Is this structure right for this message?

writing
#29

I’m not a novelist. But as a Screenwriter, I would approach the problem like this:

Your Character has Anxiety…so, they are a Be-er. The kind of Be-er depends on what you want the Anxiety to do to the MC.

If the change character starts out a Be-er, they must become a do-er to show the character arc to the audience even though their personal problems will be solved by the throughline solution element in an internal domain.

So, the guy that is afraid of heights in Pretty Woman climbs a ladder to show he puts the relationship first now.

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#30

Interesting. When you put it like that, it does sound like Change, Stop, Story Goal: Subconscious (so OS in Mind), OS/MC Problem: Avoid, Requirements: Preconscious. This gives Prerequisites of Progress and Preconditions of Doing, and a Consequence of Future, all which seem to fit. (I think this arrangement would make the Outcome Success, based on your ideas for the ending, too.)

This would be structurally similar to Barefoot In the Park and the Great Gatsby at the Domain & Concern level, but more similar to Collateral, The Graduate, or The Lion King at the Element level.

#31

One thing that’s neat about that storyform is it seems to get a lot of the implied points for your IC right, even though it was based on your overall message.

IC Issue of Self Interest vs. Morality fits the wants to help vs. selfish vs. selfless stuff pretty well. The apparent “too many motivations” might match the Focus of Reconsider, actually.

The way the IC impacts the MC around his passions and fears does fit an IC Problem of Feeling. It also seems to work for his character – “impulsive” might be he’s always doing what feels right, judging what to do based on emotion.

Maybe you’ve already been looking at that storyform?

#32

My original instincts were Innermost Desires, Future, Becoming, Obtaining, but I wasn’t sure if that was because it’s a popular quad so maybe I’ve been saturated by stories like that (I don’t like seeing that quad put down just because it’s common. The notion that Common = Inferior/Lazy/Boring is toxic and might prevent writers from choosing accurately.), or my judgement is clouded by subjective experience, or maybe I was confusing story points as the topic of fears instead of descriptors of the type of conflict, or if a knot of personal issues were muddling what I wanted to say and pulling me on tangents-- ex. straying from “the way to reduce emotional suffering is…” into topics I see as related and feel emotionally drawn to like a lesson about changing one’s perspective to see the good in one’s failures, or learning to value people’s differences (society needs both janitors and rocket scientists to thrive) as an antidote to measuring oneself unfavorably against others.

I also flip flopped on whether it should be a Failure/Good story since if they fear failure, but facing fears of failure means failing, then shouldn’t they Fail something? But if the Goal is something like “peace of mind,” then it’s a Success. Sometimes I confuse story structure with story points. All this is why I think a formula would be helpful.

I’m not sure Becoming works with MC, unless “trying to avoid changing his fearful nature prevents him from trying the new things that he wants to” is a legit encoding of that. I had MC set at Impulsive Responses since it straight up contains Worry, which keeps him from doing what he should to live how he wants, then considered switching that to OS if I want to make a point about how you have to slog through uncomfortable emotions and resist the instinct to flee pain to reach goals, but I can also see Innermost Desires since the conflict is between Desire for a goal/happiness vs Desire to avoid failure/pain.

Any ideas for a formula?

#33

Not a formula, but the best thing you can do is to create a single-sentence summary of each throughline. This single sentence will of course leave a lot of details out, but it should be accurate in the sense that everything about the throughline kind of fits inside it.

This will help you differentiate between the MC and OS throughlines. Your MC needs to be dealing with something different than everyone else, something personal to him.

I had actually kind of wanted to put your OS in Becoming, but your message seemed to fit a lot better with OS in Subconscious – and that might explain why you’ve had trouble, since an OS in Mind is kind of a different, somewhat rare beast. Still, throughline sentences will help clarify.

#34

I don’t think I can do that. OS of “Characters learn to let go of fears” or “Avoiding emotional pain/fears (or trying to protect oneself too much?) leaves characters feeling worse/more stifled than if they’d just faced them or acted in spite of them” seems incomplete and vague.

I think the OS characters are in denial that they are doing what they’re doing out of insecurity.

