I want to tell a story set in New York City. The city is changing to become something else, making Progress, the Way Things Are Going, going from a city of poverty to a city of tremendous wealth.
My MC is a character from another place who is new and uninformed and wants to Understand what is happening in the world at large before an important milestone in the life of the nation.
But I can’t write that because Dramatica won’t let me do that.
The closest I can get is making the OS concern The Past – the characters all are concerned with distancing themselves from the Past. Once I select Understanding for the MC, the gate slam down and I get to pick any color as long as its Memory or the Past.
But that’s a compromise. It’ not what I want to do. I repeat: it’s not what I want to do. I’m having to twist what I want to do, to fit it into Dramatica.
I am negotiating with Dramatica to pick a story it finds acceptable. We are staring eyeball to eyeball, waiting for the other guy to blink.
Is this the way it’s supposed to work? Why should I accept this?
(a few minutes later)
Hmm. Maybe the answer is multiple story forms. I just made three that seem to me to fit together in the telling of a more complicated novel.
My initial impression from this post is that this progress is background fodder, storytelling, which will impact the experience of the story, but not the actual underlying message. The way that you’ve portrayed this, there is no problem here. Thus, I pose two questions:
What is the overall group, and what conflict and turmoil and issues are they facing?
What is the actual source of this conflict and turmoil?
Answer these questions as if you were speaking to someone unaware of Dramatica.
With this, I wonder if it might not be that your MC is actually in Universe, especially since this sounds like a “fish out of water” personal story, from this brief snippet. In fact, you very well mention that it is the character who is trying to do the understanding, and if the character perceives this as the personal problem, then that’s a good sign that it’s the wrong choice. Because of this, I have similar questions on the MC as I did for the OS:
What are this character’s own personal troubles, separate from everyone else?
What is the source of these personal issues and troubles and conflict and turmoil?
Of course, it is possible that you have multiple storyforms, but my initial impression here is that you’ve got storytelling ideas and storyform ideas mixed into one bag here.
In addition to what @Hunter said, have you considered the possibility that what you’re seeing in you OS as Progress or your MC as Understanding is not a Concern, but is either a Signpost and/or a Benchmark?
Not really. He is driven to understand the whole clockwork of New York, as a puzzle to be solved. It’s the reason he came to New York in the first place, to crack the world of power open and look at, and see what it really is. As far as he’s concerned everything he does is in service of that. If he forgets his self-described mission, he’s failing. It’s an obsessive drive, interfering with his friendships, relationships, jobs etc.
If I did something like this, understanding is the benchmark. I can sort of see that. But other throughlines are incomprehensible to me in terms of my story.
Please note carefully that in the following, capitalized terms, such as “Concern” and “Issue” are Dramatica terms, while non-capitalized terms, such as “concern” and “issue” are everyday terms like you might use with a non-Dramatica friend.
This all looks way too much like Storytelling. I don’t think there’s much in here that can actually be used to find a Storyform. A concern for baseball isn’t enough to choose a Concern. Whether or not the Yankees will win isn’t enough to choose an Issue. And, I could and should present a similar sentence for most points that you’ve labelled with a Dramatica term.The thing is, none of the sentences in this list are really a proper encoding. Some come close, but there’s not really any Dramatica-oriented information here.
Every facet of Dramatica should be used as a source of conflict, and should be encoded as such. What you’ve presented is a list of facts, but I don’t see how any of them are a problem. There’s no sense of how they lead to conflict or turmoil.
All that said, what you wrote for Focus and Direction for Jim actually look pretty good, especially since these are two of the most character-oriented items in Dramatica. Per those lines, it looks like you want Jim to believe the source of his own personal problems is his ignorance. Thus, to Jim, the correct solution would be to dig in and learn what he doesn’t already know.
Well, this is mostly true, actually. Though, if you know enough of your story, that’s where Dramatica can shine. Speaking to that, I’d really like to help you find a story form for what you want to write, if you’d allow me.
Based on your replies thus far, I’m guessing that your overall group is the baseball ecosystem: players, managers, fans, etc. It also seems that any conflict this group will experience, such as fights on the field, or maybe deliberations in a mangers office, or other possible conflict is a result of trying to win the pennant. Is this your intent?
Now we have some information about the turmoil that Jim is experiencing. By this, it seems that Jim’s problems are the effects on his friendships, his relationships, his job, and similar things. It also looks like the source of this is his attempts to “crack open the world of power” and “reveal what this world really looks like”. This is an excellent source of information to start building a Storyform.
So, here’s my take on your story, thus far. Please correct anything that is wrong:
Everyone in the baseball world is acting toward the goal of winning of the pennant.
Jim’s personal issues are loss: loss of relationships, of jobs, and possibly other things.
Jim’s personal issues are a result of his attempts to crack open and reveal the truth about power.
Jim believes that these personal issues are due to his ignorance about baseball and NYC.
Jim tries to solve his problems by digging in and speed-learning this unknown grit and detail.
Wow, first, THANK YOU for digging into this. Your willingness to do that is great, and appreciated.
But I’m not writing about baseball. That was a ‘for example’ thing I threw out there. I am sorry to have misdirected you so that you wasted your time on it. I will be more careful about what I put up here.
The one thing you liked is the one part that’s the real part of the story. Let me come back to this.
And thanks to everyone for putting up with my anxiety about this.
