Overall story goal can be one person's concern?

theory
#1

As just 2 examples, Spider Man Homecoming and Wonder Woman have a story goal of learning. It seems like only one person in each story is concerned with learning (even subtextually)–Peter & Diana, respectively. Based on listening to the audio of the users group podcast, I previously had a conception that the overall story goal was “what everyone in the overall story is concerned with.”

What is the best way to describe the concept of the OS goal so that it is compatible with both “just one objective character is concerned with it” and “everyone / many objective characters are concerned with it?” Or am I not seeing how Adrian Toomes & crew and Ares, Steve, Ludendorff, and Maru are connected somehow to a goal of learning? I tend to understand the OS the least as a general rule.

#2

I would really like to hear what others think, but the way I try to wrap my mind around it has to do with 1) context of the perspective and 2) the difference between the player as MC and as Protagonist.

So in Subtext the OS Throughline for Homecoming is “Uncovering Toomes’ Diabolical Plan”. Even if Peter is the only one actively Pursuing this goal (as Protagonist), it Concerns everyone–it has implications for all the characters, to one degree or another. At the very least you can see that Toomes as Antagonist is trying to Prevent this goal. Whereas Peter’s MC Concern of Present is more about him just making it through, day-to-day, dealing with all the present-day concerns of being a teenager-superhero.

I’d love to hear others’ takes though.

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#3

I hypothesize an only-one-of-them-lives-through it concept. I loved Wonder Woman comics growing up, but he was always a major part of it. I was disappointed to find they killed him off in the first film, so I never watched it. That upcoming death should play a big role in character concepts, imho.

#4

The idea is that everyone in the OS is somehow connected to or wrapped up with the Goal, not that they are all actually concerned with it.

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#5

This part is related to what Mike said.
The OS is a perspective of the Storymind. The OS goal is about the goal of the mind, then, rather than the characters themselves. So the goal of the mind might be for only one character to learn. That’s why you may see one character for it, one against, and a bunch of others connected to or wrapped up in it, like Mike said.

If they are an OS character, they don’t need to be actively involved in the pursuit of the goal. They just need to feel conflict that stems from that Concern. The conflict is is what wraps them up in it. Also consider that characters don’t have to seek learning. They can just learn without even meaning to. And that can be the goal.

This part is related to your question, but perhaps isn’t a direct answer.
@jhull has recently written an article explaining that the RS is not required to carry the MC or IC. The RS is it’s own separate thing. I believe the OS can also be described as its own separate thing. What I mean is, just as the RS requires neither the MC nor the IC players, neither does the OS require those players. It is an objective impersonal view of the problem separate from the MC, IC, or RS views and can even be referred to, as I’ve recently found, as the it perspective.

As a separate perspective, it doesn’t even have to cover the same type of storytelling as the other perspectives. This is covered elsewhere on this forum, but you could have four different throughlines that look like four completely different stories, but because they all fulfill their dramatic function within the Storymind they will still get the message of the story across. So what’s important isn’t that every player in the story be involved in the goal, but that every character that carries a dramatic function of the OS perspective be involved with the goal.

As an example, look at Saving Mr Banks. You might be able to argue that Ralph the limo driver is somehow concerned with getting P.L. Travers on board with Disney’s vision for a Mary Poppins movie and this falls under the OS, but I wouldn’t be surprised if his role is strictly within the RS, a growing friendship with P.L. Travers, meaning he wouldnt have to deal with Psychology (or whatever the OS turns out to be) at all.

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#6

This is totally true. Weird in practice, but totally doable,

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#7

So, we could have a flashback of a previous historical age and people, and that is why it works in films I’ve seen but can’t remember? Maybe, a metaphor using animals or plants could be inserted?

#8

It probably can get really weird if you really stretch it to the limits, but I don’t think it has to come out as weird as it seems if the storytelling ties it all together well.

I’m thinking of something like an MC who is very antisocial but finds herself having to deal with hordes of DangerRace enthusiasts for reasons. She is challenged by the high muckety-muck of producing tv spots for the race. Meanwhile, her sister and brother in law are falling in love again as they navigate the psychology of a rocky marriage. All of these characters pay attention to, but experience no conflict from the results of the DangerRace. There are eight characters, all different archetypes and fully encompassing the 64 elements with no hand offs that may or may not have some storytelling connection to the other four characters. These eight characters are all members of a team navigating the treacherous terrain and dangerous obstacles of the race. That might feel a little weird, but I think it would slip past most as being pretty standard.

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#9

This actually sounds like a pretty cool story.

I wonder how it would actually feel though. I suspect it would feel a bit like a collection of thematically tight, inter-related shorts.

I do have a question though about this idea that all the throughlines can be completely separate. Isn’t the whole point of the Crucial Element that it’s the place where the MC intersects with the OS throughline? And what about the MC Unique Ability – “the specific quality needed to meet the requirement” to resolve the OS?

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#10

Keep in mind the core assumption of Dramatica: A story is an analogy to a single human mind trying to solve a problem/inequity.

In light of that, separated tales with the same single core inequity among them would still represent the problem in each of their contexts. Thus, the Crucial Element would likely be represented in two players, and (I’m just spit-ballin’ at this point) probably make one player feel as though it is the same as another.

I need to get back to that experimental story and flesh it out…

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#11

Hmmm… they all have risking their individual lives in play. It is a dangerous situation, as a fact. It sounds like a college class, filled with individual stories, having to produce something, individually, then separating never to meet again, perhaps. But making commercials is never a solo gig or result … just saying. It sounds down right absorbing, btw.

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#12

Thank ya, sir, That one’s on the house…as i mostly pulled it from Dramatica gists.

