Bob's my uncle: dot notation

theory
#1

I love Bob Raskopfs Table of Scene’s sheet, but wanted to transfer the idea to a graphical tool that lets me copy and duplicate elements and play with the format. I’m also fiddling with the format. My big PSR sheet looks like this:

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Four throughlines in red, blue, purple and yellow. the red, yellow, purple and yellow squares are the PSR suggested variations, and beneath them Bob’s suggested elements.

Here’s a closeup of the most developed part of my tool. This is an extrapolation of Table of Scenes and the line fro the PSR "
In act one, “the current situation and circumstances” (The Present) is explored in terms of Instinct, Senses, Interpretation, and Conditioning."

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(Ignore all the hairpins, they’re just placeholders)

The first thing you’ll notice is I always include the hierarchy in the name of a type, variation or element, using dot-notation, a trick I learned from programming. So Change element becomes Activity.Understanding.Conditioning.Change, so I can see the colors flowing out. Of course, if you follow the theory, there is also:

Activity.Understanding.Conditioning.Change.Change/Situation
Activity.Understanding.Conditioning.Change.Change/Activity
Activity.Understanding.Conditioning.Change.Change/Psychology
Activity.Understanding.Conditioning.Change.Change/State of Mind

…where the elements wrap around to the classes–that is, if I’m reading my theory correctly.

The other thing I’m doing is specifying the tensions in play, so I can keep them in mind.

It may be a bit much, I dunno, tell me what you think. Seems to me that surfacing the relationships constantly drills it into the writer’s head that they ARE relationships, and reminds you what a class, type, variation and element are and in what order they happen. Flattening out the heirarchy so you can easily see the whole in a single line, without having to drill down. Takes a little of the feeling of mystery out of it for me.

I also wrote out the bump-slide-bump scene breakout Armando recommends. I probably want to include the term there too.

And of course I show the SRCA structure, as Bob recommends.

Like I said, feedback would be great. Building this tool for myself as I commence on a big project and don’t want to have to keep looking stuff up. I’m going to incorporate definitions too, and I have a couple of ideas for how to do that too.

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#2

I’m pretty sure Shakespeare used semi-colons instead of dots.

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#3

Sorry, couldn’t resist! :slight_smile: Actually, I think your sheet is cool but I would leave lots of space to scribble the actual story stuff on it in pen.

Also, don’t forget that many scenes will naturally do double, triple or even quadruple duty – incorporating stuff from many throughlines at once. So for example you may find that one of your RS PSR Variations is actually accounted for in a moment within an otherwise OS scene.

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#4

Lol

He would’ve thought all this was pretty much witchcraft

#5

Good advice, except I plan to write with a computer, which would hardly be surprising given the picture of my desk that I showed. This is the overall view of the layout, you’ll see what I’m doing when it comes to the actual composition phase.

That is a great remark about the scenes doing duty for various throughlines. Some other writing tools are good at showing that.

I may actually turn this into an app at some point, and if I do, there will be a toggle to turn off the long names and the short names, to switch between them. Not whiles I’m writing my book though.

#6

the Henry James quote occurred to me this morning, regarding all this:

There is only one recipe - to care a great deal for the cookery.

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#7

Hey @GetSchwifty

I think this is great, but I want to play my regular role around here as the agitator.

You are a programmer, your nom de foro is Jim, and your chart magnifies something that is pretty clear: you are a male mental sex thinker. This chart is a deep dive into your comfort zone. Which is great, but comes at a cost.

Stories are particles and waves. Stories are big structure and little structure. This chart may have big structure in it, but I’m going to guess that it biases towards little structure (if only because there is more mental weight given to 16 tension elements than 1 Signpost).

My advice to writers is generally to bind their strong hand behind their back as they learn. You seem to be at the gym lifting with only your strong hand. Make sure to spend some time on the waves.

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#8

That sound like great advice. I am utterly open to advice on how to do that. Aware that I am grinding through it with male mental sex, but strangely, I am almost an entirely intuitive, non-rationalizing holistic thinker as I walk through my day --unLESS I am sucked into mental data structures like this. Long been a dichotomy in my life. For example, I do serious computer stuff at a very high level, have no degree, and can’t explain how I do it.

The best I can explain my personal method is that I spend a lot of time upfront internalizing a system, and then…let it go. I’m familiar with the process and have no trouble letting a system go, but I do try to get the timing right and make sure it was really internalized.

General question, once you’ve had a bias of this sort observed, how can I pull back from it? What can I practically do?

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#9

At this point, I wouldn’t actually advise pulling back from Dramatica, because what I’m going to advise isn’t Dramatica, and you don’t want to stop studying and internalizing it.

Step One is pretty simple: find a scheduled time: first thing in the morning is considered best, sometimes late at night is the only real option. But try to find a scheduled time. Then, take a bunch of deep breaths and as quickly as possible type one single-spaced page of words. They do not need to be coherent, but your goal is not to be incoherent. In fact, you have no goal. None whatsoever. The idea is to let your fingertips move with as little planning or intent as possible – just type out whatever is in your head. One page.

