Overall Story Problem in a horror tale?

questions
#1

I just finished the Dramatica book and am aching to finally dive in, but the software is still making me feel like an imbecile. So any help would be appreciated.

In order to get aquainted with the program, I want to start with something simple.

Let’s say I want to write a story about a group of people who move into a Cabin In The Woods to tackle a writing project together. When they are there and the only road is buried under snow, one of them turns out to be a psycho.

Would the Overall Story Goal be „Writing a Screenplay“ or „Surviving“…? Obviously Survival takes center stage, but writing a screenplay is what all of them are there for.

#2

Have you watched any of the user’s group video podcasts? Great place to start.

Question: What element, if it were removed, would fix all the other problems?

#3

I’ll check out the discussion about Shawshank Redemption, thanks.

If the antagonist were removed, that would fix everything. But I have a feeling that’s not what you meant.

#4

Shawshank is a great movie and the discussion well worth watching, but don’t stop there. The more you watch, the more you learn.

“Antagonist,” in this case, doesn’t really mean anything. What story element needs to be removed in order for the drama to end? Is it the snowed in road? Is it the desire to write a screenplay?

#5

In addition to Jerome’s questions, I would recommend you check out the Story Goal series on narrative first: Link. It helped me a lot with encoding story goals.

#6

@bobRaskoph, thank you! That’s a great link. Another on the long list of must reads.

#7

The question to ask yourself is, “where is the conflict?”

I think, if you step back, you’ll see that “difficulty coming up with a third act turn” pales next to, “Someone is trying to kill us.”

But wait! You’re about to discover the need for specificity, “some is a psycho” could mean, “someone who has terrible and untenable story ideas” or “someone who procrastinates by making the toilets overflow”. If you mean “a murderer” then it needs to be perfectly clear. For now, that’s what I’ll assume.

The question Jerome is really asking is this: if the snow was gone, would that solve everything? If they finished the screenplay, would that solve everything?

It seems unlikely that a finished manuscript would, but you actually haven’t given us enough information. If the protagonist has lost custody of his children and needs to sell a screenplay in order to see them, then things like a snowstorm are obstacles to that goal – it felled the wires and he can’t email his agent, he can’t drive out… But he can still write it, so he waits for a thaw and gathers his friends to help him write. Then, a murderer appears! It’s another obstacle that makes it hard to write. Offing the murderer doesn’t help him see his children again… Goal: write and sell screenplay.

It’s easy to twist short synopses into almost anything. It’s good practice.

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#8

Mike, let HIM answer it! :angry:

#9

I am letting him answer it – he didn’t give me enough information to answer it. I was trying to show how many ways a storyform can go if not enough information is put out there.

#10

Thanks, I’ll bookmark that article.
(Edit: If I understand that article correctly, the Overall Story Goal in case of the horror tale would be Surviving.)

Melted snow or finished screenplay wouldn’t change much, as long as they’re still in the cabin with the axe- (or whatever) wielding Antagonist.

What if it’s not “Writing a screenplay” in a snowed-in cabin, but “Getting a Tan” on a remote island? The Protagonist is someone who has a melanin deficiency and is sent to this island, because every other way to get a tan has failed.
Protagonist reaches their personal goal of getting a tan (as does everyone else), and everybody dies.

Another edit: For the sake of this example, let’s say the Antagonist isn’t a knife-wielding murderer, but an egomaniac who hides all the sunscreen for themselves. So now, the sun, which was supposed to save everybody, kills them all.

#11

‘Surviving’ is still vague. Does it mean Escaping the Cabin? Identifying the Killer? Waiting until Help Arrives? All of these would point you to different concerns, issues, and problems – maybe even different drivers and limits. It would potentially change the player functions – who is pursuing the goal, who is blocking it, etc.

Mike is right – getting specific on the OS Goal will help other elements fall into place.

#12

In the case of the cabin, killing the murderer would solve everything. In the case of the island, either killing the egomaniac (who could also be a group of egomaniacs), otherwise stealing the sunscreen back or finding more sunscreen would solve the problem.

