Quick story development using dramatica chart

[mlucas]

In this thread, @Doctorfunk_15 wrote:

Dramatica chart help

I guess at this point I'm just trying to get a simple example of someone actually applying the concepts. I guess I learn best by seeing it done.

So for example say I have a super simple story: Bill and his dog are going to get a cheeseburger, but the restaurant closes in 15 minutes. As a premise let's say I have hurrying leads to mistakes, but efficiency leads to a full belly.

Can you give me examples of how to apply a story form to this story to make it a complete story?

[mlucas]

To develop the "cheeseburger" story further, really quickly, using Dramatica concepts, you might first setup a few of the basic points. I noticed that your idea already implies a Story Limit, Goal, and Outcome.

• Story Limit: You've already got a good Limit of Timelock (15 minutes until restaurant closes), so we'll stick with that.
  (Of course you could say something like, maybe he needs to convince the restaurant to stay open later, etc. pushing it towards an OptionLock, but for this idea you presented, we've got a TimeLock.
• Story Goal: You've already got a goal of getting a cheeseburger, so we'll keep that.
  (Same thing, you could make it about understanding why it's better to cook at home or whatever, but you didn't mention anything like that.)
• Story Outcome: You didn't specify this exactly, but you did mention a full belly, so let's assume it will be Success.

If we were taking our time we might now write a sentence or two for each of those points. Kind of test them out, see if we really like them. But since we're trying to be quick, let's move on.

So now you want to identify the throughlines. I think the Main Character is Bill, the Influence Character is the dog, the Overall Story is about getting the cheeseburger. That leaves the Relationship Story being about a man and his dog -- and this is important, Dramatica is telling us that silly cheeseburger story will become much better by somehow focusing on how the relationship between Bill and his dog grows or changes, or has a chance to grow but doesn't, or something.

Now why don't we stop here, and you can tell us if you have any gut feelings about:

• Bill's personal baggage that he brings to the story, that is very personal, separate from the rest of the story
• The dog's unique perspective / concerns / issues, that somehow challenge Bill
• Their relationship and how it might grow or change

If you don't have any of those gut feelings already, that's cool, we can use the Dramatica chart to come up with ideas that fit with each other, and fit the overall story about getting the cheeseburger. (I'm not sure if you'd prefer to see if your ideas match Dramatica's concepts ahead of time, or if you'd rather just use Dramatica to help generate ideas, or try some of both.)

One caveat: I'm not a Dramatica expert or anything, still learning it myself. I just thought this would be a fun and it seemed like the kind of thing you were looking for!

[Doctorfunk_15]

Ya, this is exactly what I was looking for to help gain an understanding before spending a lot of time on a more complex story.

I like the idea of seeing what matches my ideas and what doesn't so I get sort of an idea of how/what dramatica thinks should or shouldn't be in the story based on my main ideas and my own intuitions as a writer.

So, let's say Bill is constantly pushed by his girlfriend to hurry in life. That's the simple baggage he brings with.

For his dog, id like to explore two ideas one where the dog is just as giddy as Bill to get the burger and is full of energy and another where the dog is kind of droopy and slow and enjoys taking his time in life.

I imagine the relationship would start off positive in either case and the two would be at odds at the midpoint of the story, but would come together in the end and are successful at getting the burger.

Hopefully that will get us started.

[mlucas]

Okay cool. I think we have enough ideas for the OS and MC throughlines to get us started. The Overall Story we said was about getting the burger; all the characters will be concerned with this somehow. (Or possibly concerned with some other form of obtaining or losing something, like maybe there might be a passing policeman who wants to catch the dog.) So I think we're safe to say the OS Concern is Obtaining, making the OS Domain Activity -- conflict will stem from activities or endeavours like cooking burgers, running a restaurant, etc.

For the Main Character throughline, do you see Bill as more of being stuck in a situation, like stuck in an overbearing relationship? Or do you see him as more of someone with a strong mindset that he won't or can't change, like he has a phobia about germs or a fixation on getting everything perfect, or some other fixed attitude, which is why he finds it hard to hurry up? I got the sense of the former (situation), but just checking.

[Doctorfunk_15]

Ya, Bill is in a situation with his girlfriend as opposed to having an internal problem.

Once source of conflict could be a police officer chasing(obtaining) Bill to pull him over since he's speeding.

Now one question I have...

Lets keep our original stort but let's say that the city that Bill is getting a burger in is locked down due to it being in a war zone, or there's an epidemic or something. So this story of Bill getting a burger that we created is within a situation that is part of a "bigger" story that the burger story is contained within. Is Dramatica able to acount for the points of both stories to keep them both complete without contradicting each other?

[Greg]

I hope I'm not jumping in and messing up your exercise with @mlucas! But I would say that, yes, Dramatica can absolutely handle your larger story of the city being in a war zone or going through an epidemic.

The trick is, though, to remember where your OVERALL story problems stem from. You've already got the OS set in ACTIVITY and the concern set as Obtaining. So while the city itself seems to have a problematic SITUATION of being a war zone or epidemic site, the main problems of those in the city should not stem from that SITUATION but from an ACTIVITY. For instance, everyone in the city might be seeking to obtain safety in a bunker or to hide in an abandoned building or dodging gun fire. They might be preparing for an air raid they know is coming or to fight against an approaching enemy. They might be trying to mass produce a vaccine or make sure as many people are taking the vaccine as possible. The problem would need to be anything that is an ACTIVITY.

Within that ACTIVITY, they will need to be concerned with OBTAINING something. Some might be obtaining shelter while some are obtaining ammo. Some might be obtaining medicine while others are obtaining food. They could also go the polar opposite and their concern of OBTAINING could be getting rid of the meteorite that crashed in town square just before everyone started getting sick.

You said that you felt the MC was more in a SITUATION with his girlfriend. So his main problem will be something that stems from that. His concern within that SITUATION will be the FUTURE. Not trying to change the course of your example, but maybe, if she's always pushing him to hurry, maybe she's also pushing him to eat healthier. So he has that problem, and now, what with the war zone/epidemic, maybe he sees this as his last opportunity for a cheeseburger. So he is concerned that there will be no more cheeseburgers in his FUTURE.

Hope I helped, and feel free to steer clear of any example i offered so you can come up with your own.

[Doctorfunk_15]

Good info Gregolas, so the link between the larger and smaller stories is obtaining?

What if the city is locked down because the inevitable end of the world is near and people seek to understand their fate in the larger story as opposed to obtaining something. Yet, at the smaller story Bill is trying to obtain the burger. Would this make these stories "incompatible" according to dramatica?

[mlucas]

Hey Doctor Funk,
I think we should be careful not to over-complicate things here. Dramatica can accommodate any awesome story, but your idea of the larger locked-down-city story might make things tricky for someone new to Dramatica. Either:

• we have one storyform, which the cheeseburger and lock-down are both part of. In this case, conflict in all parts of the Overall Story stems from the same Domain & Concern (Activity & Obtaining, in our case).
• the cheeseburger story is a smaller story, a substory or nested story within the larger locked-down-city story. In this case, the larger story could have a totally different storyform, or the two stories might share some commonalities. This is how Dramatica can accommodate an "obtaining cheeseburger" story inside of a larger "understanding the end of the world" story. But this is way too complicated for the aim of this thread, I think.

So I'd suggest we stick to one storyform. Keep in mind that we've already defined the Story Limit and Goal, about getting a cheeseburger before the restaurant closes. If there is a larger locked-down-city part of the story, how would that be resolved by getting a cheeseburger? I think if we stick to one storyform, the locked-down-city is just color or backdrop to the cheeseburger story, part of the setting. It can still contribute to the theme and the story-telling, but the audience/reader would not feel like getting the cheeseburger is going to magically solve all the city's problems. It might show that Bill can survive and find a way to be okay in this tough city, that sort of thing, but the scope would not be "free the city".

[Doctorfunk_15]

Fair enough, let's stick with the simple cheeseburger story for now. What would be the next step? From what I've read about dramatica we would seperate it into acts based on the quad contained in obtaining?

If I were to separate it into acts without looking at the table it would be something like this:

Act 1: introduce elements we will need to tell story and also Bill gets hungry and his dog convinces him to go get a burger.

Act 2: Bill hops in the car and realizes the restraint is about to close and in a rush of anxiety speeds towards the restaurant. A cop pulls him over and he gets a ticket and the cop tells him to slow it down.

Act 3: Bill realizing he needs to focus on efficiency instead of speed calms himself and approaches the restaurant which is about to close in five minutes and is almost there when he hits a detour. Oh no. Lol.

Act 4: Bill realizes he isnt going to make it and is tempted to speed, but at the last moment he realizes if he parks and walks through the alley it will be slower but more efficient and he can cut through and make it on time to the restaurant and he gets the burger.

How does that compare to dramatica? What would be the next step?

[mlucas]

Cool ideas, but actually I wasn't thinking of getting down to the Acts (Signposts) in this exercise. You need the software to know the order of the signposts, and a small change in the storyform can affect the signpost order. So you would only do that after you've nailed the storyform.

On the other hand, you can certainly write a Dramatica-informed story without using the software, but I would suggest we really nail the 4 throughlines Domains and Concerns before you would try to tackle that.

I think the next step is to understand the MC throughline better. As @Gregolas implied, since we have the Overall Story Concern of Obtaining, and the MC Domain of Situation, it means the MC Concern has to be The Future [see rule 3 below]. So, something about the conflict stemming from his pushy girlfriend situation has to do with The Future. Like maybe the girlfriend is really trying to figure out if he's marriage material and is pushing him to hurry up and achieve things in life, while he senses that and isn't sure if he's cut out for marriage... It can be a million things but the source of the conflict has something to do with the future.

If you're cool with the marriage thing, we can move onto another throughline (feel free to pick one), or feel free to suggest another Future related conflict for the MC's personal issues.

Because we've picked OS and MC Domains, and the OS Concern, we can now use the chart to figure out the Domains and Concerns for all the throughlines:

1. IC Domain is the dynamic pair (diagonally across) from the MC Domain, so the dog's influence will stem from a Fixed Attitude.
2. RS Domain is the dynamic pair from the OS Domain, so the relationship between the dog and its owner will be in the domain of Manipulation also called Psychology.
3. Now onto Concerns. Using the chart, if you look at the Type level, we had picked Obtaining for OS which is in the lower-left of its quad under Activities. This means that the lower-left Type will be the Concern for every throughline.
   This is always the case, e.g. if we had picked Doing (upper-right) for any throughline Concern, then all throughline Concerns would be in the upper-right of the quad beneath the throughline's Domain. (Note: same rule doesn't apply at Issue-Variation and Problem-Element level, that's why you need the software for those.)

[Greg]

@Doctorfunk_15,
@mlucas is doing a good job of walking you through the Domain and Concern levels. I probably shouldn't've jumped in, so I'm going to let you two keep going. But since I already jumped in, I just wanted to answer your question about the connection between the stories. If my answer is difficult, or doesn't make sense to you, it's probably best to skip over it for now. I just can't help but add my $0.02 because I'm so fascinated with this theory and still super excited about learning about it.

I was answering the first time under the assumption that the city in a war zone/epidemic was meant to be part of the same story form as the cheeseburger story. But @mlucas is right. It could be the same story form, or a separate story form.

As far as the connection goes, what connects one story form to itself is not going to be one concern or one issue. The easiest way to put it, I think, is to say that the Dramatica chart is all about one single problem. Everything on the Dramatica chart from the 4 domains (Activity, Situation, Manipulation, and Fixed attitude) all the way down are all looking at that one problem from 4 separate perspectives. The 4 perspectives are what make the problem look different. So the one problem that Dramatica is looking at is what connects them.

What connects the perspectives is that Situation and Fixed Attitude are both problematic states while Activity and Manipulation are both problematic processes. At the same time, Situation and Activity are both external problems while Manipulation and Fixed Attitude are both internal problems. So the various perspectives can be connected or disconnected because they are internal or external, or because they are states or processes.

Within the examples I gave before, the MC character was trying to obtain a cheeseburger as part of the OVERALL story rather than as part of the MC story. His fear of not having anymore cheeseburgers in his future would have been part of the MC story. I just used that, because it seemed to tie in nicely with the overall story of OBTAINING, but any thing that is a concern about the FUTURE would work there and be tied in as well because they are all really looking at the same problem, just from a different perspective.

I won't even begin to speculate about what would connect two separate story forms for now.

Again, my answer may be too technical. If so, my apologies, and feel free to skip it and move on. And heck, i'm still learning, so parts of it may be wrong. I'm learning right along with everybody else, if @mlucas or anyone else on the board want to correct me, please do so.

thanks,

[Doctorfunk_15]

Mlucas, that all makes sense. Let's move forward with the marriage idea. So now we would define the innermost desire and changing ones nature for the other throughlines?

[Doctorfunk_15]

Gregolas I'm happy you jumped in. We are going to move forward with the simple story as I think it's good to understand the basics of the system in terms of an overly simple idea and mlucas was kind enough to help work through that, but I'm still interested in what you are saying as well.

I guess what I'm wondering in regards to the two stories ultimately would come down to a simpler question. If you are trying to solve one problem, but another problem has to be solved in order to solve the first are the two story forms for the two problems affecting each other or are they unique stories? Say you have to escape a prison, but in order to do that you need to find the key. By defining all the story points in the first story form does that define any of the unknowns in the second (smaller scale) story form?

[Greg]

I haven't looked much into how the theory handles multiple storyforms within a single film. My thoughts would be that the stories could be very separated, but would need to tie together on at least some level. What the level is, I guess, would be up to the author.

If you haven't seen it, watch Finding Nemo. It has two storyforms. One storyform is about Marlin and Dory looking for Nemo. The second is about Nemo and Gil escaping the tank. I don't know what the storyforms for either one, but Marlins has a goal of finding (or OBTAINING) Nemo. Nemo is attempting to escape the tank and get back to the ocean, which seems to me like DOING, although I suppose it could be OBTAINING if he were trying to obtain freedom, maybe.

Again, i'm a bit hazy on this. But it seems at least possible that your two separate forms can be in different areas. But in Finding Nemo, Nemo has to solve his problem with Gil, which then allows him to prove to his other that he can do things despite his gimpy fin. I don't know which storyform falls where, but I would say that without solving his problem with Gil, Nemo wouldn't have been able to prove to his father what he was capable of. And that's the connection between those to forms...somehow...I think.

[mlucas]

The example of needing to find a key in a story about escaping a prison sounds more like Story Requirements or Prerequisites to me. It could be made into a sub-story, but doesn't need to be and in most cases it wouldn't be.

What's neat about that example is that Dramatica actually says if the OS Concern (and thus Story Goal, they are always the same Type) is Obtaining, as in escaping the prison to obtain freedom, then the Requirements cannot be Obtaining, and neither can Prerequisites. And if you really think about a story where the goal is escaping the prison, doesn't the idea of needing to find/obtain this all-important key seem kind of boring? It seems way more interesting to need to say, develop a complicated plan to escape (Prerequisites of Developing a Plan), or feign sexual interest in a guard (Prerequisites of Playing a Role) or to train yourself to climb walls (Requirements of Gathering Information), or come to understand the real reason you're in prison in the first place (Requirements of Understanding). EDIT: of course needing to obtain the key can still be part of the storytelling, but it would be about more than that; the conflict would come from some other area.

