The difficult thing about a storyform is that it gives you a lot of data which, somehow, needs to all be kept in the conscious simultaneously in order to create a gestalt.
What methods have you found to be most helpful in this effort of managing such a highly multidimensional artifact?
I don’t think this follows. If it works right, the beauty of Dramatica is that once you have the story points set and properly encoded, you don’t have to keep everything in your head – you just have a functioning story.
That said, once you work a particular story long enough with Dramatica you do remember the story points, and once you understand certain relationships (e.g. the position of the quads), that just kind of sticks in your head.
You should also consider looking at @jhull’s articles on creating a Narrative Argument.
If I’ve learned anything, it’s that writing is a multi-phase process. So I don’t think you need to overload your mind at any stage in order to benefit from dramatica. In other words, I think about the process as containing many “passes.” First pass, pin down your essentials and must-haves. Then as you build the outline over time, continue doing passes that add elements to the throughlines. Then more passes for revisions, pacing, emphasis, etc. Ditto for many passes in the writing phase after the outline is done.
EDIT: See all the story embroidery sessions/podcasts for examples of this.
Dramatica should be able to keep it all in mind for you. I think it’s important to understand that your storyform is looking at one inequity at the heart of the story and that it’s looking at your story as a whole, but I don’t know how important it is that you keep all of that in mind. What I’ve found that works better for me personally is to look at each throughline as its own story completely separate from the rest of the throughlines. I try to look at the message of each throughline as a whole so I can keep that one throughline straight (ex: their marriage needs to achieve relighting the spark, the problem is the Obtaining, not the Doing), and ignore the other throughlines while working on that one. Then I weave them together to the best of my ability, then go back and try to smooth out the edges.
I think I agree with everyone’s response to this. The theory and program can help keep this connected for you. I’d argue that this information only need be kept in the back of the mind, and not consciously forward when writing or outlining. Personally, I’ve found it easiest to focus on a specific throughline or a specific quad as I work, as @Gregolas has said.
The same argument has been made for programming a new, larger system. Whenever a system is too large at work, we’ll break it down into smaller, more manageable chunks. After those chunks are built, we figure out how to put everything together.
Side Note: The question perceives trying to keep things in mind as a consequence. Anyone else notice that the overall response has been to focus on a specific moment while writing. (The Conscious <–> The Present ???)
Do you mean like visualising the model of your story? This is how I manage to keep the whole thing in focus.
This version is without the dynamics and the PSR. I’m not sure if this is what your asking about? I could find a more complete example in my docs and explain (also the pitfalls) if you like.
I am trying to visualise the content of the form in different ways. Here are some examples:
Based on a complete storyform I ask myself 5 major questions which I answer for every project. This gives me a big picture of my objective story:
Once I have the questions answered I look at my 4 throughlines and ask what are the 4 different stories I want to tell. Pictures for me are always good to make it easier to to understand what are my different stories.
In the past I used word or excel templates to detail the story points from the storyform. But doing this directly in Dramatica using the “Story Points” function is much more convenient as you see an explanation for each point.
When I am writing scenes - on my desktop I have a sheet of paper with two questions which I always try to keep in mind:
