Yes, excellent! I admit I’m still thinking this through – I need to come up with more compelling reason why she feels that she needs to destroy this proof.
It takes a certain kind of stupid, or desperate, or unthinking, courage to try something that hasn’t been done before. I would ask, what theory are they testing out that is unproven? What result do they want to get, expect to get, are likely to get. Is it likely to end in disaster or success? How will the audience feel as they’re experiencing it? What could they have done instead and why didn’t they do it? And what’s their internal thinking or emotions that led them to the unproven course of action?
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Not sure if this fits—but don’t forget the positive side of Unproven—my story hasn’t been written yet. That kind of thing.
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I make little + or - signs to remind myself where the element is falling on the spectrum for me.
Here, I’m trying to express the idea the characters get into a deeper hole, but eventually things are okay. I use + - valence to show there’s ambiguity or balance in that element’s charge.
This is right on - what I need to think about. Especially the dilemma and what they could have done instead.
Yes, exactly - there something there but I’m not sure what it is. But this is what I’m looking for. Something like she accepts her responsibility as a leader even though she is unproven (but that’s still a little vague).
Perhaps make it concrete, not just a vague, she accepts her role, but now she has to lead people over that damn hill and she’s not sure if you can. Or maybe she is sure she can, but nobody else is.
Maybe she is unproven in her personal history but she knows her ideas are better than the guy who was there before her. So she’s confident and rightly so.
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Maybe she’s completely confident, maybe she personifies the battle in front of her as thinking it can beat her but as far as she’s concerned, it’s faith in itself is unproven, and she intends to keep it that way. If she were them, she wouldn’t be so brimming with confidence. Their ability to defeat her is unproven.
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I like both of these ideas, but here’s where I start questioning myself – what is the difference, in Dramatica terms (in this context) between Unproven, Trust and Faith? I feel like a lot my ideas start leaning toward the latter terms as I understand them. Does that matter?
For what it’s worth, the OS issue in this story is Wisdom.
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Here I must bow to wiser heads and DSEs
Faith is more about belief, though it can be difficult to differentiate from Trust a lot of the time. However, since it’s in a different area of the model (Faith & Trust would never show up in the same story), you don’t usually need to worry about differentiating them!
I think Jim groks Unproven a lot better but to me it’s different from Trust because the emphasis is on the untried nature of the thing – either as the drive (“yeah I’m a rookie but I’m gonna be awesome, just you wait”) or as a boon (“it’ll work because it’s never been tried before”) or on the negative side, something dubious or untried (“these recruits are too green”).
Whereas with Trust the emphasis is on the trust itself, on accepting implicitly something that you didn’t or can’t verify. The emphasis is on the “giving over” or “letting go” of the need to verify – sometimes that’s good (“trust the Force, Luke”), sometimes not (murdered wife, I bet the husband did it).
Here’s the important thing though – any one instance (event, beat, line of dialogue, whatever) – could be many of these things. Obi-wan saying “trust the Force” and Luke switching off his targeting computer could’ve been Faith, or Unproven – if the rest of the story supported those things. But in Star Wars, because of the context that the rest of the story gives, it’s obvious that it’s Trust.
So don’t worry too much if you have one instance that looks or sounds more like Faith or Trust than Unproven – as long as you the Author understand why it works for Unproven, and the rest of the story is working on Proven & Unproven, that’s good enough for the Audience to appreciate it properly, IMO.
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Thanks @mlucas. I realize there’s an irony my not having enough faith (or trust?) in myself to just go forward with it.
After all this, I’m circling around an idea in which she doubts herself (and is doubted by others) because she is not a Proven quantity (e.g. she doesn’t have the education and experience the others have etc.). By the end though, when everything had gone to hell, she’s the only one left to lead (thanks @GetSchwifty) and so has to trust herself to do so even though she’s an Unproven quantitly.
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I think Unproven is quite rational and literal: something is proven or unproven by external tests. You Don’t Know if it will work. Trust etc is about feelings.
