Here is an example from a recent scene I revised, taken straight from my notes that I used while revising.
Scene Summary
In Bertram’s car, a captive Becca debates Buffy with Mandy to try and cover her escape preparations, but discovers that Mandy is more dangerous than she thought (and pretty much insane).
Dramatica KTAD:
- Situation: Becca is stuck, being held at gunpoint in the back seat
- Activity: Escape activities — undoing seatbelt surreptitiously; running other activities through her head in preparation for escape; the driving car and trying to time her escape to a red light stop
- M-of-Thinking: pretending to debate Buffy with Mandy in order to lull and distract her
- Attitude: Becca’s opinon of Mandy (garish lipstick, etc.); both shared and clashing opinions on Buffy the Vampire Slayer TV show
Dramatica PRCO:
- CONSIDER (Potential): Becca considers how to escape
- OPPOSE (Resistance): Becca hates on Mandy’s garish lipstick, but doesn’t mind the gun
- SUPPORT (Current): Becca tries to lull/distract Mandy by supporting her weird game of reminiscing about Buffy, and alternating her support with non-support
- RECONSIDER (Outcome): Becca reconsiders how dangerous Mandy is and realizes she’s in worse trouble than she thought — realizes escape is a bad idea
Justifications
- Becca (CONSIDER): I need to consider my options for escape in order to save myself UNLESS I should consider how dangerous my captor is in order to fear her appropriately
- Becca (OPPOSE): I want to disapprove of someone’s poor taste in order to think of myself as superior to her UNLESS I need to debate Buffy the Vampire Slayer with her in order to (be able to) distract her
- Becca (SUPPORT): I want to withhold support for my enemy’s ideas in order to keep thinking of myself as the good guy UNLESS I need to agree that I’m Faith and she’s Buffy in order to stay alive
- Becca (RECONSIDER): In order to have a chance of escape, I need to not reconsider my plan UNLESS I need to rethink how much trouble I’m in, in order to keep Mandy from killing me
Note: all the justifications happened to be from Becca’s point of view, probably because this is a simple scene with one clear “scene protagonist” and one “scene antagonist”. For other scenes I’ve use multiple characters for the justifications.
This was just a silly, fun little scene but I had found when re-reading it that it didn’t come across quite as well on the page as it had in my head. I definitely found the techniques especially the Justifications helped me tighten it and capture my ideas so that it became what I wanted it to be.