Are there examples of Being (like a Story Goal) that aren’t about trying to (or expectations to) act like something one isn’t? I can think of something vague like “the characters can solve dissatisfaction with their lives (inequity) by acting in accordance with their desires (instead of fear)” or “finding a more fulfilling place in the world” but when I try to come up with specifics for those, I keep thinking of external stuff like obtaining acceptance from others or a job they like, which doesn’t sound right for the Domain. How much broader can Being be than playing a temporary role?
It can be about acting like or behaving in accordance with what you are. Like soldiers trying their best to act like soldiers, royalty trying to act royal. In those cases it’s not about pretending to be something you aren’t, but rather, the idea that being what you are can be damn hard.
I can’t think of any Story Goals like this offhand but there are a lot of Relationship Stories about behaving properly to suit the role in the relationship. Behaving like a father and son, behaving like a Jedi master and apprentice…
Hmm. I think trying to get acceptance by playing the role of your job, can actually fit this Domain perfectly. Is that what you meant, like an employee trying to please his boss by being the perfect employee? Or a cop trying to be a good cop to gain acceptance from her partner?
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I was thinking a character who doesn’t want to keep working menial jobs gets an opportunity and hopes to become a star or something. I don’t know if living in the way one wants (say, an artist finally getting the chance to be an artist instead of a dishwasher) counts as Goal of Being. I read about the Incredibles, but that had an element of pretending to be normal.
Are you saying this is external because of the word “obtaining”? If so, keep in mind that there is a difference between “Obtaining” as a source of inequity and “obtaining” as a standard verb. Someone who has a goal and/or source of inequity of “being the best” can try to obtain acceptance from someone, obtain a position or title, obtain first place, etc as a means of achieving their goal without making that the source of inequity.
Maybe Being could refer to something like “being a poor sport/bad winner/sore loser” or “being the best” or “being the chosen one” or “being different” or “being famous” or “being unknown” or “being an athlete” or “being an artist” or “being a dentist”. All of these are going to have some activity associated with them. But it’s the internal Ability of Desire (or Being) that describes the source of the problem, not the associated activities.
As i’m typing I see that you posted about a character that hopes to become a star. I would suggest that you’d need to make sure the character doesn’t change it’s nature in order to become a star. As long as the character had it in them all along, I would think it would work. Same thing with your artist example. If a dishwasher suddenly takes to painting and becomes a painter, it might not work. But someone who wants to be a painter suddenly getting the chance to be in that role sounds like it would work just fine.
But isn’t that Obtaining? Like Obtaining opportunity to work which helps the character realize desires? It doesn’t have much to do with acting or trying to think in a different way unless the goal was something like a slob trying to look as professional as possible to impress a studio to get that job.
I don’t know if Being could be something like finding a way to feel good about oneself, but that sounds like Conceptualizing to me.
I don’t think so. A dishwasher who wants to Obtain the position of painter isn’t worried about who she is as a painter. She’s worried about whether she can get people to pay her and adore her for painting. She’s trying to get her paintings in front of the right people, or maybe she’s trying to reach(/obtain) a certain mastery of the craft, or maybe she’s trying to win first place in the art show. Maybe she’ll deal with issues like not wanting to be a sellout who goes into advertising (Attitude) or refusing to give lessons because she’d rather finish her self portrait (Self-Interest).
A dishwasher who wants to Be a painter isn’t worried about how to get the job or who to put her work in front of–particularly if she is “suddenly getting the chance”–but whether she has what it takes to be a painter (even if she already has the job). She’s probably worried about whether she adequately knows her craft (Knowledge), or if her work is really thought-provoking (Thought), or can her work sit next to that of the master painter at the art show and hold its own.
(Edit:perhaps an easier, and much shorter, way to say it would have been to say that the painter in a Being story is obtaining the position of painter without experiencing any inequity from or through the area of obtaining, but that is exactly where a painter in an Obtaining story would experience inequity.)
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Obtaining character - “I can be/am a painter, but can I achieve something regarding painting?”
Being character - “I can get a job or otherwise achieve with painting, but do I have what it takes to really be a painter, and not just someone who paints?”
You’re right, this doesn’t really sound like Being. Just on the face of it, it sounds like Becoming or Subconscious.
Not sure if you have all the rest of this idea yet, but this may be one of those times that you need to have ideas for the whole story (all the throughlines) before you can figure out the storyform. Unless you’re starting from a storyform?