One resists getting help for his senile loved one for fear of being forgotten if she sees other people, thus losing a last immediate family member, but keeping her isolated makes her hate him and act destructively, and he grows to resent her too since he’d rather go back to acting (although type-casting is a problem due to disability, frightening appearance, and popularity playing a horror character in some cheesy movies. Maybe IC wants to revive his career and ride his coattails and win him over by writing him a rom-com script since no one else would.) She’s got delusions that she still owns a ranch and he’s out to sabotage her, then MC shows up, is mistaken for a relative, and she gives her affection to him, inciting jealousy and an awkward Situation since MC is the only one who can calm her. The first character insists that he’s just keeping her safe, but his motive is fear of losing his last connection to his family and setting into the despair that he he’ll eventually lose everyone he loves. The correct response would be to realize this and get her the help she needs. Maybe she’ll forget him, but it’ll be far less stress on the both of them than fighting and resenting each other. The first character can find peace if he learns to appreciate her the way she is Presently, like MC does since they just met, instead of lamenting loss of who she was. That’s just one strand in what I assume is an ensemble goal.

IC denies that he cares what his parents think of him, since they rejected him for dropping out of college, even though he’d love to get fame to make them come crawling back to apologize for being wrong) or whatever. He acts confident or cocky, but he’s still bitter about it. His attempts to use MC as a springboard for attention backfire when people only pay attention to MC’s extraordinariness. Affection turns to envy. That might be RS, or maybe MC’s reliance on IC (Situation) is RS stuff.

MC wants to help others, build a new life in the present as a responsible, productive member of society (to feel worthy of love and happiness), and try new exciting things like fly in an “aeroplane”, but he’s held back by fears of failure based on past experience (Proven), Worry about potential disaster (“What if we crash?” “What if I choke during our song and it makes everyone laugh at us and I let IC down? I’d better hide rather than take that chance.”), and just that awful visceral experience of anxiety. MC seeks external methods of anxiety management (avoidance, trying to win over someone to, in a way, possess as a shortcut to gain the courage and better life he doesn’t believe he can earn on his own as he is-- something he lets go of at the end. IC is helping him with this goal, but I don’t think it’s THE Story Goal-- everyone has a stake I guess, or is affected by the efforts, but they’ve got their own issues, which is why I flip-flop between wondering if it’s an ensemble goal or if I should narrow focus to everyone’s concerned about MC finding a place in life or stuff he does interfering with their plans or whatever) when he should be facing his fears.

The dog-like monster, representing MC’s unruly mind and resistance to change and joins the story after MC attempts a physical shortcut to fix his brain, fails obedience training, takes MC’s savior complex (not “I’m Jesus” but “I see danger everywhere and must try my best to help or else I’m terrible!”) to the extreme and starts sucking up people and animals to protect them from life’s pain, which is unpleasant for them. MC will have small successes and failures as a tug of war between Worry and building Confidence thanks to IC’s pushing, but after taking a risk of some kind leads to a large failure, echoing the traumatic one from his past that drove him to drop out of society, he wants to give up and join the monster so he’ll never have to worry about failure and responsibility again. IC will somehow inspire him to not give up and make the now-kaiju-sized monster release everyone by communicating with it or taking control over it, and that involves facing fears somehow. Maybe he learned something from failure that allows him to succeed this time.

I guess that all points to an overall theme about how trying to insulate oneself/others from life’s inevitable suffering (or risks?) just leads to more, which is hard to put a Story Goal to.

A giant pile of OS like that, which likely needs trimming, is why I need a formula like what you came up with for defining all three parts of a conflict. Knowing what I want to say and how will help me both generate ideas when stuck as well as trim the fat and keep on track.

I could say that “MC needs to realize that OCD/anxiety is a cycle that can only be broken through exposure” then he could use this realization to see how everyone is perpetuating their on misery in OS, but that seems like it could be an alternate illustration for the OS thing.

#35

Too … much … info … :smile:

Seriously though, I think the ability to summarize your narrative is actually the same ability that will allow you to determine the storyform, and shape the structure.

Don’t worry, the summaries are supposed to seem incomplete and vague! You just do the best you can.

“Learning to let go of fears” actually sounds pretty good. (Ignore that the word learning is also a Dramatica term for now; it might point to that Concern or it might not.)

So if you subtract anything to do with letting go of fears from the MC, and just list (even point form) everything that’s left that makes him special and is related personal issues he has, you might get somewhere.

