How to nail down a storyform quickly

writing
#1

Okay, so after a great conversation with @jhull, I’m now convinced that my working storyform was (possibly) off. I think I’m on a better track now, but my question is, do any of you have a relatively quick way to test different storyforms for a given idea?

As entertaining as encoding each point for the different possible storyform and then comparing might be, I’m afraid it will take forever, even if the storyform choices are somewhat close together.

To put a finer point on it, is there a way to target the encoding of a particular point to get at the “right” answer faster? For example: does it make more sense to try out a few different encodings of the MC at the Issue level, and then work forward from there, or does it work better to test-encode a few OS story problem examples … obviously this will vary by story and writer, but I would be curious if others have a specific order and process to this.

#2

My first attempt to create a storyform involved me developing different ideas for the MC, IC, and OS more or less at the same time. I used Dramatica to play with different ideas, but I ended up going round in circles, and getting very confused, and frustrated about what my story was about. The truth was I probably didn’t have a story at that point, and working with dramatica didn’t help me to find one.

My second attempt focussed on developing an OS plot in longhand, before going anywhere near dramatica.

I wanted a plot with a beginning, a middle and an end, that told a story that I felt was exciting.

I decided that until I could create this, as a synopsis of the OS, then I didn’t have a story. So I worked on this synopsis with no character development at all. I found a lot of the ideas I had had previously just slotted together to tell a story. Not having to think about the MC or IC seemed to free my imagination up. I wrote lots of iterations of this plot until I was happy with it.

I limited myself to using objective characters (some friends did this, they met some bad guys who obstructed them, they got help from someone else etc). I also clarified the driver events, the outcome, and the judgement (even though I didn’t know who the MC was going to be).

Once I had this ‘spine’ for the story, it was pretty clear what the domain and concern of the OS was going to be, and there was just two options for the issue (in a dynamic pair). The solution from my closing event was also obvious, although I didn’t see it at first.

I then decided that I wanted the story to have ‘overwhelming conflict’, rather than ‘surmountable conflict’, which told me the domain of the MC… and I already knew that I wanted a change MC.

This gave me a storyform where I had provided the OS stuff, plus the character and plot dynamics, and dramatica had given me the rest.

Then I just trusted dramatica, and I put my effort into encoding the rest of the storyform. I knew I had a storyform that would give me an MC that was going to be at odds with the story world I had created in the OS, as well as an IC that would challenge him. I just had to develop those encodings, trusting dramatica, and the OS plot I already had.

And it seemed to work for me…

I’m by no means finished in writing the story, but I don’t ever question the storyform. I just try to improve the quality of the encodings I have, as I gain new insights into the storyform.

So for me, clarifying the OS first, and then the plot and character dynamics seemed to do the trick.

I think it may be because I find the OS part hardest. The character work is easy once I have that framework. If I do it the other way round I just get confused. Dramatica provides too many distracting options :slight_smile:

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#3

Thanks @Dral52. That’s interesting – I think it would have worked better for me start offline too–definitely I’ll do that for the next one.

Oh, that’s an interesting way to go about it. I wouldn’t have thought of approaching it that way.

In my case at this point I have a protagonist, a main character, an influence character (I think). Outcomes, etc.

My initial problem was figuring out if the OS was Activities or Situation (which seems like a common issue). Now though I’ve got at least three fairly close choices for the MC/OS throughline – differences start at the Issue level and below.

So I’m trying to figure out if it makes more sense to just choose one and go as far as possible, maybe tweaking it later, or if I should try some encoding/synopses to compare.

#4

Hi @Lakis,
Just going with my own experience / process here (yours may be different).

What I would do is take what you know about your story, or are pretty darn sure of (e.g. OS Activities, Jack is MC, Jill is IC, Outcome Success, Resolve Change, etc.). Go ahead and write encodings for those things, or just keep them in mind.

Then develop your story further using normal story outlining techniques – synopsis, scene cards, whatever works for you*. Put Dramatica away for a while. If you can’t resist going back to Dramatica because something pops out of your outline, screaming at you like “wow in lots of scenes everyone seems driven by their consciences and it’s causing trouble but they don’t see it”, then open it up again. Throw in that OS Problem of Conscience and see how that works.

