Yes. I felt pretty good the last two drivers were action, but couldn’t pinpoint the first couple. After reading JBarkers article and rewatching, I agree with him and Rosie that Schizophrenia kicking in is the first Story Driver. It would be hard to point toward an exact decision that leads to because the OS, MC, and IC throughlines all feel like they’re knitted really close in that first act. But with schizophrenia kicking in and John skipping classes and such, I feel like the first big decision is something like ‘do we leave John behind or let him move ahead academically?’
Also, we never even looked at Catalysts and Inhibitors and Benchmarks and all. We don’t have to, but I’d be up for. Just maybe not today. Yesterday the kid had a fever, today it’s me, ugghhh. The good news is I have time to watch another movie to analyze if anyone has a good suggestion!
You’re welcome! I think there was an incident where Dramatica.com site had to get recovered from backup, so some of the newer complete storyforms got lost. I’ll email Jim about it.
Since there’s not much else going on, I wanted to
Come back and address this in more depth.
The love story with the wife shows us how they met, their first date, and then that they are married. I’m not great with RS stuff by any means, but the reason I say this is OS and not RS is this. All the conflict they have seems to me to come from Johns way of thinking. That’s also the conflict others have, which suggests that this is OS material.
Also, Johns way of thinking doesn’t seem to do much to push them apart or pull them together. Alicia mentions that she’s thinking about leaving him, but in the same speech admits that she still loves him. I believed she says something like ‘he’s the same man I fell in love with’ suggesting no growth has occurred, only conflict. I think that also suggests this is OS material. Similar explanation for when she takes the baby and almost leaves. He comes out and says he knows they aren’t real and she stays. So even though there was conflict over him falling back into delusions, the relationship itself doesn’t seem to grow, positively or negatively, because of it.
However, the relationship between John and Charles/Parcher does seem to grow in various directions over Learning. When Charles tells him to keep bashing his head against the wall and tosses his desk, they grow together a little. When John thinks Charles is with the Russians, they grow apart. The relationship is strained when John tells Parcher that he doesn’t want to work for him anymore because Alicia is pregnant.
So I just wanted to address that to point out that just because something looks like a relationship, I don’t think that necessarily requires that to go into the RS throughline. Just another way to broaden how you can use Dramatica to tell a great story the way you want to.
Wow! Thanks. This really makes me see where I steer of course by making huge assumptions – like assuming a marriage in the story has to be the RS; or a warm fuzzy moment in the story (like at the end when he calls her all his reasons) means it has to be the RS. Im glad you went back to this point, because I can understand now why Alicia wasn’t the go to person for IC or relationship.
I have also been looking at the story more. It seems like understanding it has just opened it up for even further understanding. My mind is pretty concrete, not at all flexible yet with using the dramatica terms. I could see the Psychology signposts in Johns story line (conceiving an original idea of governing dynamics, then being a government spy, then becoming cured of schizophrenia, then asking for time to develop an idea for a solution to his problem by not going back to the hospital. I am not able to see it for the OS characters as easily, I feel like I am circling but not coming in for landing so to speak. If that seems of interest to discuss would love to hear your ideas.
I’m not sure what you mean by this. Do you mean you can see how John Nash has conflict from conceiving an idea, but can’t see how, say, Hansen has conflict from conceiving an idea?
I may be misunderstanding the question, but i’m going to go ahead answer what I think you might be asking.
So the OS is about John’s way of thinking. It’s not about everyone’s way of thinking (look at the Sixth Sense storyform, same situation, the OS is all about “what’s wrong with Cole?”). What that means in regards to Dramatica is that Hansen won’t (necessarily) have conflict because of Hansen’s way of thinking but that he, Alicia, the professor, the doctor, Charles, Parcher, Sol, et al will all have conflict because of how John specifically is thinking.
From a far off view of the story, the OS Concern across all four throughlines might be about how everyone conceives of John, or getting John to conceive of reality or something. Because John is schizophrenic and hard to get along with, everyone conceives of him a certain way and this brings about conflict for everyone. Conflict like subtle insults being lobbed where Hansen “mistakes” John for a waiter and John replying that Hansen’s papers have no originality. Things like the professor having to tell John that he can’t move forward based on his current level of work. Things like John’s schizophrenia kicking in. Things like Alicia getting frustrated at how her husband seems distant causing her to have a meltdown in the bathroom.
From a zoomed in level of SP1, we still have stuff like Hansen, I guess, conceiving of John as the waiter. But I think you could say that John not knowing how to speak to the girl in the bar is a form of conceiving creating conflict for him and the girl. There are other small examples, I think, where the way John conceives or fails to conceive creates conflict for him AND for others.
But then you also have the big obvious example of John’s failure to conceive of an original idea. This failure to conceive creates some tension between John and the professor when the professor has to tell him he can’t advance. You could ask how that’s conflict for the professor, what does he care that John isn’t advancing? But the important part isn’t that the characters care about it, the important part is that they experience the conflict. And in that scene, the very small amount of tension between them, i’d argue, fulfills that conflict for the professor.
The reason that “John is schizophrenic” is the OS and “John wants recognition” is the MC is because “John is schizophrenic” is something that, in one way or another, creates conflict for all characters involved where “John wants recognition” only creates conflict for John.
also, i’d phrase conceptualizing, at least in part, as something like “carrying through a plan to ignore Charles, Marcee, and Parcher”. He does his best to ignore them, but this is still a source of conflict that has him pacing around in front of the library yelling “you’re not real!”, a definite bit of conflict.
Wow! Having an "aha moment. Taking this all in now, but really thanks ,again for the help. I know I have blind spots to understanding dramatica, but finally I get the source of conflict part. Way different than what I was trying to do with it. Like getting a new pair of glasses!! Thanks!!!
That’s awesome! I’m glad to be a help. The two areas i’ve invested the most hours of study in would be “how is that a problem/source of conflict?” and “what the heck is holistic problem solving?” so it’s always fun for me to talk about either and extremely rewarding to feel like I can help others in those areas.
have you seen the from conflict to storyform thread? It’s where I outlined a method to have a “Source of Conflict leads to Conflict” statement to help build a story. That’s sort of my take on Jim’s question of “How is that a problem?” It took me forever to figure out what that meant. I think what I was doing, and maybe what some others were doing, is hearing “source of conflict” but really just thinking “conflict” causing me to either have the SOC leads to C statement backwards or to just be missing part of the statement altogether.
Ok I love your method outlined in the thread you shared. It completely gives me a handle on conflict and source of conflict . Can’t wait to sit down and use this to make some story writing progress!! Thanks again!!
One movie recommendation that may feel very similar to A beautiful mind would be Shutter Island. Just a thought, seeing how its storyform compares to A Beautiful Mind might make some interesting discussion. Or it just may feel really redundant??? I really don’t know. But, I thought I would throw it out there.
I’m going to rephrase this again because carrying out a plan doesn’t feel like planning. And since it’s OS, I think it can be restated to include more of the OS perspective with something like “helping Nash to fit in” or “helping Nash find a place”. Still leads to the same conflict.
