The Problem of the Novelist and Dramatica

writing
#1

I’d like to share an interesting experience I have had with Dramatica while working on the storyform for a fantasy novel I’m writing, especially since I struggled quite a bit, working through at least a dozen different storyforms for this book.

I think that part of the reason for that struggle was because this novel is actually the first part of a larger series, but once I pulled out everything that was for the series alone, I was still struggling. I suspect this is because I was seeing the story from the eyes of my characters instead of more objectively.

However, I’ve settled on a storyform I believe is correct, and the results are rather surprising. I’ll only be showing the MC throughline here, but it was similar for the OC and SS throughlines, too.

In most every storyform I had initially, the MC signposts had this order.

  • Conceptualizing, Being, Becoming, Conceiving

In my current storyform, the MC signposts have this order.

  • Conceptualizing, Becoming, Conceiving, Being

This doesn’t seem very interesting at first, but here is the PSR for the MC in the current storyform.

  1. Conceptualizing -> Sense of Self, State of Being, Situation, Circumstances
  2. Becoming -> Knowledge, Ability, Desire, Though
  3. Conceiving -> Rationalization, Commitment, Responsibility, Thought
  4. Being -> Permission, Need, Expediency, Deficiency

The thematics here look a lot like Conceptualizing, Being, Becoming, Conceiving.

Of course, the question arises: Do I have the right storyform, now? I can’t say for sure, but I do know that with the one I’m using now, everything I’ve already written and intend to keep, and everything I need to rewrite flows a lot nicer into it. Moreover, this is the only storyform I’ve had so far in which the OS throughline actually fits.

I’ve heard time and again that novelist have a harder time using Dramatica because we are so accustomed to viewing the story as our characters, and I think this probably shows it.

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#2

Hi,

I’m a novelist and I always used to jump to the PSR to get a handle on the signposts.

However, more recently I have been forcing myself to use the ‘objective’ variations that sit below the signpost to get an initial feel for what a signpost is about.

I do that because I worried that by going straight to the PSR variations, I was skipping a step, and failing to get a clear ‘objective’ encoding for the signpost.

This is the method I am playing with at the moment: I use each objective variation to develop a beat for the signpost, and then put these beats into some kind of PRCO order, that makes sense to me, and gives the story a progression.

So for example, Signpost 1 for my MC is Contemplation, and I have created 4 objective beats, using investigation, appraisal, doubt, and reappraisal, in that order (my choice).

I can summarise these beats to get a simple encoding for the signpost, which by focusing on the elements below, I trust to be a decent encoding of Contemplation.

However, once I have the four ‘objective’ beats, I can also map them to the PSR variations, and think about how my main character would distort these ‘objective’ beats into the PSR beats.

Thus the PSR for my MC signpost 1 is: closure, hope, dream, and denial (in that order).

However, if I try to get inside the head of my MC, I can easily see how the MC would distort investigation into closure, appraisal into hope, doubt into not dreaming, and reappraisal into denial, based on the story material I developed in the first step.

So I can still see how to use the PSR sequence to develop the signpost, but I am no longer using it as a first step. If I dived straight into beats for closure, hope, dream, and denial, there is a risk my signpost would not be a good encoding for Contemplation. So I try for a more objective encoding first…

I’m pretty sure Jim did an article looking at the variations of a signpost both objectively and subjectively. I think it was for Doing, and it was about about someone crossing a river… anyway, I remember thinking it was fascinating (I don’t have the link). In an ideal world, one would be able to ‘see’ both views when developing a story… but yes, perhaps we novelists have to work a little harder to see things objectively like the screenwriters!

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An IC throughline quick SP1 encode
#3

Which one was that?! That does sound like it would be cool to read, but I don’t remember writing it. Are you sure you don’t mean the series on Generating Dramatic Tension? That was all about the subjective point of view of structure.

