Connection between MC Growth and Issue? (plus: series storyforming)

I’ve been poking at figuring out the storyform for my series, which is a lot harder than book 1 because so far I don’t know much about the series!

Anyway say you have an MC Growth of Stop, and an MC Issue of Self Interest. Is it still okay to picture the MC as “not having enough Self Interest”? Or does the Growth of Stop indicate that there is too much Self Interest in the picture? (this would be for an MC Resolve of Change BTW)

It might sound like Morality should be the Issue, but for some reason Self Interest feels more accurate to me. It’s more like she lacks self-interest than is overly altruistic, if that makes sense. For instance, it’s not like she goes out of her way to sacrifice herself, but she can’t stand it when other people put themselves at risk for her, and tries to stop them from doing so even when she sorely needs their help.

But I’m wondering if all this is an indication the Growth should be Start?

This stage of storyforming is kind of neat, it’s like you’re probing your muse or something!

Good question. I’m thinking it works because the negative side of self-interest is what’s at play there. In that instance I’d say Stop would indicate that she has too much of the negative aspect of self interest. So She would need to stop not having enough self interest. But that’s just my best guess. I’ve always wanted to find an article about Dramatica negatives and double negatives for stuff like this.

Part of me says yes, but another part of me says no. The fractal nature of Dramatica would suggest that you can mimic the Problem-Solution structure in higher tiers, but at the same time, I envision Issue-Counterpoint as being different qualitatively. There’s some amount of synthesis involved here, i.e. the story doesn’t ultimately come down at one-hundred percent Self-Interest or one-hundred percent Morality. Rather, Self-Interest and Morality are tempered by Approach and Attitude. In fact, I wonder if you might be able to create a sort of “Simpson’s Paradox” in your sequences–in a straight shot of Self-Interest vs. Morality, Morality is seen as better, but when looked at through the lenses of Approach and Attitude, Self-Interest is always positive, and Morality is always negative. :stuck_out_tongue:

In any case, I think you can do exactly that. Just because the story is “Stop”, doesn’t mean the character needs to Stop the Issue at hand. You might be able to argue that they need to Stop the Counterpoint! All that Stop really says is that the Problem needs to Stop more fundamentally than the Solution needs to Start. (And if your MC is Steadfast, it affects which Crucial Element is theirs.)

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Okay thanks. It may be that what I see as her “lack of self interest” is really something else, like a Problem element. (e.g. Consider - not considering herself worthy; Help - difficulty accepting help).

Even though I think the series Domains are different from Book 1 Domains, I’ve been assuming the Concern quadrants are the same (lower left). But maybe I’m wrong on that, which would open up a lot more storyform possibilities!

Oops. I didn’t even notice that you were on the Issue level. My answer was more for the element level. I’m agreeing with @actingpower on this one.

Why do you assume the Concerns have to be the same? If you’re doing a form for each book and a form for the overall series, I would think they could be different depending on the goal for 1 book vs the goal for the series. Like, I envision a quadrilogy having a book each about Obtaing, Doing, Gathering Info, and Understanding while the overall storyform would only be one of those.

Hmm… That’s an interesting idea, but what happens if your story isn’t a quadrilogy? The series acts and the… episodic acts?.. wouldn’t align. Ultimately, I think they have to be different; you have to be constantly spinning both plates in your story. Advance the episodic Goal of Being while simultaneously working within the story Act of The Past.

Thanks Greg. With both of your input, I think I’m sold that “you need to stop putting yourself last!” is a reasonable illustration for Growth of Stop.

Re: the Concerns, I definitely might be wrong about those. It’s just that each Concern quadrant has a definite feel to it and I was guessing the series story had a similar feel as Book 1 (although changing Domains would make it feel somewhat different). I was also thinking along the lines of:

  • Book 1’s Consequence (Becoming, which comes into effect due to Failure) being an instance of the Series Cost.
  • Book 1’s OS Concern (Obtaining) being an instance of Series Dividends. Since even though they don’t achieve the Goal in Book 1, there is still some reasonably good Obtaining that happens.

The pattern you mention with each book’s Goal being a signpost in the overall series storyform, is definitely one that can work and has been recommended. But it’s not the only way to do it, which is lucky for me because if you set OS Signpost 1 to Obtaining, you automatically get a Failure story! And I want my series to be Success.

EDIT: all that said, I did try a storyform with upper-right Concerns and it seemed reasonably promising.

I was just curious why you said you assumed that about the Concerns. I didn’t mean to suggest that I thought they should be the same or could be different or that you were right or wrong. It’s an aspect of Dramatica I haven’t explored in any depth so was more interested in your reasoning. I didn’t know if there might have been a Dramatica reason you were assuming they should be the same or if it was just a personal feeling for your story. I’d be interested in any insights you gain from looking at a series storyform while working through three (or however many) individual book forms.

Well, one wild idea I had is that, say the series is 4 books, there would a series-storyform and each of books 1-3 would have their own storyforms. But then book 4 would just totally focus in on the series-storyform, and wouldn’t need its own, letting you really conclude the series with a bang. (I kind of wonder if this is what JK Rowling did with Harry Potter?) You could also start that series-story focus earlier, and not have individual 'forms for book 3 or book 2 if you wanted.

As far as insights go, if you’re ever in the same boat as me (know Book 1 very well with a solid storyform for it, but don’t know much about the series)… One thing that helps is to think of the issues and conflicts in Book 1 that do exist, but are maybe in the background a bit, they do come up but are not fully addressed nor given a chance to be resolved in Book 1. These are the things that might be sources of conflict (and thus, Dramatica story points) in the series.

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