Question about Drivers

If the MC Changes, it’s assumed the IC will remain Steadfast. When it comes to Drivers, could it also be said that if the OS Driver is Action, the RS Driver would be Decision?

Thanks for the help on these forums! :slight_smile:

No. The relationship between Change and Steadfast is tied to the meaning of the storyform, such that one approach is shown to be more or less appropriate than the other. The Story Driver sets the path through the narrative and would not be reinforced or less emphasized when compared to a “driver” in the Relationship Story Throughline.

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Thanks, Jim. Would it hurt the storyform if I put more emphasis on Action within the OS and Decision within the RS? I have Action as the primary Driver of the story.

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Anything you do that is not a part of the Storyform is ultimately disposable–so it will neither hurt nor improve the story. It’s all a matter of your writer’s intuition at that point.

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A fun exercise you can do is watch/read something and pay attention to how the drivers change things in each of the throughlines.

That’s a bold statement. I think you mean that they will not affect the meaning of the story, yeah?

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That’s why I put in bold. When a scene falls flat, it always does so because it isn’t tied to the storyform. You can either find some part of the storyform to incorporate into the scene or remove it all together.

If it’s not tied to the Storyform, then whether or not it hurts or improves the story is 100% subjective, and therefore has no true answer.

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This is exactly the kind of thing I would love to dig into if I had a tenured position somewhere.

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