#13

I think we should clear up one major terminology point here: you keep referring to a horror tale – tales have fewer requirements. Grand Argument Stories are the bread and butter of Dramatica, usually called GAS or just Stories. But never tales, which are by definition incomplete stories.

Being able to distinguish between the two becomes easier with time, so if it’s not readily apparent, don’t worry because it will kick in soon.

One of the key differences is thinking of “what ends the conflict” and “what ends the movie.”

I could easily think of a story that begins with a group of friends, specifically a writer, who go out to a cabin to put a screenplay together, get surprised (and killed) by a psycho and then kill him and emerge out of the snow drifts back to the main road – alive and safe! I could even see telling this story with some sort of redemption theme – a previously successful writer feels dead inside and needs to produce something so he doesn’t feel irrelevant, has this experience and comes out feeling rejuvenated and alive.

This has an arc, it has redemption, it has action – could be a good movie. What I’ve described isn’t a story really. Not yet, anyway. It’s a tale.

The reason I’m saying that is because it starts with one goal – write a screenplay – which gets abandoned for a second goal – survive. The screenplay becomes irrelevant.

I’m not saying that this barebones outline could never be constructed as a GAS, only that I haven’t really demonstrated the key points that would make it one. This is sort of the issue with the examples you are putting up here.

My advice is this:
Take your “get a tan” movie.
Ask yourself: what is the thing that everyone in the story is thinking about?
Ask yourself: what is the thing that only the Main Character is concerned with?
Ask yourself: What is the thing that the protagonist is concerned with? The Antagonist?

Then put those into a synopsis and add it to this thread.

#14

“tales have fewer requirements”

That’s what I’m hoping for. I’m going for a satirical tale rather than a full-fledged story that looks at the question of homicidal egomania from all angles.
This might make for an easier entry into the Dramatica paradigm, so I thought, two birds with one stone.
(Of course that could be totally wrong and I would fare better starting with a complete story, but this particular tale has been burning under my fingernails for a while now.)

I would say that what everybody in the tan story is concerned about is getting their share in order to survive the week.

One thing I can think of that only the main character is concerned with, is holding on to their belief in the goodness of humanity.
That, and actually doing what everybody came there to do, while everybody else mostly cares about themselves.

I’m inclined to make MC and Protagonist the same player. Externally, he/she would be working towards getting the sunscreen back from the Antagonist, with the help of the IC who urges the MC/Protagonist (hero, technically) to go about it more aggressively.

#15

Hey Flexmeister, you’re missing a key detail about Dramatica – it doesn’t work with tales. So using a tale as an entree into Dramatica is not going to work. It’s like saying “I want to cook Chinese food, so I’m starting with a bowl of cereal.”

There is no easy graduation from tales to GAS. The mindset is different.

Some things that I am seeing: you use the word “externally” as a qualifier for the kind of work the hero would be doing. That may be true – he’s doing things in the outside world – but “externally” and “internally” and “the protagonist must have an internal and external problem”… these are constructs from other story theorists, and they are weaker concepts than Dramatica. They are helpful, to an extent, but they limit you more than they help you. They don’t bridge very easily to other concepts in Dramatica, and when they do, the baggage they bring with them isn’t worth it.

Second, you’re talking about the IC in terms of how they are assisting the MC/Protagonist. You’ll grasp the idea easier if you talk about the influence or conflict or opposition that the IC is causing, and that is true whether the IC is urging the MC on, or outright getting in their way.

Here is one place, though, that you are right on: lots of horror stories are tales. They aren’t interested in making a point, just in scaring you. So, it is totally possible that you’ve made the right choice (a tale) for your idea.

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#16

Did I hear, accurately, once that a tale can be just one throughline?

#17

Sure, that makes sense.

It is probably a more cohesive tale, because if it’s one throughline, then it’s addressing a specific problem. Lots of tales don’t do this, and they just feel like they are walking a drunken line.

But despite sticking to a single problem, what a tale cannot do is satisfactorily shed light on why the central character decides to stay the course of change paths. And that, in a nutshell, means that the story has no meaningful meaning.