GREATEST POST IN 20 YEARS?! I’ve peaked.
Just kidding. I’ll take a look at the other Domains as soon as I can. Glad you all found it interesting! 
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I already have it on my todo list for today to add a “Subgenre” column for the Storyforms in Subtext…so get to work!
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@jhay . This is absolutely fantastic. Was just reading through and I must say it is awesome. Please keep going. I want to see what you have for Progress Goal and The Preconscious consequence.
Godspeed friend!
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Its kind of wrapping back around to Georges Solti 
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Howdy friends, and happy (late) fourth of July to you all from this limey bast-- Anyway, I have a little update for you all, and a question. There might be a couple of interesting things in here somewhere:
Almost finished the Physics Domain (not as easy as you might expect!), and can confirm: one of the types has a full, completed quad. I’ll let you take a wild guess which of the four Physics types has all four subgenres identified…
Some interesting patterns are emerging. The big one: as @actingpower spotted initially, the subgenres do, in fact, appear to line up with the thematic issues below their individual Types. I didn’t look to the issues when researching, but they do appear to be lining up in hindsight. However, the Issues of the stories themselves don’t line up with their subgenres (which I expected). For example, Collateral and Finding Nemo share a storyform but are in different subgenres. So that’s interesting.
I’m also starting to think these contextual subgenres work as ‘sub-types’ to some degree and have some form of fractal logic of their own, but I’ll explore that theory a little bit more when I come back with the Physics stuff.
Right. A question:
- I’m considering skipping the consequences this time as I’m finding that the Consequences, by and large, are just reflections of the concern subgenres with very small variations and can feel a bit repetitive. So it’s up to you guys, and I’ll only ask this one time: do you want the consequences? (EDIT: My lawyer has advised me to stress heavily that this is NOT a threat.)
I also intend to go through the Psychology types and polish them up a little bit to reflect the stuff I’ve learnt while researching all of this, so look for that at some point this week.
Thank you for reading this far.
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I don’t have much to add, but I just wanted to add a thumbs up to this work – super-interesting and useful. It was timely for me too, as I was just reworking a thriller outline from Physics to Psychology, and noticed that the vast majority of psychological thrillers actually have a concern of Conceptualizing (as your analysis suggests). So just having that in mind could have saved me some time.
Not sure how to connect it, but that recent post that @Rachel_Blot started a little while ago about the personalities of different Concerns was really instructive as well – like a different lens.
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That’s the kind of result I’m hoping for from this big experiment. I really want it to help people ‘locate’ their stories in an easier way. It can be so hard to define from just a list of Dramatica terms and analyses, and sometimes can become overly confusing. Very happy to hear this would have helped.
That post was actually what made me look into this stuff. Seeing so many different interpretations of the types inspired me, and then I discovered the two ‘Being’ stories I had seen over and over. I give all credit to @Rachel_Blot for the inspiration.
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I definitely got something out of your descriptions of the Consequences, but I also understand what you’re saying. I don’t want to ask you to do extra work since you’re doing so much already (which is SO helpful), so I will be happy with whatever the consensus. Thanks again for doing this!
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Same feeling as @Jain – the Consequences stuff is great, but it’s kind of the icing on the cake; you could always add it in a second pass if it’s giving you trouble.
Incredible work so far!
It’s got to be Obtaining!
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Nopes @mlucas, it’s Learning. LOL. Great work @jhay. I really love the consequences. I’m not insensitive to the amount of work you have to do but with these things I’ve found that one gets fatigued at some point. So imho I’d say give it a single thorough passthrough. Thanks again for your great work
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Well I’m happy it could provide you with some inspiration, the post you made is very interesting and will surely help a lot of people with their writing ! (it was especially hard for me to differentiate Conceiving stories from Conceptualizing stories, but now it’s much more clear 
)
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Building on this, I’d like to throw something against the wall and see if it sticks.
Looking at Becoming, for example, the quad under it is Rationalization, Commitment, Responsibility, Obligation.
