Dramatica: A New Theory of Story
By Melanie Anne Phillips & Chris Huntley
How This Book Is Arranged
Part of what makes a story great is its underlying dramatic structure and part is the manner in which that structure is related to an audience, often called “storytelling”. Therefore, this book is divided into two principal sections: The Elements of Structure and The Art of Storytelling.
You will note that the majority of examples provided in this book are drawn from motion pictures. This stems from the authors’ personal backgrounds in the motion picture industry. Dramatica, however, is a theory of story — not a theory of screenplay. All of the dramatic concepts presented here are equally applicable to any medium of story expression.
Note about Pronoun Usage: Some characters are best looked at by their dramatic functions. To help keep this perspective, we use the impersonal pronoun “it” when referring to such characters. Other characters are best explored in terms of their growth. To help draw the reader into a closer relationship with such a character, we use the personal pronoun, “he”. Earlier editions of this book used “she” as the personal pronoun. Because of this uncommon usage, readers were jarred out of a relationship with personal characters, rather than being drawn in, defeating our purpose. As a result, this edition employs masculine pronouns.
