An example of why I LOVE Dramatica

writing
#1

Okay I’m going to write this really quickly because it’s taking me away from my actual writing, but I just had to share this somewhere. (I keep saying I need to start my own blog where I can post at will about how awesome Dramatica is!)

So I’ve been working on my outline for my epic fantasy story, it’s been going super well ever since Jim (@jhull) helped me zero on the narrative structure[1]. Anyway, in Act 3 (out of 4) my MC Caitlin gets broken out of prison. I had put “the escape goes badly” in my outline without a clear idea why or how it went badly, I just knew there needed to be problems. I also knew that one of the guys that helps break her out, Herr Lewan, is actually a good-guy posing as a guard.

Anyway, today I was going for a walk and envisioned a scene that happens before the break-out, where some of the guards are about to molest/rape her, and H. Lewan steps in and convinces them not to, saying she is a witch and is seducing them with her witchy powers. After they leave her cell, he pretends to beat Caitlin up, whispering to “make your screams convincing or I’ll have to hit you a lot harder”.

And that was it … that was all I envisioned. Maybe a little cliched, but seemed cool. But when I got home and re-read the dictated Evernote, my Dramatica senses started tingling. My OS Problem/Symptom/Response is Oppose/Hinder/Help, and this was a pretty great example of this – H. Lewan disagrees with the idea of her being raped, sees that they have her boxed in[2], and decides to help. But then I realized, okay if this a Response of Help that is motivated by Oppose, it means there needs to be some additional conflict generated by it!

Then it hit me, the “escape goes badly” part – that could easily be related to this! What if one of the guards wasn’t so easily convinced by the “witchy powers” and false smack-down … he might now be on the alert for trouble and be the one to raise the alarm unexpectedly quickly when H. Lewan helps her escape… This is perfect! I love how Dramatica seems to help me tie everything together like this. So cool!

Footnotes
1: I enrolled in Jim’s mentorship program in August. Funny enough, the story point he’s helped me with the most that I totally did NOT get before and has made the biggest impact to my outline? Story Driver!
2: She’s definitely hindered from defending herself by being a prisoner. But another, possibly better encoding for Symptom of Hinder is that H. Lewan knows there may be an escape attempt soon – and if these bastards injure her it could really undermine the escape.

3 Likes
#2

Shoot, I forgot to mention the icing on the cake … after writing all this down I checked the PSR:

Act three focuses on “appreciating the meaning of something” (Understanding) and is explored in terms of Conditioning, Instinct, Senses, and Interpretation.

Geez, all of those seem to fit! Especially Interpretation (the one guard correctly interprets the various signs that H. Lewan is not who he seems to be). Conditioning might also illustrate H. Lewan’s automatic response to help Caitlin before thinking that it might jeopardize the mission – I had imagined him as having escaped a lot of violence in his home country, so maybe he’s conditioned by having witnessed violence against women. Good enough for now.

I’m kind of using the PSR in a loose manner for now, sort of just glancing at it to see if the Variations seem to fit the story content, not trying to define sequences or anything. I’m not sure how kosher that is, but it’s really fun using it that way!

#3

I love these aha moments with Dramatica. I’ve been trying to figure out a story form for an idea for a while. I would work through one that felt close, but not quite right, but not know how to change the engine settings to make it more accurate.

One problem I had was that I had come up with a story that needed to be a decision driven story. But somewhere along the line, I decided that something else worked better than what I had and that change, whatever it was, forced it into an action driven story form. So when I finally got to the point where I just needed to select the problem element, nothing worked out quite right. The problem element was there for me to select, but it threw off the Signpost order.

I was willing to accept that what I had previously come up with was wrong, that what I had thought of as the act where the OS characters conceive an idea was actually supposed to focus on something else. But there was nothing I could change it to to make it feel right for my story. And changing where Conceiving an Idea appeared in my story seemed to mess it all up. So I cleared all the story engine settings and set what I thought the Signposts should be for just that throughline. Then I filled out everything else as close as I could to what I had. Turns out, the only thing that changed is that it went back to a decision story after all (whatever had forced it into action had been long since changed to something else).

