After getting down to 1 storyform what is next

questions
#1

OK I am first time user of Dramatica. August 2015. The Dramatica theory concepts seem clear to me. I get it. But the software seems awkwardly designed. So I need help with the following:

I am down to one story form after using the settings (yes I know its for advanced users But …).
So Any way, I am down to one story form and feel good about my choices. Now I am wondering what is the next step for me to create the most clear and complete output Dramatica offers? Should I uses Gists? Seems I have by-past that function? Do I move on the Story guides and fill in the questions even if they seem “a bit much” as I am still creating the story and do not know the answers to what it is asking?

Thanks for helping out the rookie.

#2

First off welcome! Glad to have you here. :slight_smile:

So, now that you have a storyform, you should have a pretty good idea what your story is about. Not necessarily all the character and setting details, but the plot and thematic questions central to your story. Before we move out of the Dramatica program, there are still a couple things we can do. First, you can look at the Act order and think about how your story makes sense with that order. If your first Act is, say, Understanding, what does that mean for the plot? What do your Main Character and/or Protagonist (along with the other Overall Characters) need to understand?

Speaking of Overall Characters, the program has a very nice menu for planning out your characters. Give them a name, then select the Elements that define them. Be as Archetypal or as Complex as you like. (One caveat: the program might let you put a character on both sides of a Dynamic Pair, which is verboten.)

Anyways, once you’ve done that it’s time to start thinking about scenes. I… think the program has a way to make scenes, but I don’t remember where it is. (The Story Guides?) Write a scene, decide what Act it’s in, then decide what that scene furthers. Remember, you have an Overall Throughline, a Main Character Throughline, an Impact Character Throughline, and a Relationship or Subjective Throughline. Your scene should advance one or more of those. With that decided, next you have to cast that scene with the characters of your choice. Have as many or as few as you want, though 2 is optimal for a dialogue. Then keep doing that until you’re done!

Once all your scenes are planned, then comes the hard part: writing the story!

#3

Thank you for your kind and thoughtful reply.
allow me to try and better phrase my question. I have the setting, a great deal of research, the basic plot, 2/3rds of my characters, all their personalities, motivations etc, their background story and so on; but I wanted to improve my story and my argument/ structure. Dramatica has been of great help so far. But my question was how to to better understand the software. It appears I can jump around, or do what ever I want, but what is a clear and logical choice from where I am at right now?

What do I do next in the software? My first step was to create a clear structure based on the story that I already have; with that i mind is Story Guide is my next logical step?

My goal is to complete all that Dramatica can offer me before leaving Dramatica with my end result and then finish the work.

For example one person wrote that after I have the form down to one then I should I use gists? However my understanding is that using gists is a way to select the one story form. Am I right or wrong on that software concept?
So if i have my one story form and then use gists that will change my structure? or am I wrong.
Just checking how to get the most out of the software itself. My guess is that after I work through the story guide that will end the Dramatica features. Unless I want to make changes to my story, plot, structure etc. ???

#4

Using the story guide will help you to refine your story by having you answer questions/provide input on things that will ultimately come to exemplify your storyform. There are three different levels of the story guide, each getting more and more detailed. The idea is to get you thinking more about your story, to the extent you may not have before, from Dramatica’s perspective. Don’t be surprised if, as a result, your storyform ends up changing; it’s really part of the process and more important to get the right one instead of merely narrowing it down to one. The questions/inputs you go through will get you thinking to make sure this is the case.

To that end, gists won’t necessarily change your structure - they will help clarify by narrowing down and focusing on more specifics pertinent to your story (in which case, as mentioned, you may end up seeing things differently as a result and decide to make changes). Using the software itself, you should think of it as a process and what you gain by going through it vs. what you get out at the end of it. When you’re done, you still have to write your story, but by going through the process you should be better equipped to do so in a compelling and meaningful way.

#5

If this is your first time I would work through the story guide or the story points window and fill in all those boxes. By the end you’ll know your story better than you ever did …

… the only danger is that you’ll more than likely lose your motivation to actually write the thing. Part of the drive to write comes from not knowing what comes next, or “figuring out” how each scene will play. If you go through Dramatica as a completionist you will figure everything out–there will be no blind spot motivating you to finish.

Try and leave a Throughline untouched, or minimally explored. Then sit down and actually write the thing. You will naturally fill in the blanks yourself as your mind will want to fill in the spaces in the argument crafted by the other three Throughlines.

Then you can go back in to Dramatica and check your work. See where your intuition was in line with what you were saying. If it isn’t you can conform Dramatica to your new argument or rework what you wrote using the Dramatica storyform as a guide.

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