I don’t know, I feel like there are a lot of cases where a character’s Unproven drive is very much about feelings. Think of the new athlete who’s just joined the team, desperate to make something of himself… Or have you seen Whiplash? The main character there is driven by Unproven to the point that he drums until his hands bleed …
But that’s mixing up two ideas: being unproven, vs your anxieties around that, your trust in yourself, self-awareness, etc. At least that’s my current level of understanding, as a newbie. Every post or opinion I have should be labeled in red BUT I COULD BE WRONG because there seems to a definite part of the theory which is specific and doesn’t have to do with opinion of the theory-user, although there also seems to be some part that is subjective. Any thoughts on where that line is?
Regarding Unproven, I think we may be saying the same thing with different words. If you can watch a movie like Whiplash or Eddie the Eagle and see how the MC is driven by Unproven, you got it.
The theory itself is completely objective, but it relies on subjective “measurements” by humans. That’s why “calibrating your instruments” (watching lots of movies and trying to get an understanding and feeling for the various appreciations and elements) is so important. Also why group consensus is so important during analysis – comparing the results of several instruments whose accuracy is difficult to verify individually.
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as an addition to your question …and as it relates to post from @chuntley earlier
To see the difference between elements, you can put the elements in context with the issue:
Here some ideas and examples for the three elements:
Faith as in…
- (Openness) seeing sudden chances as opportunities
- (Morality) believing in good intentions of others
- (Dream) being convinced someone dreams become true
- (Commitment) going with a friend whatever comes along
Trust as in…
- (Fantasy) believing someone’s imagination can finally turn out to be real
- (Skill) completing a job without getting distracted by contracting information
- (Confidence) finishing a difficult task in-time despite time pressure and high expectations
- (Desire) she wants to believe him but she cant after what happened
Unproven as in…
- (Fact) nothing is true without facts
- (Wisdom) having dramatica expertise doesn’t count until you finish you first draft
- (Value) some pieces on the flee market might be worth a lot or nothing
- (Knowledge) barking dogs don’t bite until its proven otherwise
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Thanks @Gernot – this is helpful. So I guess this means that because my OS Issue is Wisdom, I should be trying to think of Unproven mainly in that context?
My first thought on reading this was to wonder if maybe I need to rethink my illustrations in this context, but I wonder if that’s necessary, as I have also tried to illustrate Wisdom. So maybe just having that context will take care of it (I hope).
Yes, the context is important especially looking from of issue, concern and domain. Asking questions is helpful for me as well “seeing the story” instead just an element:
For example for wisdom:
Hunch: Why do they need to use hunch something showing it? A young girl believes everything what she is told by her very best friend
Proven: What do they need to prove to get it? A teenage must handle a difficult situation to prove they are old enough for something
Theory: What should they know without having facts? Buy cheap but buy twice or buy expensive but buy once – is it all theory?
Unproven: What needs to be proven before something else happens? Being a dramatica expert doesn’t mean anything until you finish a first draft
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It all depends on whether or not you think it makes your story better.
Even if you don’t put it into context of the Issue above (like Unproven in terms of Wisdom - which, @Gernot, that is a great list!), the Audience will be able to make the connection themselves and be able to understand the message of your argument.
It’s the old thing about whether or not you need to specifically encode the Problem in context of the Issue in context of the Concern in context of the Genre and whether or not these can be four completely separate things, or do they all have to connect.
The storyform makes all the connections for you–by virtue of the way the model was constructed. The idea that your story’s Problem is Unproven and the Issue Wisdom - the Audience will naturally make that connection, even if your storytelling is vastly different and doesn’t mix together well at all.
That’s why theoretically you could have a Relationship Story Throughline between a MC and a character who is not the Influence Character, because it is the storyform that reigns supreme, not the story.
In short, you really don’t need to worry about it to that amount of detail, let the storyform make the connections for you and just follow your intuition on what sounds fun to write.
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It’s actually kind of weird/amazing how this works – I’m writing along (not consciously thinking about Dramatica) but all these things are coming up which just seem to fit. Well, at least that’s how if feels now. We’ll see what my readers say when I’m done. 
Probably this is for another thread by I’ve been wondering for a while if this was possible, especially in the case of an IC handoff situation. (Note to self, start another thread…)
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