Mastering Narrative Systemically - Mastermind Group?

Hi gang.

I’m still chipping away at dramatica and not too long ago was getting extremely frustrated by my seemingly lack of progress or insight.

So I’ve recently tried to look at how I’m approaching learning and mastering dramatica.

Before I’d watch a story that had been covered by either Jim at Narrativefirst or on the official dramatica website and then try to make sense of the storyform.

The problem I believe was that I was picking films seemingly at random.

I used to watch a movie where the OS would maybe be in Mind - Memories and then willy-nilly watch another film where the storyform OS was in Activites - Obtaining which really didn’t help me with pattern recognition and see how certain storyforms felt.

Two things I noticed and I’ll credit Jim for bringing this to my attention.

He mentioned watching several films in the same area which I’ve found so far to be tremendously helpful.

What I do now is almost like doing the playground exercises but instead of working on a story and using gists to get away from dramatica terms, I’m watching films with as close to the same story points. I.E The majority of the differences in the film would be based on storytelling and thus I’m able to more easily separate the two.

So for example I watched ‘The Sixth Sense’ and ‘The Others’

The majority of the storyform was practically the same and I can see a lot of the same underlying dynamics pop far more easily.

The thing I’d like to add to the mix is see if anyone wanted to watch the same films and form up some sort of discussion group afterwards.

Maybe watch two movies with as close to the same storyform. Discuss each individually and then compare and contrast each other based on the underlying dynamics.

Either over chat or skype. Whatever works.

Discussion could also nail any questions anyone has about a dramatica storypoint (many of the analysis on the site don’t have elaboration so right now you’re stuck on your own if you’re having trouble understanding why a story point was selected) and examples of how it was applied to that film.

Discuss things like where a film was weak. (barely existent RS throughline) ect…

I think through discussion it would force me and anyone involved to think more deeply about the films they are studying and help make the film more memorable.

Why do I think its important to remember these films?

Which brings me to another point I see Jim bring up again and again which I like and think would be extremely valuable for me and anyone else trying to fully understand dramatica. Having solid concrete examples for any and every story point.

Like instead of just abstracting thinking - Character Judgement Bad and knowing what that means conceptually but to be able to attach that point to as many concrete examples as possible like Clarice starling in ‘The Silence of the Lambs’ at the end of the film ‘Are the Lambs still screaming?’

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Hi NarativeBeast,
I just joined dramatica. Were you ever successful in getting a discussion group together to watch two films at a time?
I’ve just joined and learning dramatica for the first time.
Cheers
Shash