Throughout the process of hunting for the proper storyform, i would see all these words like Evidence and Changing One’s Nature, and think I must be there because of how well they fit into my story. But it wasn’t until I made the right changes that put those words in the right place (how could I ever NOT have seen that the OS thematic issue is Situation vs Circumstances or that Changing One’s Nature isn’t the Concern, but the Benchmark?) that the clouds parted and a single ray of sun shone through like the Finger of God reaching down and touching my laptop as if to say, “Yes, that is your story form”.

While I may be being a bit hyperbolic about the experience, I have to say, those moments when Dramatica helps you finally understand exactly what’s going on in the story you’re writing are pretty incredible. That alone is worth the price of admission.

1 Like
#4

Wow, storyforming using Signpost order … that’s really interesting! I’m not sure I could ever do that with my own writing … my ideas always feel too all over the place in terms of plot, except maybe for the Act 4 climax stuff.

I had found almost the right storyform on my own, but I had Story Driver wrong (I had Decision which is hilarious to me now because it is so obviously Action, all through the whole damn story!). I also had MC Problem Solving wrong, my MC is somewhat intuitive but that does not mean Holistic. I also had absolutely no idea where my Act Turn Drivers were, Jim was immensely helpful with that.

The biggest lesson I learned with Drivers was understanding the meaning behind “Actions drive Decisions”. I thought it meant you had an action that forces a big deliberation, like a decision which is really hard to make because the pros and cons of each option are totally balanced, and you have to take the time to weigh them. I didn’t realize it means the Action drives the particular difficult choice – like because of something that happens, character(s) end up making a choice they wouldn’t otherwise have made. For example, Princess Leia would not normally have chosen to send the all-important death star plans with two droids on an escape pod. But the Empire’s attack on her ship forced that choice, or decision.

That’s the problem with the word Decision, it can mean the decision process itself, or it can mean the particular thing you choose. At least when Actions are the drivers, I think it’s more about the latter.

What’s great is that now that I know that, I can see it happening all the time in my story – and it has the double advantage of both feeling right and objectively matching the storyform.

#5

It wasn’t my intention to storyform this way. More of a hail mary to find out what I should have already known. I don’t think it would have worked most of the time, but after going through as many story forms as i had while looking for the right one, i had gone from a partially formed idea to a pretty much fully formed idea. so it worked this time. It was the journey to that proper story form where what i thought were concern became benchmarks, etc, that really amazed me.

#6

Right, I get it now. That makes a lot of sense actually.

You’re totally right how it’s important not to get to hung up on certain terms and how important they seem to your story, looking at the Theme Browser like a kid in a candy shop. I know I’ve been guilty of that :slight_smile: ! But it seems like once you nail down your storyform for real, you realize that a lot of those terms end up coming into it in other ways – signposts, benchmarks, catalysts, UA/CF, counterpoint (or anything from the same quad as the issue, since that one chapter in the book talks about exploring the Issue using each item from that quad as a reference). Or even the PSR, which includes all 64 Variations!

So eventually, once you start writing, you do get to sample all of the candy… :stuck_out_tongue:

#7

“Sample all of the candy” I love that. It describes the experience so well. Like when you think you are looking at a problem/solution of faith/disbelief only to realize that doesn’t work in the story form, so you eventually realize you’re looking at a problem of actuality/perception, and then the whole faith/disbelief aspect comes up right in the one act where it actually should and you see you really were trying to force a one act issue onto the whole story.

After reading your original post, I went back and looked over my notes to compare to the PSR and, like you, was pretty amazed at how well everything worked, even when it was pulling from different quads that I would never have guessed. I’ve been working on my relationship through line and having trouble using it to add something that’s not already covered by the MC and IC through lines, so I plan to use my lunch hour today to see if the PSR can finally help me come up with a few more events that focus not on the characters interactions with each other in their respective through lines, but on the actual relationship story between them.

#8

Ooh, the relationship story. That is another thing I did not fully understand, and have needed a lot of help on. I think I’m almost there now. What’s really helped is to picture the RS Throughline as a tether that connects two objects together (where the objects are the MC and IC characters, or maybe more accurately their “players”).

So in the story what the audience sees is the two objects [1]. Anyway you can imagine that with this tether between them the two objects might do some complicated dance that could be represented by a physics equation, sort of like a planetary orbit. But with Dramatica, the equation we have is the equation for the tether itself. The RS Domain, Concern, Issue, Problem, etc. all apply directly to the tether, and tell you forces originating from it and acting on it, i.e. the sources of its dramatic conflict.

So like a Problem of Oppose might appear sometimes as though one of the two characters opposes something related to the relationship, but what’s really going on is that the relationship tether itself opposes something. It either opposes itself, or something about itself, like what it’s becoming (e.g. if the Concern is Becoming).

The really interesting thing is that it’s taken me four separate RS playground exercises to understand this. The first two were way off, the next two were closer but not quite there. Now I’m about to do the 5th and I’m pretty sure I know how to nail it – but I’m hesitating because I can feel it’s almost too emotional for me to write about. I’m actually afraid of it, of the emotions it might bring out. I think that’s a good sign – it shows how much this storyform resonates with me.

1: although maybe more relationship-savvy people than me can sort of see the relationship itself in the way two people look at each other or speak to each other etc. but I can’t usually do that

#9

A tether is a good way to think of it, and I think, in theory, I can get what the difference between the impact character and the relationship story are. But in practice, when trying to encode for them I end up stumbling over my own feet. I think that in trying to make sure I’m focusing on how the IC is having an impact on the MC, I end up encoding both the IC and RS into one, so when I go to encode the RS, it’s really already done.

One of the stories I’m using Dramatica to write seems like it probably just is supposed to have really tightly woven IC and RS stories that just aren’t going to seem very separate from one another. Like right now I’m working on one about a nurse that sees ghosts and demons trying to help a doctor who also sees ghosts, but who doesn’t realize they are real (he thinks they’re in his head). Her throughline ended up being about helping people who don’t see ghosts to figure out what’s going on (wow, this sounds waayyy too Ghost Whisper-y when I type it out like that), and she is helping the doctor in the same way. I’m not sure how that could be more separated.

But other stories seem like they should have had more separated IC and RS stories. Like one I wrote for my daughter about Pirates. One is looking for a lost treasure while the other is under a curse and is a ghost stuck on the island with the treasure (apparently we like ghost stories in our house) and he is trying to keep the other pirate from finding the treasure. That one seems like it should have plenty of room to separate the IC and RS stories, but I felt like I was encoding the same things for both Throughlines.

I think the next time I start encoding a story form, I’m going to start out with the IC Throughline and try to encode without any thought for the MC or what their relationship might be. Then when I get to the RS, I’ll think up some relationship that seems wildly different from the IC story i’ll have started and see if I can’t force them apart that way. I suppose I should do it a few times, like you said, to really get a good feel for how to do it.

#10

Yes!! That’s definitely the right way to go about it, especially in conjunction with playground exercises.

For this part:

Her throughline ended up being about helping people who don’t see ghosts to figure out what’s going on (wow, this sounds waayyy too Ghost Whisper-y when I type it out like that), and she is helping the doctor in the same way. I’m not sure how that could be more separated.

One thing that seems to help if I’m writing RS encodings is to start with a sentence or two that mentions the characters (refer to them by roles). Like you can write RS Problem of Help (just guessing at your storyform there) as “she tries to help the doctor but he doesn’t want her help, causing X conflict between them”.

But that’s not the actual RS encoding, that was just a prompt for you. So you follow it up with a new paragraph that starts with “But what’s really going on is…” or “the real problem is…” etc. And then for that new paragraph you do not refer to the MC or IC at all, not even by their roles, you only use the words “they”, “the relationship”, “the connection”, “the space between them”, “each other” etc.

So continuing the example it might be “But what’s really going on is their relationship can sense it is losing out to the stuck-up ‘I know best’ attitude weighing it down, and never achieve the lasting connection it wants. So they are driven to help guide the development of their relationship, to assist it in the right direction. Yet those attempts to help resolve their issues just cause more problems between them as they’re merely further expressions of the stuck-up attitude that’s causing them so much trouble.”

(The example was supposed to be RS of Activity/Obtaining/Attitude/Help there. Even when encoding the Problem it helps to stay aware of the Domain/Concern/Issue – I didn’t get Activity but I mentioned the other two.)