Category Archives: Story Points

What is Your Story Driver?

Driver: The mechanism by which the plot is moved forward.

Some stories are driven by actions. Others are forced along by decisions. All stories have some degree of both. This question determines which one “triggers” the other, but does not determine the ratio between the two.

If actions that occur in your story determine the types of decisions that need to be made, your story is driven by Action. If decisions or deliberations that happen in your story precipitate the actions that follow, your story is driven by Decision.

Excerpted from
Dramatica Story Development Software

Story Point: Mental Sex

Every Main Character should have a Mental Sex. Whether your Main Character is a horse, a house, a person, or an alien, the audience will not be able to empathize with it unless that character possesses a Male or Female mind. If you want your Main Character to tend to look for linear solutions to its problems, choose Male Mental Sex. If you want your Main Character to tend to look for holistic solutions to its problems, choose female mental sex.

NOTE: A character’s Mental Sex need not match its Gender.

Mental Sex: A differentiation between male and female problem-solving techniques.

Excerpted from
Dramatica Pro Story Development Software

Story Point: Your Main Character – “Do-er” or “Be-er”?

Some of the characters you create as an author will be Do-ers who try to accomplish their purposes through activities (by doing things). Other characters are Be-ers who try to accomplish their purposes by working it out internally (by being a certain way). When it comes to the Main Character, this choice of Do-er or Be-er will have a large impact on how it approaches the Story’s problem. If you want your Main Character to prefer to solve problems externally, create a Do-er. If you want your Main Character to prefer to solve problems through internal work, create a Be-er.

Excerpted from
Dramatica Pro Story Development Software

Story Point: Main Character Growth

Over the course of your story, the Main Character will either grow out of something or grow into something. Authors show their audiences how to view this development of a Main Character by indicating the direction of Growth by the Main Character.

If the story concerns a Main Character who Changes, it will come to believe it is the cause of its own problems (that’s why it eventually changes). If it grows out of an old attitude or approach (e.g. loses the chip on its shoulder), then it is a Stop character. If it grows into a new way of being (e.g. fills a hole in its heart), then it is a Start character.

If the story concerns a Main Character who Remains Steadfast, something in the world around it will appear to be the cause of its troubles. If it tries to hold out long enough for something to stop bothering it, then it is a Stop character. If it tries to hold out long enough for something to begin, then it is a Start character.

If you want the emphasis in your story to be on the source of the troubles which has to stop, choose “Stop.” If you want to emphasize that the remedy to the problems has to begin, choose “Start.”

Excerpted from
Dramatica Pro Story Development Software

Story Point: Main Character Resolve

The Main Character represents the audience’s position in the story. Therefore, whether it changes or not has a huge impact on the audience’s story experience and the message you are sending to it.

Some Main Characters grow to the point of changing their nature or attitude regarding a central personal issue like Scrooge in A Christmas Carol. Others grow in their resolve, holding onto their nature or attitude against all obstacles like Dr. Richard Kimble in The Fugitive.

Change can be good if the character is on the wrong track to begin with. It can also be bad if the character was on the right track. Similarly, remaining Steadfast is good if the character is on the right track, but bad if it is misguided or mistaken.

Think about the message you want to send to your audience, and whether the Main Character’s path should represent the proper or improper way of dealing with the story’s central issue.

Excerpted from
Dramatica Pro Story Development Software

A Story’s Limit

  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.

Objective Story Range

This appreciation describes the kind of value judgments that seem to pertain to all the characters and events in a story. For example, a Range of Morality will have a dynamic counterpoint of Self-Interest. This means the thematic conflict in the Objective Story Throughline would be Morality vs. Self-Interest. Because Morality is the Range, it would be in the forefront and appear as the topic or subject matter of the Objective Story Throughline’s Theme.

Because Morality is the Objective Story Range, it will appear almost everywhere. In a hypothetical story, we might see a man taking candy from a baby, a headline proclaiming that a company’s profits are up, while behind the newsstand we see the company dumping toxic waste in the background. Illustrations of the Objective Story Range can focus on the characters or can act as a flavoring for the story as a whole. We shall explore this in greater detail in the Encoding section.

From the Dramatica Theory Book

Subjective Story Concern

The Subjective Story Concern describes the area of greatest conflict or divergence between the Main and Obstacle Characters. They might see eye-to-eye everywhere else, but when it comes to the Subjective Story Concern, they always come to blows. It is the nature of the way the thematic structure is created that the Concern of the Subjective Story Throughline will seem to grow out of the Main and Obstacle Concerns.

If the Subjective Story Concern were Obtaining, the Main and Obstacle would argue over whether or not they should have something. It might be something only one of them has or can have (who should have it?) or it might be something they must either have together or not at all.

From the Dramatica Theory Book

Obstacle Character Concern

Because the Obstacle Character Throughline is looked at in terms of its impact, the Concern here will be seen as the area in which the Obstacle Character has its greatest effect. A way of phrasing this is to say that the Obstacle Character’s impact primarily Concerns this area. So, an Obstacle Character Concern of Obtaining here would describe an Obstacle Character who changes what is or can be Obtained (or refused) because of his impact on the people and events around him.

From the Dramatica Theory Book

The Main Character Concern

As one would expect, the Main Character Concern is of interest only to the Main Character. This appreciation describes the area in which the Main Character is most worried or interested in regard to the way it sees the problem.

If Obtaining were the Main Character Concern, the Main Character alone would be trying to get or get rid of (hold on to or refuse to hold on to) something. None of the other characters would share this Concern because the other throughlines are all in other Classes with different Types. This divergence is what gives a story some breadth and a sense of completeness for an audience. Rather than focusing on just one issue, every point of view regarding the story’s problem falls into a different Domain with its own unique Concern.

Similarly, a Main Character with a Concern of Memory would be trying to remember, to forget, to establish a memory, or to prevent one from forming.

From the Dramatica Theory Book