How exactly do sequences fit in the plot?

[VIlle]

I’m really struggling with the logic behind Dramatica’s signpost-journey conception of plot: specifically when it comes to the sequences.

If every act is explored in terms of four sequences, then, obviously, four sequences go inside each act. But the journeys seem to take the bulk of the plot, the acts being just places to visit relatively quickly – the last act being the destination. So, this raises the obvious contradiction that the sequences don’t have anywhere to fit in unless the journeys are just short passages between acts. If the sequences happen mostly during journeys, the last four sequences of each throughline fall out of the story completely, since no fourth journey exists – the only option there would be to quickly go through the last four in the destinations.

[decastell]

Not sure if this helps or not as I’m a novelist rather than a screenwriter, but I tend to look at them in the opposite way (partly because I write in four acts):

The signposts are the acts for me. When we’re dealing with the Situation throughline and we’re in The Past, then it means the conflicts that are arising in that act and throughline are arising out of The Past. What Dramatica calls the Journey is, for me, the thing that transitions the story from one act to another (with respect to a particular throughline.) So for me, “The Past To How Things Are Changing” can be a scene or chapter or sequence where that big change takes place.

Not sure if I’m right on the theory side, so perhaps more experienced Dramatica people can clarify further.

[MWollaeger]

You are both right. Each story has all seven moments – the signposts and the journeys. Different writers and stories are biased towards one set or the other.