It’s the same one I’m always working on, but after some time away, I couldn’t figure out how Failure or Success might affect what I was trying to say (Letting fear hold you back leads to regret; Courage leads to fulfilment. Either way, I want MC Change, Judgment of Good). Wasn’t sure if the message was baked in the storyform or if it depended on whether I encoded the Goal as something positive like characters want to feel content about themselves or maybe being performers is the thing that will give them fulfillment (I’ve been thinking of performing as the stuff they are doing), or as something negative they can let go of like living up to perfectionistic self-expectations. I did read Jim’s article on Story Nature in case Nature could help me determine the best Outcome for my message, but the article felt really abstract to me that late at night.
I could see giving up on negative stuff as either giving up on a negative Goal, which is good, or a Solution to get to a positive Goal, also good.
I also try to think of the initial inequity to extrapolate the goal’s phrasing from that, but have trouble since I ended up with an MC with issues of Worry like I have, so how I see the initial inequity is very focused on MC feeling imbalanced by it rather than both characters (a third important character comes into the picture a bit later). MC’s been living as a hermit no one knows about for a long time, then IC stumbles on his home. MC observes the stranger using “futuristic” gadgets and wonders what’s out there, starts to pine for unfulfilled dreams, wondering what could’ve been if he hadn’t taken this path and tried to solve his anxiety by hiding from the world. MC is tempted to reach out, but afraid that change might make things worse, so he tries to scare IC away and it backfires, leading to them meeting. I don’t think this unbalances IC, but IC sees an opportunity to get fame or whatever, which doesn’t sound like an inequity like MC has. So, I don’t know if I picked the wrong event to be initial inequity or if I need to modify it or what.
From my subjective POV, I see accomplishing my dreams as key to fulfilment and feeling better about myself instead of worrying about failure and unfulfillment, which is why I think of external stuff for the Goal like if my MC dreams of having lots of friends or being able to do a useful job, then he wants those things. I mean, the point of those external things is feeling good about oneself, but I don’t know if that’s Being either.
Hmm. It sounds like the OS might be Physics (performing arts), especially if the MC has a hole in his heart (Start character in Mind).
I really think you’re at the point now where you could start writing or outlining in detail, and come back to the storyform analysis later. You have a good grasp of the throughlines even if you don’t know the Domains & Concerns perfectly, it sounds like you have the positions properly in respect to each other (your example sounded perfect for a Situation IC influencing a Mind MC).
I could see your OS and RS domains vacillating easily between each other in your ideas if you mostly only have the two characters to go off. You might need more details (specific stuff that you write or outline) before you can see it at that level, and/or lock your ideas into place.
I don’t know if any of this is what you are looking for, but the kids watched Wreck-it Ralph again this morning. I felt like there was Being all through it.
“Zangief, you are [Being/Playing the Role of} Bad Guy, but this does not mean you are bad guy.”
“I’m bad, and that’s good. I will never be good, and that’s not bad. There’s no one I’d rather be than me.”
Ralph wants to be a hero, to be invited to the party, because he wants to belong, to be included in the group.
Vanellope doesn’t know how to drive but nevertheless wants to be a racer because it’s in her blood.
Everyone celebrates the good guys for being who they are, but looks down on the bad guys for who they are.
Everyone is concerned with playing their role in the video games, not interfering with the first-person shooter as they get them to the top of the building to get the medal, or making sure they show up and do what they need to do so their game doesn’t get unplugged for being out-of-order.
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I have a lot of material, but always struggled with OS. I have a few more characters, but I don’t know how much to change about my ideas to fit the storyform or perhaps tweak the storyform to fit that. If I knew whether it should end in Failure or Success-- if it affects what I’m trying to say, I could encode better.
Has Wreck It Ralph been analyzed?
I’ve seen it mentioned once or twice, but have not seen an official analysis. If anyone else started a thread for it, I’d love to take part in it.
Way I see it, if you’re writing about how accomplishing dreams is key to fulfillment and feeling better, I would think a Success/Good would show this. A Failure/Good would say that accomplishing your dreams is NOT required for fulfillment and feeling better. A Failure/Bad would show that failing to accomplish dreams will not lead to fulfillment and feeling better.
I’d say both. Yes, the storyform has a message baked into it. You can get part of the message by looking at Outcome and Judgment. You can get another part of the message by looking at thematic conflict. You get the whole message by looking at the entire storyform. But yes, the message also depends on how you encode it. Imagine an otherwise random storyform that ends in Success/Good and allows for the Goal to be to sacrifice fifty-two virgins a year to the volcano. Then imagine the same storyform, Success/Good, but now the goal is to stop the practice of sacrificing fifty-two virgins a year to the volcano. Same structural message, but different storytelling message.
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I think what tripped me up was Story Nature. I don’t know whether I oughta say that MC is the cause of the problem (Actual Dilemma) or if it’s something out of his hands (Apparent Dilemma). Whatever the case, Change was Good.
