Starting a storyform before answering 12 essential questions

Yep. I drew a new picture. It’s supposed to be Robert Downey Jr. the last one was supposed to Bryan Cranston.

Really? I thought him to be Mark Getais

Well, I didn’t say it was a good rendition of RDJ. Haha.

Sorry Prish, thanx for vote of confidence. What is imho? I’m sure it’s just a typo. If not forgive my ignorance.

(MC Solution of Acceptance) is the answer to the (MC Problem of Non-Acceptance). By accepting that his desire for a romantic relationship with Sadie is ridiculous, Mitch is able to get his life back.

(OS Solution of Acceptance) is the answer to the (OS Problem of Non-Acceptance). By accepting (stage seven of the 7 stages of grief) the reality of his mother’s death, Mitch is able to properly grieve and move forwards with his own life.

Desperate to break the ice, Mitch composes a love letter and hand-delivers it to Sadie (Process?). But at the request of Sadie, a security guard escorts Mitch out of the bookstore for harassing a member of staff and tells Mitch he is banned for life (conflict?).

Already suffering the loss of his mother, and now the loss of his sanctuary, and worst of all, ‘his Sadie’, (process?) Mitch wanders through the streets of the city, looking for a new place of refuge (conflict?)

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In my humble opinion…imho…one of the first and I guess now not used much…haha

So first off, since I spoke of an arc, you’re probably right that looking at Solutions gives a better picture of an arc than just a problem. And your examples look great to me. If there was a question before about whether the MC problem should be Non-acceptance or Pursuit or something else, I think you’ve done a great job of deciding on Non-acceptance and giving an in story example of it. So great work there.

The problem with looking at MC Problem/Solution, though, is that it doesn’t tell us what Domain the throughline should be in. That’s what I was hoping to get at even though I didn’t say it.

Looking at the Shawshank example, just talking about how Red Opposes the system at the end of the movie doesn’t point us to which Class his problem falls under. But if you’ve seen the movie, you know that being institutionalized is a way of thinking, a problem of Psychology (Jhull has said that Psychology is how you think and Mind is what you think). That one broad issue is what lies over all of Red’s Character level Problems of Support.

Or for another example, Miguel in Pixar’s Coco has a broader problem of being stuck in a family that hates music. His Character level Problem of Proaction doesn’t necessarily point to that, though. When he steals the guitar and gets cursed, or when he competes in the competition to play for Ernesto and almost gets caught by his family or whatever (I forget exactly what happens there, maybe gets in a fight with Hector?), those problems could have been made to look like Physics, but we already know at that point that Miguel’s broader, more general problem is that his family hates music and it’s making it difficult for him to pursue that dream.

In your story, I was hoping for something like:
-Trying to recapture his youth (Process) causes Mitch to chase dreams that will never come true (conflict)
-or Dreamimg that the girl at the bookstore might share his feelings-or to keep it from feeling too much like RS, a Desire to be loved-(Process) leads to Mitch walking away from good things he already has (Conflict).

Those examples aren’t necessarily specific events, but hopefully you can see how those problems might describe his story and can kind of hang over everything Mitch does, like the Genre of his problems. And from there we could hopefully look at the process side and start seeing a good idea of where his throughline should go. That’s what I was hoping to get to with that exercise. The reason I didn’t say that before is because I’m hoping you’ll just think about the process Mitch is dealing with in your own words and forget about the Dramatica terminology. If you keep words like Physics and Universe and Psychology in mind while you do something like this, you’ll probably end up writing specifically to that rather than just describing your idea.

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“Wax on … Wax off.”

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Haha. If I’m talking too much or trying to get you to do things you’d rather not mess with, let me know and I can back off. Sometimes I can talk too much on here.

Wow, I had actually thought it was a photo of a Breaking Bad DVD cover or something!

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No no no NO! That was not a complaint or a negative sign, I was referring to you as my mentor, which, you have been and are still doing today :pray: plesse do not think me ungrateful or losing interest - far from it! Thanx Greg. I’m sorry, was is it you wanted me to do next?

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:smile: I definitely didn’t take it negative at all. I just know I comment a lot and am giving you permission to tell me to back off if you do get tired of me.

“That’ll be the day!” ( Uncle Ethan). Back to “Overcoming Sadie Teak” (quick recap) Desperate to break the ice, Mitch composes a love letter and hand-delivers it to Sadie (Process?). But at the request of Sadie, a security guard escorts Mitch out of the bookstore for harassing a member of staff and tells Mitch he is banned for life (conflict?)."

I think This event, the first and only time Mitch actually tries to let his feelings known to Sadie, should end with Mitch going through a humiliating process of being held at the shop while interviewed and then cautioned by a female police officer, who then escorts Mitch off the premisess.

Now that Mitch is in no doubt as to what Sadie thinks of him and his affect on her, he realizes that his idea that they could be together is ridiculous, and that Sadie is probably more frightened of him than anything else.

But I don’t know how Mitch accepting this and overcoming Sadie Teak (which the audience needs to have some visual or oral illustration of) can also be a linchpin to the OS of him accepting the loss of his mother, which itself needs to be shown to the audience.

“(Jhull has said that Psychology is how you think and Mind is what you think)” . Doesn’t this, then, make the MR or OS domain, ‘Mind’?

Are you referring to this part?

Why is that in Mind? What’s your reasoning behind that?

Are not grief, and overcoming loss, internal processes?

They are internal. I don’t know from there whether they’d be seen as a process or a state. Internal processes would be Psychology. Internal states would be Mind. Psychology is a more temporal process. Mind is more like a state. Is The OS about the state of mind that Mitch is in, or is it about Mitch’s journey through several stages?

“Can you look on the Dramatica chart and see which processes you think are at play?” Failing to OVERCOME Sadie (process), will prevent Mitch from (gaining his free will) getting his life back (Conflict).

But what element on the Dramatica chart is that?

Failing to OVERCOME Sadie (process), will prevent Mitch from (gaining his free will) getting his life back (Conflict) … ‘Becoming’ or ‘Obtaining’.

…Sorry, you said element, not Type. I shall return!