* Jim’s Logline to Treatment course works well here too as it’s at a high level, accessible to your “muse”.

Eventually you’ll get down to a single storyform this way. If you don’t outline in detail, you may need to start writing the first draft, but that’s okay (and recommended by some, e.g. Melanie). One thing to be careful with though, I’m finding that writing a first draft of a novel I get inside my characters’ heads so much that I keep thinking the Symptom is the Problem! Until I pull back a bit and take a more authorial objective view. So watch out for that.

Also, your storyform is always in “pencil” – your actual story always has authority over it. (But when you start finding that awesome examples of story points keep popping up all over the place and you didn’t intentionally put them in – that’s when you can start to be really sure of the storyform.)

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#5

Thanks @mlucas. So you start outlining before you have everything nailed down in the storyform … that makes sense. What about the signposts though? Do you not use those when outlining/drafting?

Actually it occurs to me that if you encode the points you’re sure of, that might lead you naturally to the right choices for the other points. And … if you figure out that signposts it could narrow down the rest of the storyform…

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#6

Since the Signposts (and PSR) tend to change so much when other story points change, I tend not to trust them until I’m REALLY sure about the storyform. Even with my current project, I’m about 40K words into the first draft and every once in a while I wonder if the Judgment will end up Bad instead of Good. (I can’t “see” that yet, and mostly picked Good because the Unique Abilities and Critical Flaws seemed to fit better.)

When I worked with Jim on a detailed outline (for a different story), I was very confident in the storyform thanks to Jim’s help, but it was interesting that at first I focused only on the IC signposts, and the OS, MC and RS signposts seemed to fall naturally into place. Even a lot of the PSR Variations fell in naturally.

So yeah, I think you’re right when you say: [quote=“Lakis, post:5, topic:1214”]
if you encode the points you’re sure of, that might lead you naturally to the right choices for the other points.
[/quote]

#7

Really? I think I’m both impressed and terrified by that! Somehow I thought that getting the signposts right was the whole key to plotting the story ahead of time. What happens if you realize you’re off – suddenly the 2nd half of act two is now about the Future and not the Past… doesn’t that mess up the whole sequence of plot points you’ve written?

But your response is making me question my thinking. On your advice I started Jim’s logline course last week and I’m about halfway through … and I already have a stronger synopsis than I did from several months of work before, and that’s before trying to figure out either the throughlines or the signposts.

#8

Don’t you mean “Act 3”?

So many things are understood by the reader in the context of the entire story, that this switch from Past to Future might not be as traumatic as it seems it would be at first glance.

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#9

I don’t think it messes everything up. It just makes you look at them differently, and hopefully makes everything work together better! Armed with your more accurate storyform, you can emphasize different things, but still keep the same general plot.

Like say your OS Signpost 3 was encoded in your outline to be about analyzing historical records (The Past). But then you realize OS Signpost 3 is actually supposed to be The Future. “Oh crap,” you say, and then, “wait, the whole reason they’re analyzing those historical records is to predict the planet’s future!” So Dramatica told you that the future aspect of that is more important to the story than the past, and you should focus more on that.

I’m of the belief that if you’ve got everything else working in your storyform, you probably would’ve put something to do with The Future into Act 3, even without meaning to.

Also, read the end of this article:

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#10

This is very helpful (and encouraging)! I think I may be having a “test/trust” problem with myself.

Sorry I should have used a less confusing example - I meant Signpost 3 (which I think of as = Act IIb).

#11

Okay, that’s really helpful. I had actually read that article at some point but I guess not taken it to heart.

#12

I think it’s deeper than that. In one of my early ventures, I wrote to a storyform, only to find that I had actually written a different storyform (with the MC and IC’s Domains flipped) – and when I figured this out and compared what I had written to the new storyform, it lined up so much better.

In general, the software makes us think about our story a lot. So even if we encode it incorrectly, we have worked through the story in our mind. So when we write, we put the story on the page, not what we have incorrectly encoded.

This makes it tough to use the incorrect storyform to enhance a story, but at the beginning, the process of thinking outranks plugging things into the software.

To build on your image: don’t mistake the finger for the moon.