So far I noticed the “external attempt to fix his brain”, being responsible for the dog-like monster, and something about being a vampire-like creature living off a tree. These all seem to be things the MC is dealing with that no one else is.

#36

That stuff might affect other characters, like trying to deal with the monster. I could argue that anything MC deals with might apply to anyone else at a certain level. I mean, none of the others were hermits but that’s, what, a Situation and other characters maybe have issues with stuff in The Past. Regret over “wasted” time is MC stuff too.

I was told that encoding must be specific and concrete, or do you mean something else by summary?

Is a proper conflict something like “MC always wanted to fly on an airplane but isn’t on an airplane, therefore conflict is Situation because he’s not on an airplane and desires it, and that his fears caused him to make a scene at the airport and miss a flight doesn’t matter”? IIRC, don’t you have to state why something is a problem for it to be a real conflict though? Like Character + Desire + Obstacle to Desire = demonstrable unpleasant effect on Character = Conflict?

I suppose that would look like: MC spent a century alone in the forest and wishes he hadn’t, but can’t change The Past. This causes him to use sleep as escapism and miss out on even more experiences. Doing that, just about everything I chose sounded like Situation or Mind, and I can’t have MC in Situation and OS in Mind in the same form.

Wouldn’t it make more sense if MC Concern was the Story Goal instead of OS Concern since MC is the reader’s position in the story-- the perspective being reconsidered? MC is considering whether to give up on life or try to build one back up.

#37

Wouldn’t it make more sense if MC Concern was the Story Goal instead of OS Concern since MC is the reader’s position in the story-- the perspective being reconsidered? MC is considering whether to give up on life or try to build one back up.

Remember, all four throughlines can have a goal of their own, and it is up to the author which goal he chooses to emphasize. But it’s also worth noting that if your MC is also the protagonist, then the OS Goals and MC goals might be overlapped:

#38

Me: Munches popcorn

#39

Right, I mean something else – these summaries aren’t encodings. They’re identifying what each throughline is. Look at the beginning of any DUG video analysis, identifying throughlines is the first thing they do. You need to do it with your story, too, in order to analyse it.

Right, but that’s why I was careful to say “being responsible for the monster”. Others might be affected by it but no one else feels responsible for it (at least as I understood your description).

#40

If my characters want to avoid regret and I want to make a statement on how not letting fears hold you back leads to less regret, does that mean Regret is the Consequence or does that make Avoiding Regret the Goal?

I’m guessing Innermost Desires as Consequence, which makes Future the Goal, but I’m not sure if “You can have a better Future and avoid regret if you face your fears” is exactly what I want to say when the characters seem like they’re trying to obtain, but close enough? ~shrug~

#41

My first thoughts are:

  1. I think you’re describing a MC throughline of subconscious with problem of avoid. The description reminded me of George McFly in Back to the Future. If MC is change, then OS problem is also avoid.
  2. The OS concern could be either obtaining or becoming. I have a hunch “becoming” will grab you more. Perhaps the protagonist is trying to become something but faces outside opposition. This can connect with the MC throughline at the climax but the 2 throughlines are still separate since the MC was dealing with this avoid fixed attitude even before the inciting incident.
  3. If you want, you can focus less on the OS TL & more on the MC TL (e.g. Hamlet).
#42

Yes, MC is Change. IC is protagonist, I guess, unless I’m confusing roles. IC initiates things.

I suppose OS would be Obtaining since their aspirations are externally focused-- gaining or keeping love/approval (although I think all motivation boils down to wanting to be happy) and I see them as unwittingly suffering due to selfish ways of going about those things. However, that sets Growth as Start, so I can’t use it unless I’m saying that MC Stops Avoiding. That leaves me with a choice of:

If you Start Pursuing your desires, then you can Obtain a better life.

If you Stop avoiding your fears, you can Become a better person. (This sounds more like my message, but I’m not sure this works since my IC Protagonist wants to help MC Become a better person for various reasons like a means to an end for fame 'n such, so how can Become be the Goal?)

#43

Here are few more variations for you to play with:
Stop avoiding your fears and you can transform your life.
Stop avoiding your fears and you can change how you see the world.

I don’t understand, why wouldn’t this work for Becoming?

