OVERALL STORY CONCERN: Having an Intuitive Understanding of Oneself
Each player struggles to some degree with rationalizing his or her view of women in this workplace, either in complete denial, or thoughtfully considering the positives and negatives, or even blatant radicalism. In addition, there is a struggle, particularly with the women, to break out of the traditional view of women in the culture so each one can experiment with her potential.
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I’m having trouble seeing the problem here…how does Having an Intuitive Understanding of Oneself create difficulties for everyone involved in the story?
This happens a lot with Dramatica…and Gists make it easier to do…where the terminology assumes the role of storytelling rather than operating as a function of the storyform. It’s not enough to simply encode a paragraph that describes people having an intuitive understanding of themselves–you must show how that is a CONCERN for everyone–in other words, how does that create problems?
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Hmm… How about: As the players come to grips with their own views of women in the workplace, the tensions between those who are in denial and those who actively want to discuss the issue results in regular workplace disruptions. This affects the productivity of everyone in the workplace and could end up affecting the bottom-line. If the business tanks, people will be looking for work.
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@jhull. Question on this, is the creating a problem/conflict for all the appreciations or just the Concern/Issue/Problem ones in each of the 4 throughlines? Or should symptom/catalyst/response etc. also be encoded as “problems?”
Concern/Issue/Problem (you forgot Domain) all describe the same thing – just from a different magnification (see the article I’m about to publish later this afternoon 
), so yes – those all represent different ways of looking at the problem.
Symptom/Response deal with the results (or apparent results) of the Problem so not necessarily, though you could imagine how the Main Character Responding inappropriately to the real Problem at hand could create conflict…
Same with Catalyst and Inhibitor. Those describe the change in direction (gas or brake pedal), whether or not they create conflict I believe would be up to the Author. Some would want to show how applying the brake pedal (Inhbitor) could temper conflict, while another might show how putting on the brakes might simply build even greater potential.
The Domain/Concern/Issue/Problem column acts like one giant microscope with each level representing a different level of magnification.
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This is closer…but don’t write what “could” happen, write what is happening. People who have an intuitive understanding of themselves tend to let everyone know about it, they become caught up in themselves and tend to couch everything in terms of their point-of-view, creating interpersonal conflicts that otherwise wouldn’t be there…They also tend to go home at a moment’s notice because they intuit that they’re sick leaving their remaining co-workers to clean up the pieces…something more along the lines of this.
You might even try writing the conflict for different characters: Because of the head writer’s intuitive understanding of himself he tries to force his own life story into every cartoon…the elevator operator’s intuitive understanding of himself inspires him to pitch a new series idea every single morning regardless of who wants to hear it (and most don’t!). Just don’t use proper names and you’ll be good to go from an objective point-of-view
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Another, more thoughtful Hmm this time… I hope you all aren’t in a super hurry… I’m looking for a “Nice one!” or an “Excellent!” from Jim, so I need to continue to think. But I’m seeing that throughout this process the idea is to be brief, generic, yet as concrete as possible. Is that right?
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I would leave out generic…you can be imaginative, but yes, brief and concise is a good thing (though is usually difficult for writers!). And by all means, take your time…everybody learns from everyone else and we have the luxury of no deadline so why not indulge…
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I published the article referred to earlier: Understanding Dramatica’s Complex Terminology Made Easier.
Check your date on the workshop button. It says September (instead of November). Wish I could go! Someday.
Great article. It gave me some stuff to chew on. I feel like I need to get pencil and paper and start drawing out my “problems” at the different levels to make sure I understand what I’m doing. I just might do that right now. Thanks!
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I’m… stumped, maybe. But I don’t want to leave the appreciation. I want to understand it, fight for that understanding and not just drop it… I guess the part I have the hardest time dealing with is whether what I use to satisfy this appreciation is more on the line of possible scenarios that may or may not play out during the course of the story. Or am I trying too hard by asking that question, thinking too much about it rather than just jotting ideas down? I kind of grok the idea that all of the four levels all deal with problem (Biggest, Big, Medium, Small), but at this stage in planning, how much can you really know about the context to put those kinds of ideas in place? Or is it more like a brainstormed lists of possibilities of how conflict and problems could end up as a result of people having an intuitive understanding of themselves?
So, how far does this overall viewpoint extend? Are we narrowing it down to maybe the things that happen in the building where everyone works? Is that the “battlefield” from which this particular general is viewing the battle? Or the block where the building is? Or does it extend beyond that to the families of the people who are working at the syndicate? The janitorial staff? The taxi drivers that pick up and drop off? The people in the restaurant on the ground floor? The florist shop? Or does that really depend on other phases of the story process?
I apologize for all the questions. Or maybe I don’t. I am a professional irritant by trade
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Hi Writegeist,
I’m gonna brainstorm with you, I hope that’s okay.
