly structured story with a fully developed argument and a clearly defined point.

Regardless of the balance between passion and point, this first face of narrative is the Muse itself.

Story Development

Most written communication does not flow onto the page devoid of consideration.  Rather, the words come forth at times, and at other times one gives thought to how the concepts expressed are hanging together and where they might best lead next.

When an author, be it a personal diarist or successful screenwriter, cogitates either in advance of writing, during the process, or after the fact in order to improve the work in another draft, he or she is wearing the face of Story Development.

Story Structure

Unless wordplay is random, unless there is no intent involved, then the face of Story Structure rears its head.  And the head, not the heart is where it belongs.  Story Structure describes the underlying mechanics of a story, the cogs and processes that lead an audience down a path and bring them to embrace (or at least understand) a message about life and the best way to lead it.

Story structure exists because those cogs and processes provide all the essential techniques and points of view that we, as humans, use in our own minds and in our associations with others to identify problems, refine our understanding of them, and seek to discover the solutions that will resolve them.

Narrative Science

If we look beyond the conventions of story structure to ask why these same cogs and processes appear repeatedly in narrative after narrative, we discover that story structure is a model of the mind itself.  Every character, plot point, thematic issue or genre mood is a facet of our own minds, isolated in nature and made tangible so that we might better understand ourselves.

At the most basic level, narrative science allows us to understand human psychology, both of individuals and how when we come together toward a common problem, we self-organize into group minds in which each individual comes to specialize in once aspect of our narrative selves in order to bring the greatest clarity to the group as a whole.  In essence, when we gave into the face of narrative science, we stare into a mirror.

Though I might conclude this brief introduction to the four faces of narrative with some grand intellectual framework, my own Muse calls at the moment.  And so I rather bring this to a close with a short bit of my own creative writing, pertinent to the subject:

In Verse

by Melanie Anne Phillips

If you could look into infinity,
all you’d see was the back of your head.

And if you were living forever,
you’d clearly be nothing but dead.

But if you step out of the universe,
where time is the flip-side of space,

You could be everywhere,
though you’d never been there,
and you’d stare,
right back into your face.