The less you intertwine the storytelling, the more episodic i’m sure it would feel. But if you intertwine by, say, having the MC dealing with being antisocial by discussing it with her sister and then you follow the sister home where she has to deal with her husband, I think you can keep the flow that makes it feel like a single story rather than four completely separate tales. In the world of the story, these characters can all be connected, afterall. It’s just the perspectives of the storymind that we’re keeping separated in this example.

To show the difference-and to show how far you can stretch this idea-look at an idea where the story telling is also kept separated. Our MC is a military scientist who performs an experiment and gets stuck several million years in the past. Then we have a poor character that lives in the southen US in the mid eighties that we look at to see how he handles having the belief that the good ole days were better. Then we have a relationship with an astronaut in the distant future who feels closer to God the deeper into space he floats. And finally, an OS about a dysfunctional family of animated frogs. Hard to imagine this one would feel anything BUT episodic. And yet, the Storymind should still carry the context over from one perspective to the next and allow the audience to get the message.

I imagine there are lots of ways to handle this. You’d just carry one element over from one throughline to another, whether through multiple players, or similar story events. Like maybe when the scientist puts the crystal rods in order, Papa frog finally orders the tadpoles to stop splashing around or finds a nice , orderly pond or something. The audience might only pickup on a similarity between characters, but the Storymind should see the connection between perspectives.

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#13

Wow, another weird but cool story from the Gists – nice job!

Of course this is a thought experiment and the constraint is to keep all the lines separate. But the funny thing is that you could just connect them in storytelling. The MC military scientist clearly knows the guy who’s in space professionally, and the poor character who lives in the eighties is a relative of his whose journal he reads (while stuck several million years in the past). Part of that journal, BTW, is recounting an old animated television series about a family of dysfunctional frogs.

EDIT: Thinking about this more… I suspect what could happen (unless you were careful) is that each of these separate threads would start to coalesce around it’s own different storyform. For example, it’s pretty easy to imagine personal “situation-like” problems appearing for the astronaut, separate from his relationship with God.

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#14

I cannot believe the theory would make this work on its own. It would have to be a very talented author to pull this off. Believability and connectedness. The theory has to be woven into a meaningful unit. The meaning comes from the interplay of all the throughlines. The HOW it’s woven together. Picasso may be famous and expensive and talented in many ways, but not everyone wants to enjoy that on their wall.

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#15

That doesn’t mean that there isn’t meaning. It could just be too far muddled for some people.

I feel like this idea of separate throughlines provides a more holistic view of an argument, and it would very likely (almost certainly) confuse the heck out of Linear thinkers if there are no tricks used to connect them through storytelling. In fact, for a Linear thinker, it would likely come to one wondering what the point of the story was.

I’m actually writing a story this way as an experiment. There is no connection between any of the four throughlines, other than the Storyform connections. Even so, there’s this zen feel of connectedness and greater meaning within the whole that I’ve only experienced when trying to describe non-Western philosophies. (Now, I know that’s sounding all very “the Universe’s will” in the description, but there’s not really a better way to describe it, except through experience.) Thus, with this style of writing, where there are separate tales interwoven into a single Storyform to build a coherent argument, it seems to become more about the journey through the ebb and flow of the experiences than it is about arriving at any solutions.

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#16

One thing to mention – and you may have already thought of this @Hunter, but it gets a bit toward what @didomachiatto is saying about the need to connect things – I think there is actual meaning that comes from the connection between throughlines. In points like Unique Ability and Crucial Element, as @Lakis said above.

What I mean is that, the MC player is the one with all the personal issues (MC throughline) and the story of those personal issues ends up impacting the OS throughline through the MC player, i.e. by virtue of that player existing in both throughlines. The fact that it’s the same player has meaning.

If you have a story where the MC player has no role in the OS, I think you would have to find some other way to connect the MC and OS throughlines, maybe through symbolism that has something to do with Crucial Element and/or Unique Ability.

But I might be wrong – maybe the audience’s own storyminds would be open to finding these connections just because the right elements exist in both throughlines, and you wouldn’t have to do anything extra.

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#17

It’s possible. Unfortunately, this is all very much a theoretical discussion at the moment. There aren’t many, if any, stories that attempt it. And it’s probably because of similar reasons to what has been suggested. That’s why I’m interested in this, though. Weirdness is interesting.

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#18

I feel like an example might be the book (NOT the movie!) World War Z. It was a collection of separate stories, each with their own characters, all about the same global event/situation (zombie apocalypse). When I finished reading it, I felt like it was grasping for a kind of higher meaning, and that it almost accomplished it, but not quite.

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#19

The more I think about it, the more I think this is correct. My intuition says that the moment of “completeness” you feel in a story happens exactly at that point of intersection–when the “I” connects to the you, we and they.

But maybe this could happen in the briefest of moments! In other words, find a single point where they intersect.

I’ll be interested to see how your experiment goes though @Hunter.

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#20

If the structure is there, the meaning should be there. The storytelling delivers that meaning by acting as an analogy for the problem. It doesn’t matter which analogy you use or how many, the Storymind will follow along. Think of structure as a house and storytelling as the decorating. Decorate one room in contemporary, one in futuristic sci fi, one in medieval torture dungeon and you have a very strange house, but everyone can still see that it’s a house. Even when using similar storytelling, you’re still telling four separate throughlines-and therefore doing the same thing-it’s just harder to tell that that’s whats going on. I’m not saying you wouldn’t need to work a little harder to make sure it works, only that it should work.
The audience will likely find something like that to be a different experience, and it make take time to get used to, but they should be able to do it.