Sharing a practice encoding for MC in Manipulation

[Greg]

I’ve had an idea for kind of a dark tale for a while that pops into mind occasionally, but I keep ignoring it because I’m not sure I can turn it into anything interesting. In my early days with Dramatica, though, I would try to find a storyform for it as practice and kept putting it into Activity and Learning because of all the things the MC would need to do in the story, but could never find a satisfying form for this tale. But today it occurred to me that I was probably looking at the storytelling (something I still struggle with) rather than the source of the troubles. So of course I had to rush home after work and see if I couldn’t find a better form for it.

I was surprised to find that I now think the MC goes in Psychology because I’m not particularly comfortable with that quad. I’ve decided to share it here just for fun and to see if there are any thoughts on if i’m maybe still in the wrong spot with this one.

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This tale was supposed to be in the tradition of a Twilight Zone episode, or maybe Tales from the Dark Side or something. Something short with a bit of a surprise ending. The idea is that a kid sees a death and is traumatized by it. From then on, he’s obsessed with knowing what death is like. He eventually decides to dig up a coffin and spend the night in it. Of course things wouldn’t end up going as planned.

MAIN CHARACTER

THROUGHLINE: Manipulation
Ever since a traumatic experience in his childhood, the MC has been obsessed with death. This obsession with death drives his every decision and drives others away from him.

CONCERN: Conceiving an Idea
The MC wonders what it’s like to be dead and in a coffin. He doesn’t think there’s an afterlife, but also can’t concieve of death as an end of consciousness. He thinks death must be like being trapped in a cold dark coffin with only your thoughts for all eternity and is incredibly disturbed by this idea.

ISSUE: Expediency
The MC is always looking for a way to mimic the experience of what he thinks death is. It starts with sitting alone in the dark trying not to think, but when that doesn’t work, it builds to him going to a cemetery to dig up a coffin and spend the night inside of it. Over the course of the story, these attempts to experience death cause him to miss out on a lot of life. People think he’s weird. Maybe he loses a girlfriend or something when he won’t quit talking about death. Maybe it somehow costs him a job or something.

COUNTERPOINT: Need
In order to make peace with death, the MC feels he needs to know what it’s like to be dead. He feels he needs to recreate the experience so he can process it. Mimicking the experience, he thinks, will somehow allow him to come up with the idea he needs to understand how death is NOT being stuck in a dark coffin with only your thoughts forever. (forgive the awkward wording, still trying to figure this one out)

PROBLEM: Inaction
The MC wants to know what death is like and it’s driving him nuts just sitting around wondering. The only way to find out what death is like seems to be to just wait around until you die. But he can’t stand it. He wants to know before he dies so he’ll be prepared. And besides, it won’t help him to know what death is like by actually experiencing it because by then…he’ll be dead. Waiting around to die is killing him.

SOLUTION: Protection
I suppose if he considered the possibility of an afterlife, some way that he could live forever, he might feel protected from the horrors of being trapped in a coffin with only his consciousness, and this would sap his motivation. (I’m not feeling this, haven’t considered it much yet)

SYMPTOM: Reduction
I don’t have a good handle on Reduction. I keep trying to think of it as the MC reducing death to consciuosness trapped in a box. Maybe he determines that death is probably nothing but being stuck in a box?

RESPONSE: Production
UNIQUE ABILITY: Need

CRITICAL FLAW: Investigation
The way the MC investigates the death experience doesn’t help him to understand death, but leads to death instead.

BENCHMARK: Developing a Plan

SIGNPOST 1: Conceiving an Idea
The MC can’t concieve of death not being an existential nightmare.

SIGNPOST 2: Developing a Plan
The MC decides to try to mimc what he thinks the experience of death is like.

SIGNPOST 3: Playing a Role
The MC is essentially trying to “play dead” as he climbs into coffins to feel what being dead is like.

SIGNPOST 4: Changing One’s Nature
When the MC digs up a coffin in the rain and climbs into it, the muddy walls cave in on him, trapping him in the coffin. Since the cemetery he’s in is out in the country and unused anymore, no one is going to find him and he will eventually die in the coffin.

[mlucas]

Wow this is really cool! Am I right that you are thinking of this as a short story (tale) that is focused only on this single throughline? Or do you plan on weaving in the other throughlines?

If it’s only the single throughline (definitely a valid form for short stories) then I’d say you don’t have to worry about the Unique ability and Critical Flaw so much since those are really the intersection of MC and OS.

I actually think your instincts are bang-on about the Symptom of Reduction. Even quoting from your Concern encoding:

@Gregolas

He doesn’t think there’s an afterlife, but also can’t concieve of death as an end of consciousness. He thinks death must be like being trapped in a cold dark coffin with only your thoughts for all eternity

So he’s focused on what he sees the problem, death is nothing but what you describe, it reduces one’s consciousness to this one horrible state for all eternity. Perfect example of a Symptom of Reduction. And your other examples work too – he might focus on his difficulties of losing his girlfriend (getting dumped can totally be Reduction, it’s like getting laid off or “culled”, and it reduces him to being single), and obviously losing his job fits.

I also think the Concern of Conceiving is perfect – his conception of what death is what is giving him so much trouble. To resolve his problems would involve letting go of that way of conceiving death.

For the Response of Production, your example of him spending a night in a coffin and trying to produce the experience of death for himself – that’s great. And it’s quite obvious how it’s in response to what he sees the problem is, too. And when you say he won’t quit talking about death (costing him girlfriend/job), that could be Production too, he’s trying to produce in others the death-obsessions that he has.

I also found your Solution to be pretty good – the idea of a kind, protecting God / divine power would totally change his conception of death, if he was willing to embrace it. (Though I get the idea that he ends up more of a steadfast character from your description.) It works for me, anyway.

Awesome stuff!

[Greg]

Thanks Mike. That’s the kind of response I love to see, and not just because it’s all super positive! Lol.

Your suggestions on Reduction are super helpful because I never even considered the job/girlfriend as examples of that. I wasn’t sure about Production either, so those suggestions were helpful as well.

I definitely conceived of the story as being a one throughline tale in the beginning so you’re right, the UA and CF probably wouldn’t be that important. Funny thing is, I think selecting a UA of Need is what brought me to a problem of Inaction rather than Certainty, which is where I thought it was headed. Going back and looking at the form with a certainty problem, I find some things that work really well too. I prefer the slight change in Act order for one. but I went with the above form for a reason. Perhaps my own process was a bit confused and had me landing somewhere between those two forms.

I thought for a while that leaving out the other throughlines would come across like the MC wasn’t even considering that there might be another path and help add to the horror feeling of the story, or at least make it feel all the more tragic and add a bit of the mysterious to it. ,But I’m not so sure now if it wouldn’t feel more tragic seeing the other path and seeing him not take it.

Another thing that surprised me other than coming up with a Manipulation MC was how something I chose forced the form into Intuitive/Holistic rather than Linear. I don’t find myself to be a particularly holistic problem solver, but I think I selected the first and last Sign Post up front and caused that selection. looking back at it, I would have said that I can see a series of steps from problem to solution, but thinking about it now, I guess they don’t all necessarily follow logically or linearly. It’s all reminded me of a question I’ve had for a while I’ll probably have to post about now.

Anyway, it’s crazy how obviously this story belonged in Manipulation and yet I continued to try to see it as an Activity because of how uncomfortable I was in my understanding of the Manipulation quad.