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#13

Act IIb is something I use to badmouth crappy theory, because it seems to make theories self-contradictory and exposes that they do not know what an “act” is. And I don’t mean a dract, I mean an act. These theories define what an act turn is, and then deny the midpoint is an act turn. And then… oh, never mind. You have access to better things (Drivers and Four Acts) and you will get more mileage out of focusing on them.

At any rate, Signpost 3 ≠ Act 3 ≠ Act IIb.

The Act is the full exploration of a new perspective on an idea. A Signpost can be a single incident, though it can also be more holistic feel of the act itself (which I suppose is when Act 3 = Signpost3).

The difference is most easily seen in a story with journeys: most of the actual exploration is in a smooth transition from one signpost to another. Whereas in something like Ghostbusters, the third act signpost is [negative] Obtaining and sure enough all of the spirits escape. In that way, it is defining of Act 3, but it’s not really all of Act 3.

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#14

lol.

Yeah, the various theory books I read before I got into Dramatica used different terms which always sounded like the same thing to me – so Larry Brooks calls it 4-part structure, whereas a lot of others just divide Act II into two parts. I always just figured they were using old terminology out of convenience, but that the number really was 4.

Which seemed to fit with Dramatica, but I realize I might be making the mistake (again) of mapping my prior understanding onto Dramatica, which is way more confusing, sorry, complete (Signposts, Journeys, 4 different throughlines, Z-patterns, bumps and slides…).

That’s a really useful example. I confess I found the whole Signposts vs. Journeys thing really confusing in the theory book so I decided to just focus on Signposts. Maybe time to revisit that idea though.

#15

That awesome. So how do you know when to stop tinkering with the storyform and start writing? I don’t know if I’ve said this elsewhere, but I have a phobia of jumping in before I have the structure worked out – last two books I tried to write stalled out at 40K words (but this was before Dramatica).

#16

I would say if you’re asking the question, it’s time to start writing. You can always tinker more with the storyform later.

Now, it’s possible you may benefit from outlining more before starting the first draft, especially with the phobia you mentioned. But you don’t need to have the storyform perfect to do your outlining. Keep in mind that even without a storyform, just by knowing Dramatica basics – the four throughlines, the fact that there’s a Story Goal, an Outcome, a Judgment, etc. – you’re way ahead.

Why do you think you stalled out at 40K on the other two books? Was it because you just didn’t know where to take the stories?

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#17

I think there were couple of reasons.

In the first case, I was writing Book 2 of trilogy in which the “main” characters were two brothers who affected each other but had separate plot lines. In retrospect – to put it in Dramatica terms – I had two storforms (at least) that needed to be woven together plot-wise. It’s possible that there was actually one OS, but two separate main main characters with their own influence characters … it just got too complex. I do hope to get back to it at some point and I think I may have enough to use Dramatica to piece together the structure, so I’m hoping that will go better.

With the current project, I was doing a similar thing, this time aiming to write a trilogy. And definitely not knowing where to take the story … even though I had scene synopses written, it just got to a point where I was wandering around, writing way too much about random scenes.

I do feel much more solid on it now (book one) after the work from @jhull’s logline course. What’s weird is that I felt like I was drawing my initial synopsis from a storyform that was pretty set, but after talking with Jim, I realized it wasn’t right. But even working from a “wrong” storyform I feel like I’m way further along than when I started, which gets back to @MWollaeger’s point I think. [quote=“mlucas, post:16, topic:1214”]
I would say if you’re asking the question, it’s time to start writing. You can always tinker more with the storyform later.
[/quote]

I am beginning to think you are correct.

1 Like
#18

This discussion is amazing.

@Lakis I think we spoke about it already, but that back and forth is something you’re going to go through for the rest of your life as a writer—the only difference is now you have a concrete way (Dramatica) to objectify your work and quickly determine what is working and what isn’t.

But you’ll be doubting yourself the whole way—which is both frightening and exciting. Who wants to know exactly where they’re going to end up when the journey is so much fun?

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#19

As long as I get the end of the story before the end of my life @jhull. :grin:

You know I’ve actually been having a lot of fun doing the encoding (once I kind of figured out how to do it better). But I also know myself – I could play around with different storyforms, encoding and so forth for years just to avoid writing the first draft.

I am encouraged @MWollaeger and @mlucas and your advice – it might be time to start drafting (maybe after a few more tweaks…)