#44

Because his goal isn’t Becoming? It’s a means to an end. However, I remember another recent thread where I talked about something similar-- oh, it was that I misunderstood that the elements or maybe storypoints aren’t the absolute root of a problem, as in so-and-so is a jerk because they’re mad at their parents etc.

#45

A few thoughts here. First, the characters aren’t necessarily conscious of the Story Goal. They might think they’re after something else (Coco is a good example).

Second, because you’re story’s not written yet you have to be willing to give and take (especially if you’re storyforming from the message first). So if you have some story ideas that sound like they could be Becoming if you shift your viewpoint a bit, don’t dismiss that possibility.

Finally, couldn’t the Protagonist part of the IC player maybe be focused more on “helping this guy become a better person” while the “fame” focus is coming from the Influence Character part of the same player?

#46

I figured that the fame thing would come from IC throughline, but without that drive in OS, I’m not sure what IC’s stake is in OS. I hate the OS-- no matter what I go with, it seems shallow or boring or overly complicated or like a smaller part of something else. I have a bad feeling about any OS for this thing.

I’ve tried picking a Goal from the message I want to say.
I’ve also tried picking a Goal from the point where the status quo in the story is upended (MC sees IC and experiences conflicting desires to stay or go),
but I just can’t pick a Goal because you can come up with justifications for multiple things (if it’s about Innermost Desires, is the Goal about getting rid of fears, gaining peace of mind, or is the fear/regret the Consequence they want to avoid? Or is the Goal like Obtaining a better life to prevent future regret?).

I can’t find the thread discussing the “source” of inequity, although I remember finding the term “source” misleading. Would the source of conflict (not what motivates it), be conflicting Desires (fear vs yearning)? Or is it MC is in a Situation of having “wasted” his life, which causes regret?

I started another thread asking if there’s some way to just make an equation to figure out if your storyform’s structure from message. That’s what I want to know-- how to turn something like “The only way to escape fear is to face it” or “Letting fear hold you back leads to more regret than trying and failing” (should that be Success or Failure?) into a storyform.

#47

I struggle with the same thing for the OS concern & OS problem. One thing that helps me is to ask: what is nearly everyone concerned with (not just the protagonist & antagonist)? In order to drive this home to the viewer, add at least one or 2 objective characters who have concerns in the same concept as the OS concern and/or OS problem apart from the protagonist’s caper. And put some focus on these concerns so that the viewer understands that “they” are all concerned with that sort of thing.

For example:
When Harry Met Sally (OS concern of subconscious)
Most everyone in the Objective Story is concerned with finding the kind of love that will last for the rest of their lives. Serving as a Greek chorus, the documentary couples relay their love stories, while the Objective Characters search for Mr. or Ms. Right. (these characters aren’t strictly “team protagonist” or “team antagonist” but they have a parallel concern in subconscious)

All About Eve (OS concern of becoming)
Margo fears becoming old and ending up alone with only her press clippings to look back on; Bill wants to become Margo’s husband; Lloyd wants to become a more successful playwright by having young actresses play his stage heroines; Karen fears becoming an ex-friend of Margo’s, and thinks she might also become the ex-Mrs. Lloyd Richards when Lloyd pays too much attention to Eve; Max Fabian wants to become the richest Broadway producer ever; Miss Caswell wants to become an actress and uses her looks to get an audition; Eve wants to become a successful actress by simply sliding into Margo’s life on stage and off; Addison wants to become Eve’s lover and mentor for life; Phoebe wants to become the next Eve Harrington.

Ditto for the OS problem. See narrativefirst’s analysis of Lady Bird: https://narrativefirst.com/podcasts/59
Many characters (dad, boyfriend, etc) have a common problem of rejection or rejecting–and not solely in the context of the protagonist’s caper.

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#48

I just want to say how much I’m enjoying this thread @SharkCat even though I feel your frustration!

Have you tried just creating a few possible storyforms and encoding them to see which feels right? Dramatica for Screenwriters suggests this method in the “Dramatica in 30 Seconds” chapter. The advantage to this approach is that it uses a limited number of storypoints so you can try different things on for size. That chapter also has several great examples where he does this with very high-level summaries. Being forced to limit the summary to just a few paragraphs could be helpful.

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