Anyway, the idea of multiple storyforms is tough when you're learning Dramatica, so I would try to not worry about it for now. To me generally the best way to tell if something is or needs a separate storyform is if it just feels like a different story on its own, something that gets resolved (or has a chance to resolve but doesn't), and has its own instance of truly Changed character. (If it helps, most films have only one storyform.)

Here are the links if you want:
http://dramatica.com/analysis/finding-nemo
http://dramatica.com/articles/finding-nemos-substory

[mlucas]

Right, we can move on with the other throughlines now I think. Let's summarize what we've got so far:

• Story Goal & Limit: Getting a cheeseburger before the restaurant closes
• Story Outcome: Success
• Overall Story Domain & Concern of Activity & Obtaining: Driving fast, trying to avoid getting caught (for speeding, or as a stray dog), maybe some cooking / preparing fast food, managing a restaurant, etc. -- all somehow related to the goal of getting a cheeseburger.
• Main Character Domain & Concern of Situation & The Future: Bill is stuck in a relationship with his overbearing girlfriend. She's trying to figure out if he's marriage material and is pushing him to hurry up and achieve things in life. But Bill isn't sure if he's cut out for marriage. The future of their relationship is at stake.

Now I think we should develop the dog -- what are his issues and perspective, which cause conflict not only for him but for those around him, especially Bill? His Domain & Concern are Fixed Attitude and Innermost Desires (aka Subconscious).

Keep in mind that both of those terms are a lot broader than you might first think based on their names. Fixed Attitude sounds like biases and racism, which it covers, but it also includes fears, love, having a crush, longing, wishing, believing in something, etc. And Innermost Desires is sort of like a zoomed-in version of the same things -- fears, obsession, craving, lust, hunger, etc. (but not the biases so much). And if you want you can select each one to be very different, like it could be Fearing Tall Men & Longing For A Puppy Of My Own. Or Hating All Breeds of Retriever & Longing to Drive a Car ... those are a bit silly, but you see how it can get interesting.

[Doctorfunk_15]

Ok, lets build a dog.

Fixed Attitude: Optimism

Inner most desires: Hunger

[mlucas]

Cool. How do those things create conflict and challenge the people (or other animals) around the dog, in this story?

[Doctorfunk_15]

Bill may become frustrated as he's in a time crunch and this causes the speeding. His dog challenges this as he stays optimistic even when things seem doubtful.

His hunger drives him and creates conflict with those who try to slow or stop them from getting the burger.

[mlucas]

Great! I like the optimistic attitude. So the dog challenges those around him with his optimism, and this somehow causes trouble for the dog and others.

I'm of two minds about the hunger. It definitely works great for a Concern of Innermost Desires, but for this story it may be too close to the Overall Story about getting the burger, making it hard for us to differentiate the dog's hunger in the IC throughline from his actions and motivations in the OS throughline.

On the other hand, the hunger could work well as just causing general trouble for people, not directly related to the overall story of getting the burger. Especially if it causes trouble for Bill's relationship, like the dog's constant hunger annoys his girlfriend, and she's always nagging Bill to hurry up and feed the dog or go buy more food. And her attitude toward the dog bothers Bill in turn so that he often uses the excuse of the dog's hunger to take the dog for walk, saying it will distract the dog, but really he does it to get away from her. And this whole thing pushes them toward realizing they are concerned about their future together, which helps move Bill toward a resolution of that issue, and somehow the dog's optimism would impact things as well.

Then later when we weave together the throughlines, we can use the dog's hunger as part of the OS as well, but that's really just a happenstance of the dog being a character in both throughlines, it's not part of the IC throughline. (Same with the optimism.)