So if the OVERALL STORY CONCERN is Having an Intuitive Understanding of Oneself
And it effects everyone, the question I’d start asking myself is WHEN does understanding yourself become a problem?
Then start playing with the fodder we already have on the table
1930s Depression era
Artists/Cartoonists
Voice Actors
Producers
Writers
CEO types like Mr. Fleischer
Well, one thing that leaps to mind is confidence or lack there of.
If you think you’re really good at what you do but you know there’s 50 people/men down on the breadline who could do what you do, would you ever act like a prima donna?
What if you are responsible for a company and men are the bread winners, how can you justify hiring a woman? What kind of man are you?
What if you know you are a sweet gentle soul, but you have to be the opposite to get what you want or need? Could you do it?
What if you know you are an angry SOB, can you hide it?
What if you KNOW in your soul that you are meant to be an artist, but door keep slamming in your face?
Everyone knows their ass is on the line because of the times they are in. Everyone is scared. What if that fear makes everyone act like Little Mary Sunshine and they don’t like it cause they know it’s not who they really are?
These, of course, are only a few tidbitty ideas. What have you got?
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Nothing to add except those are some FANTASTIC questions. Very thought provoking and exactly what the Overall Story Concern is looking for…
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Those are all boffo directions! I definitely don’t mind the help. I guess a question I still have is, taking Jim’s article into account, how does this reflect the Big (Biggest, Big, Medium, Small) level of problem? These all seem pretty focused rather than broad. Whether they get used in the story or not, wouldn’t these represent a very close approach to the problem? Either that or I don’t still quite understand how the remaining problem levels (Issue, Problem) could get more direct/focused/higher-microscope-powered. Then again, that would be for someone else to decide… If this is sidetracking things, let me know and we can start a new thread somewhere else.
Another thing to add to jassnip’s fine “freestyling” on an OS Concern: Fundamental to Dramatica Theory is the idea than either “too much” or “too little” of an appreciation can be what causes an escalation in the story’s problems (which some of jassnip’s examples kind of hint at).
So, while some of the OS characters might be concerned too much with “having an intuitive understanding of oneself,” you can also include OS characters who care too little about this trait.
That is, they refuse to have (or negate the value of having) any kind of “intuitive understanding of” themselves. They justify this using rationales such as “it’s hard times, honey; we got no room for that kind of useless emotional jabberwockying!”
So, at least in the Overall Story throughline, your several objective characters can be at various places on the spectrum from too much to too little of “having an intuitive understanding of oneself.”
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So, the $64,000 question is how do you take all that, distill it down, and create something to fill in the appreciation?
Well, consider the spectrum that ranges between jassnip’s suggestions and mine, and perhaps consider the following (now in the storyform) description of a fairly broad-spectrum appreciation like the OS PROBLEM of Being Chaotic: “A chaos-causing Depression forces everyone to either go crazy or try to make a living at things they’ve never tried before.”
So, with an OS CONCERN of Having an Intuitive Understanding of Oneself, maybe it’s something like:
Everyone is torn between their compassionate intuitive understandings (“we’re all in this Depression together, so why should I steal someone else’s opportunity?”) and a refusal to acknowledge those understandings (“because if ever there was a time to be looking out for number one, this is it!”).
And obviously, that’s just one suggestion… plus I have no idea if you or our moderator will see any value in it. But it is fairly short, and does suggest a spectrum (from too much to too little) regarding that “intuitive understanding.”
Does that help you invent one that’s personally meaningful to you?
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Maybe it would help not to think about the levels, but think about the characters. What do you see happening to them? What would be fun for you?
Considering this is a rom-com, and even though we’re dealing with a serious topic (the value of women in the workforce), I’d like to see the humorous aspects of this, how we could laugh at the antics of these people, like the head of the company who, on the one hand says that he has the greatest respect for women, yet we see how his choices twist both the women who work for him as well as the women who are in his immediate family. Like his daughter who sees more about what is going on than does her father and who makes his life a living hell at home by rebelling against what she sees as his “out-dated, fuddy-duddy ideas.” Maybe this is the germ that will eventually grow into the women who take over the work when the men all go to war in the next 20 years.
I think you’re on the right track here, Writegeist… except since you’ve picked the Overall Story throughline, you need to make your 50-words-or-less description be about the majority of the Overall, Objective Story characters, not just about the boss and the women in his family (who aren’t even in our character list).
Find a quick way to lump various groups of “objective-story” characters — like Fleischer executives, male animators and staff, female wanna-be animators, and out-of-work job-seekers and protesters who banter with the women going in and out of the Empire State Building — and describe how their Intuitive Understandings of Themselves (or refusals to Understand Themselves) worry them and cause them Overall Story problems.
And don’t worry about the “comedy” aspects now; most great rom-com writers will tell you they had to get the story “bones” right first, then they made the surfaces funny in the story-telling.
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