Maybe not. Maybe Dramatica is showing you that there’s more to understand than you realized, so you really understand your story better even if it feels like you understand it less just because you see all the potential there is to understand it. Keep the glass half full!
Instead of continuing to speculate on where the throughlines for this story might fall, let’s do this. Let’s look at how the processes and their conflict work to create a throughline and then see if we can use that to figure out the story.
So first off, there’s nothing inherently problematic with either of the things I highlighted above. In order to determine a throughline for Mitch (and I’m assuming both of those sentences speak directly to Mitch’s throughline, but they could both be about the OS just as easy) we need to know why one of these things is a problem. (Buckle up, this is feeling like it might be another overly long post, ugh sorry 
, I’ll try to quit doing this)
Here’s the thing. Dramatica deals in inequities. Some will see an inequity as a problem while others see it as an imbalance. It works like this. Let’s say we’re looking Physics and Psychology. An inequity between the two just means that there is somehow an imbalance in the mind between those two processes. There’s too much pressure being applied to one area and not enough to the other. What we do is we pick one of those and say that process is fine just the way it is. Then we assign all the conflict we feel to the other process. So let’s look at how that works.
Just to keep it simple, I’m going to stick with what you’ve said about Mitch and keep looking at Physics and Psychology. So let’s replace Physics with “Arranging his mother’s funeral” and we’ll replace Psychology with ‘being discontent’. As long as these two are in balance, there’s no problem, but as soon as they are out of balance Mitch will sense that he has a problem. At that time Mitch will need to decide that one is fine and assign conflict to the other. We can look at both.
First let’s say that Mitch doesn’t see a problem with being discontent. That means he assigns all conflict to arranging his mother’s funeral. When he experiences an existential despair, he assigns that to arranging his mother’s funeral. When he sees his mother’s ghost floating around his house at night, he assigns it to arranging his mother’s funeral. Just so we can see it clearly, let me restate both in a way that shows process and conflict.
-Arranging his mother’s funeral (Process) causes Mitch to fall into an existential despair (Conflict)
-Arranging his mother’s funeral (Process) leads to Mitch seeing his mother’s ghost (Conflict)
Now let’s see what happens when Mitch doesn’t see a problem with arranging his mother’s funeral. That means he assigns all conflict to being discontent. When he experiences an existential despair, he assigns that to being discontent. When he sees his mother’s ghost floating around his house at night, he assigns it to being discontent. Lets restate both in a way that shows process and conflict.
-Being discontent (Process) causes Mitch to fall into an existential despair (Conflict)
-Being discontent (Process) leads to Mitch seeing his mother’s ghost (Conflict)
In the first example, the conflict was assigned to ‘arranging his mother’s funeral’ which is what we used instead of Physics. So we know the process there is Physics and thus that would be a throughline of Physics. In the second example, the conflict was assigned to ‘being discontent’ which is what we used instead of Psychology. So we know the process there is Psychology and thus that would be a throughline of Psychology.
With that in mind, can you tell us some of the things that might happen in the story by separating the Process and the Conflict as I did above?