(Maybe you’ve heard of this before? It’s called “morning pages”, and there is a website called 750words.com that will give you a place to do it if you need, and prompts.)

If you find this difficult at first (many people do), then you should use paper and pen. Something about the physicality of that helps a lot.

Many people also try to ignore what is in their head: they try to maintain a blank slate. That’s not really the idea either. Don’t suppress anything: just put it on the page. The idea is to have the fewest hurdles between instinct and word.

Many people find their first week or so of this is gross, sexual, deviant, violent… something ugly. I have a couple of theories about why this happens, but they don’t matter for the exercise. Put it all on the page.

After you’re done, put it away. Don’t even read it. Or throw it away, delete it. It doesn’t matter. The doing is the exercise.

FWIW, it’s also easier to do this daily than it is to do it 5/week.

After you do this for a while, ask me for step two. If enough people are interested, I’ll teach another class – I did one a couple of years ago for people on the forum.

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#10

hah I do morning pages. Julia Cameron is an acquaintance of mine here in NYC actually. She personally tutored me on it.

But great advice, and I needed to rehear it.

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#11

Oooh I would LOVE for you to teach a class on the forum.

I’m going to write a bit about my process outside of Dramatica theory, so you can get a sense of my motion in the ocean here, but I have to do it later. Any guidance is always richly welcomed.

#12

It’s funny, I had the below post drafted a few hours ago (got called away from desk). But now that I see Mike’s post, I see I was merely pussyfooting around what Mike had the courage to raise…

Part of the reason I mentioned Shakespeare was to remind you that complete and lasting stories can be created without needing all these details. Or at least not knowing them consciously.

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#13

I am sure that no matter how much I get in their consciously, that vast majority of it will be … from the Great Beyond.

#14

Just to be clear, I wouldn’t actually teach the class on the forum. I would teach it virtually, to people in the forum, at a set time.

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#15

I’m pulling each signpost onto a separate page for brainstorming and composition.

New thing I’m trying, copied all the verbose definitions into cards and using them in quad form, too. Already inspired reveries and words. I’ve finally put down enough track that I can write and play with my actual story.

So, I’m taking the approach that if an idea comes from these quad suggestions, use them, and don’t reach for other variations unless it’s super clear there’s a misfit of some kind… sound thinking? unsound thinking? too much thinking?

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#16

ok knocking off for the night.

You know what the greatest gift of Dramatica is?

Just write to the quad. Stop worrying. Really, just stop it. You have a task in front of you and you’re no longer trying to pull moneys out of your, umm, hairdo.

It’s just one task. One quad at a time. Just write to the quad.

What a great evening of writing.

I expanded on the idea of the quad a bit for the OS Signpost 1. I want to include some storytelling both about the MC and the ‘people of the city’ and so I wrote about the The People in a central quad, then on each side created a box for both the positive and negative for each element - facts, fake facts; threats, non threats; security, insecurity; and fantasy, rejection of fantasy. Armando was right, you can really expand your theme by hitting both the negative and the positive of an element. In those boxes, I wrote about my hero (yeah he’s a hero) Peter. It was the best of times, you know, and it was the worst of times. That was the best line I wrote tonight. And then there were my own lines, which weren’t bad either.

I have got a lot to learn but I am a little less overwhelmed. Onward now…

Oh man I have got a LOT to learn.

A lot.

#17

ok now I have to take a step back.

I have all my story points in the app.

I’ve got my throughline progression, not perfect but a good start.

and now I have my PSR all set out.

Now I have figure out how to moosh it all together.

hmm.

#18

I looked at Rod’s Horizontal Story Chart and brought some of the elements into my tool, so now my Signpost 1 looks like this:

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#19

I’m altering my tactics a bit. I think this is a great way to lay things out and set up your mental arena, see the forces at work, see the quads and their order, but I don’t think it’s that great a composition tool.

So the next thing I did is work with MindNode, while having this model above as a reference, and I think that’s what worked the best. The great thing about MindNode is the ability to mind map and reorder things dynamically. With Omnigraffle, once you’ve got it set up you’re a little loathe to muss your beautiful structure, and it’s just not that great a writing tool. Wish it were, but it ain’t. Omni Outliner is another possiblity…hmmm

also have reacquaint myself with all the scene composition help in Dramatica app.

#20

I see that the writing app Ulysses for Mac integrates MindNode . . . that’s how I found out about it fwiw. Thanks for sharing these screen caps. They’re really helpful to me. I’ve been trying to figure out how to visualize the scenes based on the PSR. Once I have that sorted, I’d like to experiment using Todd Klick’s 120 pacing beats as “scene containers” from his books: Beat by Beat and Something Startling Happens. This would help me with storyweaving at the end. Then I’ll add genre tropes and “obligatory” scenes components before the actual writing begins. I like having all the story beats sorted as much as possible. Even though this is for a series of novels, I like to pretend I’m a TV showrunner in a writer’s room.