You list subgenres of Becoming == Goal as Makeover, Evolution, and Social Change. Perhaps these correspond to the quad as Makeover == Rationalization, Evolution == Commitment, and Social Change == Responsibility. That leaves a goal of becoming in exchange for someone else’s earlier or potential favor. I think we can flip this to include becoming in exchange for someone else’s disfavor as well. So, this gives us revenge / payback stories, Breaking Bad, pretty much anything which has the theme “he who fights with monsters must take care less they become monsters.” It would also include Sister Act and other movies which show social bonds between people and how an act of kindness reciprocated can transform a community. The core characteristic is reciprocation. You might view this as splitting up Social Change into two categories; reciprocal and non-reciprocal.
I think Makeover and Evolution will definitely be in a pair. Makeover is the external change to Evolution’s internal change, so they will be in some form of dynamic pair. If anything, they feel more like Commitment and Responsibility to me. Social Change maybe Rationalization? Not sure without the other type.
This will come up when I get to the Physics Domain, but Revenge and Payback stories show up in the Obtaining quad almost exclusively. In fact, your example has a Becoming consequence built in to it!
Occasionally, you might get a Psychology-based Revenge story (maybe a conspiracy-esque thing or an attempt to make people think the Mark is crazy), but generally, those things are Obtaining. It’s actually so popular that I almost put it as a subgenre (and the Heist story), but they both kind of fall under one umbrella subgenre.
A big part of makeover stories is that the external appearance doesn’t change the internal nature. There’s usually a point in the story where the lack of internal change becomes an issue. The madeover person is confronted at the crisis by the lack of internal change and the conflict of the climax is whether they will finally make that change, usually by doing something they were unable to do in the first act.
Rationalization shares this idea of something being sold as something else. Then,the fact that it hasn’t changed its nature is what creates the crisis. The climax asks the question “can it change its nature?”
True, but that’s not so much about the subgenre as the MC Resolve. A character in an Evolution story could also face that crisis of ‘can I actually move ahead with this huge life change or can I walk it back?’ It might be harder, but it’s an MC Resolve question.
Admittedly, using the words external and internal is completely wrong on my part, given that we’re talking about an Internal domain. But what I meant to say is that one is an intentional change, while the other is unintentional. ‘Makeover’ stories are driven by characters intentionally seeking to change a set of circumstances, while ‘Evolution’ stories just happen to change their characters because of life or love or something else experiential.
My use of ‘external’ and ‘internal’ is down to the fact that most Makeover stories do tend to deal with the external world to some regard (such as making over the Moulin Rouge or getting Harvey committed), whereas Evolution stories are pretty much entirely about that inner journey.
My argument for Social Change in Rationalization is that it’s a subgenre entirely about changing people’s minds and challenging rationalizations for the status quo. But there’s only one story in that subgenre, so it’s a tenuous grasp, I’ll admit. Without the other, it’s hard to determine where it sits.
Hey @jhay. How’s it going? Hope you’re in great health? Just checking in to ask how the work is going?
We eagerly await the awesomeness of your findings.
Godspeed friend.
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I’m all good, thank you! And it’s coming, I promise! I wanted to double check some of the findings since some stories were hard to place, so I’m just obsessively watching as many Physics movies as possible to figure it all out.
This is the watchlist at present*. There’s a lot (I’ve been doing them in double features based on storytelling similarities where possible), but I won’t watch all of them because I’m aiming to get the Physics set all uploaded sometime during the first week of August. And then the next will be first week of September, and the next first week of October. That way, I can watch a few movies and then update after the fact as I experience more and more stories.
So it’s coming! First week of August!
*I’ve managed to get through twelve so far (not on the list). The colour system isn’t representative of anything, just a key to let me know where I watch the movies (DVD, Netflix, etc.). Bolded and underlined are today’s watches: Erin Brockovich and Team America – what a double feature!
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Thanks for the head’s up! I’ll read everything carefully — train commute mulling-over time.
Awesome! And I like the movies on your list too. It’ll be worth the wait; I can feel it. Thanks again @jhay.
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This is so helpful, it really give a clearer idea of the Concerns by attaching familiar plots to a Type! I’m looking forward the next ones!
As for the consequences, I think you could add some examples, but I doubt a paragraph is really needed for these, since they tend to look similar to their counterparts.
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