I can’t figure out how Being is supposed to solve regret or bad self-esteem unless it’s going from thinking “I’m not good enough” to “Everyone has their different strengths and I don’t have to envy others because we all have something to contribute, a role to play.”
That wording can be very misleading. Represents might be better than is the cause of. Anyway, Nature isn’t that useful when you’re writing. It’s better to think of Outcome and Resolve separately, I think.
If you don’t know the Outcome yet that’s okay. I actually think it’s cool to write the story for a while not knowing the Outcome because as the author you get a bit of that audience excitement and tension not knowing how it’s going to turn out. I think that sense of freedom can be good for your muse, an open field to play in.
I still have bookmarks to both my Success/Good and Failure/Good story-forms on the story I’m working on. I’m pretty sure it’s Success/Good now but even over 100K words into the first draft I still wonder about the Failure/Good sometimes. (Outcome actually doesn’t affect that much – just RS problem quad, and some signposts and PSR.)
I think what you should do is write down the Story Goal only in English words – what are they actually striving for? Write it the best you can without any Dramatica terms. (Knowing that Goal is still super useful without a storyform.) And then write the story, and feel free to tweak it as you go.
Another thing that might help is to think of the Goal in terms of resolution. It’s something which, once you show they’ve achieved it or that they’re never going to get it, it’s clear that the Overall Story is now resolved. (You can apply that resolution based thinking without worrying Concern Type.)
Being explores Issues of Knowledge, Thought, Ability, and Desire. I’m not sure where regret or self-esteem should go, but I think your last statement–“Everyone has their strengths…a role to play”–could fit into Ability and Desire.
I also really like this advice. This is how you write what you want rather than forcing it into Dramatica. Assuming a Goal of Being, the goal could be “to be” or “not to be” or “keep something from being” or “just be good enough” or pretty much anything. And it could refer to your protagonist, the antagonist, a group of people, an activity, a thought or decision, an object, pretty much anything. Sometimes it’s really hard to see what a goal of Being (or any other term) should be when you’re focused on the term itself. If you look at your story and not at the structure and say, “this is what I want to write” rather than “I need to write to ‘Being’”, the relationship between the Dramatica term and what it’s referring to has a way of presenting itself in a way it wouldn’t have otherwise.
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I’d say the Goal is fulfilment, but that’s too vague to use to work out exactly what they are doing in the story (I had a lot of problems with not encoding this in concrete terms, just talking too abstract like that). From my POV, I look outwards and feel like career success-- being able to be what I am and get “rewarded” by it (earn a living, renown, opportunity for further creative development) would give me confidence and courage so I imagine that kind of thing and envy being OS stuff. MC represents the instinct to escape/prevent suffering: give in to fear to potentially avoid something worse or a bigger fear of failure, or act despite fears to avoid regret.
MC wants to belong and has certain standards he thinks he needs to fulfil to be “good enough” which involve an ordinary life. IC wants an extraordinary life of fame and fortune. Maybe he’s a bit insecure, but buries it deep down and is the energetic “we can do this!” protagonist type. I suppose Antagonist would be interested in Doing things the same way as usual.
How about this?
Story Goal: Earning a living in a fulfilling way (i.e. it suits who and what they are, their desires and talents)
Or possibly even (always better to get more concrete if you can) Story Goal: Earning a living in the performing arts
That Goal could probably fit six or seven different Types, but that doesn’t matter for now. If the story demonstrably showed that they were earning their living in a fulfilling way, does that feel like the overall story would be resolved (Success)?
I don’t know. Maybe it’s just one movie. Or maybe it’s part of the goal of fulfilment. Originally, I figured that everyone would fall short of their ideals (IC doesn’t get the fame and fortune he wanted. MC can’t get a perfectly normal life), but either way, they’re ok because they found a place/sense of belonging and companionship. Or they just stopped comparing themselves unfavorably to others? I don’t know what to throw away and what to keep to go with the MC’s throughline of Worry vs. Confidence, which is why I need Dramatica for decision-making.
If the Goal is that my MC ex-hermit and IC drifter find or make a place in the world for themselves-- a sense of belonging, maybe to something bigger, (regardless of whether they seek it in work, approval, or whatever), then that’s a Success. Or maybe more simply, they want to feel “good enough.”
That sounds cool. Why don’t you pencil that in (making a place in the world for themselves) as the Goal and start writing.
You could even pencil in the partial storyform that your last sentence indicates – OS Issue Ability, MC Issue Worry – and go from there. (Since wanting to be “good enough” is a pretty strong indicator of Accurate as part of the problem quad.) Just realize that it could change as you write and your ideas solidify.
Don’t feel that by penciling in a storyform or goal description that you’re locking yourself into anything. If it’s not quite right your muse will still take you in the direction it wants, but you need to start with something, start moving in order to see what’s around the bend.