#4

Don’t you love when people here give you ideas for great articles for you to write? :wink:

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#5

This

and, this

together sound much like the process I was heading toward. However, I was on the other side of the lake, staring at the depths that I would need to swim, and I think you just gave me a row boat. So, I’ll thank you profusely, @Dral52, while I try it out.

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#6

I think I found my note… it was called “The Wormhole Between Author and Audience” Does that ring any bells? It was about the plot sequence report.

#7

I think they mean The Wormhole between Author and Audience.

Ninja’d! Anyway, there’s the link.

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#8

Where do you find the PSR?

#9

Assuming you have the same version I do @Leah, you can find it in “Reports” under “Dramatica For Screenwriter Reports” - “Using the Plot Sequence Report Materials”.

I am ambivalent about the PSR. Reading Armando Saldanamora’s description of using it in “Dramatica for Screenwriters” makes it sound awesome. But so far it just confuses things for me (still learning though).

#10

Wow! That’s a really cool article–

–I totally don’t remember ever writing it! LOL

I should do more of those - makes perfect sense the difference between the objective view of the storyform and the subjective view of the twisted up model.

Thanks for this :slight_smile:

#11

I used to feel the same way, until I’ve used it with so many writers that I begin to see how much more comfortable they are using it.

It’s because it’s the closest thing to how we see things that makes it easier for writers to work with – its more like how we think, because we’re always seeing the screwed up version of things.

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#12

Its funny because after I wrote that this morning I started thinking about whether I should try diving into the PSR again.

Part of the problem I think I had the last time around is that my storypoints weren’t properly encoded – I believe I was making the newbie mistake of using them for storytelling instead proper story encoding via conflict. Anyway, without proper encoding I was ending up with just a longer string of cryptic story events that I could shoehorn into the story but which gets a little tedious (which in turn makes me think I’m doing it wrong).

I’ve been working on better encoding - leaning on the gists a little more (including your collections). I’m hoping that if I get that level a little more “correct” that it will make the PSR make more sense.

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#13

Just remember that the farther you go down into the twisted up model, the less accurate its going to be. There’s a good chance that everything below the Sequence/Issue level is off because of the subjective nature of looking at something subjectively!

In other words, don’t worry about it being super perfect.

I think this is why Chris says the order of the PSR doesn’t really matter, when clearly it has some significance (and it’s been my experience that the order makes a big difference in the ability to tell the story).

The more you write with Dramatica, the more you’ll begin to understand what everything means. Practice makes perfect!

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#14

With my own writing I’ve found the order of the Variations in the PSR definitely doesn’t line up with the SRCA (1234) order in the story. Yet, I’ve found the PSR Variations to be incredibly accurate, to the point of being spooky!

One thing to point @lakis, the PSR is like Dramatica’s version of a hash function – it’s very sensitive to the smallest change in the storyform, at least in my experience. (Except for Story Limit, that usually doesn’t seem to impact it.) So, if you find the PSR doesn’t seem to line up with your ideas, it might be that your storyform could need a bit of tweaking to match your subconscious ideas.

On the other hand, I’ve recently been wondering whether a writer’s subconscious might sometimes vacillate between 2-3 close storyforms*, not cementing things until after finishing the first draft. (Especially if you don’t outline in much detail.) If that’s true, using the PSR might be one way of getting your subconscious to settle on a single storyform!

* This has been happening to me a bit on my current project, which I decided to outline in a lot less detail than my last one. I’m well into first draft and I’ve got most things worked out, but sometimes wonder if Problem and Symptom might be flipped … and I’m really not sure on the Judgment!

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#15

This has been my problem exactly. I realized that my first couple of storyforms for this project were off - so that could definitely be part of why the PSR didn’t seem right.

So that leads to a practical question: I found Dramatica in my quest for a faster, better way to outline great stories. I lean more on the outlining side vs. pantsing – I really hate it when I get 25-30% into a draft and it feels like its not working, and I have a bunch of material I can’t use. So the appeal of getting the structure right ahead of time is strong.

