Scenes for MC,IC,RS and OS in multiple domains

#1

Just out of curiosity as I would like to know how you deal with this kind of stories …

I hv outlined a short story - without thinking dramatica - and ended up with 16 scenes.

Story: Jack, a vivacious and spontaneous live wire, who has problems with keeping commitments freaks out as he is laid-off by his principled Boss George. While losing is confidence he must decide to take back his old job with changed conditions or do something completely new.

Usually my first place to go before developing a story is dramatica. But as I didn’t start this time from dramatica I figured out the storyform “manually” afterwards.

  1. I assigned a point-of-view for each scene which I thought is the best (MC, IC, RS or OS)

  2. I checked the quads and figured for my story the best one is the motivation quad (Future, Obtaining, Becoming, Innermost)

  3. As I have 16 scenes I thought I can assign 1 main-issue per scene

Until this point it worked very well, but not surprisingly I ended up with scenes for my domains or point of views (MC, IC, OS, RS) in multiple classes. For example I have now 3 scenes for IC Situation and 1 scenes in Activity or 2 scenes for RS in Manipulation and 2 scenes for RS in Mind.

I know I could change it, but that is my question: Whats the better more effective approach for the story?

  • Run as is … I will try it out and write
  • Run 16 scenes through only 1 Class … for example only Manipulation
  • Run as is but assign scenes for MC, IC, RS, and OS to only 1 class
#2

Thats when you do dramatica “manually”, just figured out that the 16 scenes fit nicely into the 4x4 signposts (excluded journeys). With a little bit work it also worked that all scenes are equally assigned. Just my thinking that a short story doesn’t “fit” into the big dramatica story form prevented me from doing so and not sitting in front of it.

However sharing my experience … maybe it helps others to start with

#3

Hi Gernot,
This topic sounds really interesting, but I couldn’t quite understand what you are saying… At what point did you use the software or were you just doing everything manually? I’m also not sure if your second post is saying that once you considered signposts, everything worked well and resolved all the questions you had in your first post?

When you say you:

assigned a point-of-view for each scene which I thought is the best (MC, IC, RS or OS)

I wonder if this approach may have led you astray? It seems to me that as an author it would be very hard to look at an outlined scene and know for certain that “this scene is definitely X Throughline”, especially if the scene contains the MC, IC, or both. I wonder if a better approach might be to take a step back and decide what your four different throughlines are, treating each of them as their own little separate story, and giving each a quirky title that you like. Something like “How to Lose a Job in 10 Ways” (OS throughline), “Sure I’ll Commit… To Quit!” (MC Throughline) or “The Taming of the Unruly Employee” (RS). It doesn’t have to be that silly or funny, just something you like that conveys the feeling of it.

Once you’ve done that, it might be easier to go through each scene and decide which Throughlines are being touched on – since you can certainly have more than one Throughline in a scene; in a short story even a few snippets of dialogue might be RS Throughline, while the rest of the scene is OS.

You could also check out the Amazon preview of the book Dramatica for Screenwriters; the exercises found just in the preview chapters are extremely valuable (fair warning, if you try those exercises, you will probably end up buying the book - it’s that good! :slight_smile: ) I’ve found it useful for outlining a novel so I bet it would work for a short story as well, though it does assume you’ve done a full storyform.

Anyway just my two cents, as a fairly new (but excited) Dramatica user!

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#4

Thanks Lucas for your feedback. You tip to treat each throughline as an own little story was extremely helpful. I have now a proper story form

Premise: Innovative production leads to unexpected changes

  • OS Man. Situation: How to layoff right, effective but also efficient?
  • MC Mind Suspicion: You don’t need me? Its not possible!
  • IC Interdiction: Why did you quite your job yourself?
  • RS Sense: How to handle a dismissal?

The order of the scenes I need to change but with the storyform I think I have a good start for a first draft.

I wonder if this approach may have led you astray?
Indeed, obviously I couldn’t see the wood for the trees.

At what point did you use the software or were you just doing everything manually?
I first did all the scenes, than added the points manually (still on the train) and at home I checked it with Dramatica which brought up some of my questions.

The book from S. Mora I have on my desktop but dint check it since a while. Its always worthwhile going back and reading it again.

Thanks.

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