I’m pretty bought-in on Dramatatica potentially leading to better stories, but I’m also at the point where I keep tweaking and re-encoding my storyform to the point where I’m starting to worry that I’ll never start drafting. So far I’m chalking it up to the steep learning curve – with every iteration I’m understanding the theory better, and I can see how you could really outline fast once you get it. But the process is pretty slow right now.

So here’s what I’m wondering from practical point of view: does it make more sense to encode things at just the higher level, draft as fast as possible and then tweak the storyform as necessary in rewrites? Or should I give the PSR another shot ahead of time? On the one hand, it would be awesome to get the chapter/scene stuff “right” before I start drafting. On the other, I was thinking the other day that I could throw up an “instant Dramatica” and write a draft from that and it would still be more complete than any outline I ever tried to write before I discovered Dramatica – and doing it that way might get me to the finish line faster.

(Mike – what made you decide to outline in less detail this time?)

#16

The other issue I’ve been having with the PSR is how to weave the throughlines together. It’s hard enough when you’re just working with signposts. Armando makes it sound like you should write in sequences … so your OS Signpost 1 variations all happen at once (say the Future as relates to Fantasy/Security/Threat/Fact). But as I was doing it the first time, I kept wanting to outline say an OS Future-Fantasy chapter and then follow it with MS Playing a Role as relates to Instinct, and then back to the second OS variation … but in addition to being terribly unwieldy, something tells me this isn’t the way it’s supposed to work. (Or is it?)

#17

I was tripped up significantly by this myself. As a matter of fact, I’ve procrastinated so much with Dramatica (being a real theory hound and Be-er myself) that I realized I needed a Do-er to influence me to write something. Gratefully, I had a roommate that worked perfectly as my Influence Character in this regard, and finally just sat down and started encoding.

What I’ve been doing for this is encoding the story points with the closest things I have that match, and saying “To heck with it, I’ll better it later if I need.” This way, at least I’ll have something I can write with.

And as to this:

I recall reading a thread on here where someone found they needed to weave the PSR thematics in and out. Something like the first scene would be from the IC throughline, the next would be the OS, and back to the IC, etc. It’s looking like I’ll be needing to do this, too.

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#18

:joy: In my case I’ve been avoiding talking Dramatica with the ICs in my life (my wife, my writing accountability group) because I’m pretty sure at some point they’re going to say “what the hell are you doing? Just write!”

Okay good, it’s not just me!

#19

Actually what I’d recommend is to go through Jim’s “logline to treatment” email course, which is currently available on the home page of Narrative First. It’s AWESOME because it’s based on narrative structure but works at the level that everybody groks – the main character’s personal issues, that sort of thing. With the encoding you’ve already done, it should be fairly easy, but it may spark you to add stuff in places you hadn’t realized you needed it, that sort of thing.

By the time you’re done you’ll have a small but solid outline, maybe 2-4 pages I think. Then you can grow it by adding in more encodings of story points, finding the Act Turns and making sure the Signposts are well represented, and using the PSR if you want.

Personally, I feel the PSR is more useful to fill in details when I already know the high level. Like, I know my MC is in prison awaiting execution in Act 3, and MC Signpost 3 is Impulsive Responses with Closure/Hope/Dream/Denial in the PSR. Maybe I was already thinking of having her mom visit her in prison, so the PSR helps me realize her mom should totally reject her (Denial) and leave her feeling Hopeless.

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#20

That’s a great idea. I was just thinking of doing this. I had started it a few months ago but I was already in the middle of things and thought I would muddle through without it (probably should have finished it lol). [quote=“mlucas, post:19, topic:1190”]
Personally, I feel the PSR is more useful to fill in details when I already know the high level. Like, I know my MC is in prison awaiting execution in Act 3, and MC Signpost 3 is Impulsive Responses with Closure/Hope/Dream/Denial in the PSR. Maybe I was already thinking of having her mom visit her in prison, so the PSR helps me realize her mom should totally reject her (Denial) and leave her feeling Hopeless.
[/quote]

Thanks, that’s a great example – makes a lot of sense.