Just wondering if Costs and Dividends retain their basic meaning regardless of the MC Resolve, Outcome, and Judgment (as a group).
I’m wondering this because in my Change/Failure/Good story, Costs and Dividends seem to have inverted or opposite meanings… at least that’s the way it seems.
Are Costs always negative regardless of the rest of the storyform, and are Dividends always positive?
They don’t change their meanings … is it possible you have your MC and IC in the wrong domains (opposite)?
Can you give an example of something in your story you believe is a Cost and/or something that’s a Dividend?
P.S. Good to see you again Rod!
What part of the Resolve, Outcome, or Judgment do you think would change whether the costs and dividends were positive or negative? Can you give examples of a positive and a negative cost/dividend?
A cost should be something that your characters have to give up to reach the goal, a price to be paid. Maybe think of it less in terms of positive and negative and more in terms of high or low, or worth it or not worth it.
For example, the cost for me to learn Dramatica has been countless hours of study. I’d prefer to just download the theory straight into my brain like Neo learning Kung Fu in the Matrix, but I don’t look at those spent hours as a negative by any means and it certainly hasn’t been too high of a price to pay. They were enjoyable at times and frustrating at times, but they’ve been well worth it to me to the point I definitely would see them as a positive cost if I were to look at it that way. And even if I fail to become a Dramatica Master I will still see those lost hours as well worth the attempt, particularly when viewed in light of the benefits that even just a partial knowledge of Dramatica has provided.
If the cost to learning Dramatica had been, say, that I had to sell my soul to the devil, then the cost would have been too high and the dividends not good enough.
So to answer the question, I don’t see the meanings as changing based on any of the story points you ask about as much as I see the worth going up or down.
I don’t have any specific examples prepared, but your replies have made me rethink parts of my story. I may indeed have a tale on my hands, rather than a Grand Argument Story.
@mlucas indeed my MC would be where my IC is, if I were to swap the Costs with the Dividends, domain-wise.
I suppose writing a tale is all right. My story is a sci-fi fantasy, after all. I want my MC to be Change/Stop/Do-er/Logical, in a Decision/Optionlock/Failure/Good story.
I want to tell a story where going after one’s Innermost Desires costs a person the Future, but plotting that in the story engine flips too many other Story Points for my MC, making him unrecognizable (to me) and unrelatable to the majority of my audience (according to the the Theory).
I think the right fit for my story is to break the GAS and go with my instincts.
What effect would flipping the costs and dividends have on my story, and the audience?
I suppose what I meant by positive and negative would be illustrated by using a gambler as an example. What if the cost to get to his goal is giving up the (negative) habit of gambling his paychecks away? So his cost would be giving up something negative, which is positive, right? So in such a story the cost would be seen as a positive thing, throwing away a negative and costly (no pun intended) habit.
(I do realize that I’m jumping to the Audience appreciations as well as perhaps the Subjective Story, with my example.)
I just want to have a clearer understanding of how a writer can play with Costs and Dividends.
Is it important to you that this be true for all (or at least most of) the OS characters? (I just want to make sure you’re thinking of the OS throughline, and not the MC here.)
You might be able to write a GAS story with that message, without using Dramatica’s Costs and Dividends.
Also, I don’t think the Dividends are something that the characters normally “go after”, at least not for a large portion of the story. It’s more like side benefits accrued on the way to the goal, almost without trying. Sometimes the Dividend might be dangled in front of them so they go for it, but it’s like a side-quest.
A gambler giving up his negative habit (as part of pursuing a different goal) would be a great example of a Dividend. That could fit with several Types depending on author’s intent and emphasis – Future, Progress, Impulsive Responses, etc. I can’t see it being an example of a Cost unless the gambling was shown to be something he truly loved and enjoyed.
On the other hand, if giving up the gambling habit was the goal he might have to bear several Costs on the way to that goal. Imagine him sweating his way past the casino, or having to say no to the hot girl who wants him to teach her blackjack tricks…
In case it helps, here’s how I would use Costs and Dividends:
That said, I’m certainly not saying it’s wrong to think about them more upfront and bring them consciously into your story. It’s just not a method I’ve used.
I think @mlucas pretty much covered it. But 3 things.
Instead of posting all the junk I said last time, I started simply to ask if instead of switching the meanings of Costs and Dividends, is it possible you have your cost where your dividend should be and dividend where your cost should be? As opposed to have the MC and IC switched. I still kind of wonder if that might not be the case.
Regarding the gambler example, I still think it makes more sense to think of it in terms of is it worth it or not. Your example doesn’t explain how not gambling away his paycheck is a cost so let’s expand it to say his goal is to become the man that Jane wants to be with and Jane wants a man without vice (no swearing, no drinking, no gambling!). Not gambling, then, becomes a cost to reaching the goal. As a man who loves gambling, he doesn’t necessarily see the habit as negative or giving it up as a positive (even though you as author do…at least in this specific example). He’s not sure giving up gambling is worth it to win over Jane until he remembers that by not gambling, he’ll have more money to spend on dates with Jane (assuming he was losing more than he won). Taking Jane on dates to McDonalds with what little money he’s used to didn’t seem worth quitting gambling over, but taking Jane on trips across the world seems well worth giving up gambling. So you can talk about whether it’s positive or negative, but ultimately I think what matters is if it’s worth it to the character.
When you talk about a gambler not gambling his paycheck away, I really think you’re talking about two things. You’re talking about the act of gambling, presumably as part of a goal or requirement, and the possession of his paycheck, presumably as a dividend. So gambling could be negative (he’s addicted to it and it ruins the rest of his life) or positive (keeps the urge to murder at bay) and still be a cost. And the extra money I’m assuming it means he has can still be a dividend either way. If it’s negative he might say “I love to gamble, but at least I’ll have some extra cash”. If it’s positive he might say “I’m back to murdering again, but at least I have some extra cash.” I only mention this third point as a way to show how you might play with costs and dividends as you mentioned.
If you care to share a storyform, we might can look at various examples of positive and negative costs and dividends to see how to play with them if you’d like. We could look at your story idea or come up with something completely new, or see how it applies to the gambler.
The storyform is identical to another story I’ve done.
Here’s how to quickly replicate my storyform: Change/Start/Do-er/Logical, Decision/Optionlock/Failure/Good, OS Goal of Obtaining and an MC problem of Uncontrolled.
That should narrow it down to a single storyform.
All this talk about negatives and positives has made me realize I’ve missed the obvious. I think I can still make my story a GAS after all. I have to remember that any Dramatica Story Point can be positive or negative, the presence or lack of something, etc., and can be illustrated in many different ways.
YOLO (You Only Live Once) is the answer I’ve found for my storyform. People seeking to Obtain their Innermost Desires wind up with a wonderful Future, but a very short one. And they will have to sacrifice some of their Innermost Desires along the way, to get what they REALLY want.
It’s amazing to me how Dramatica keeps on giving. YOLO just suddenly popped into my head as I was thinking about my various Story Points… one of those little “aha” moments I suppose, that Dramatica seems to cause in my brain at times.
sounds awesome. Is it supposed to inspirational? Because when I read YOLO my mind went right to dark comedy and murder again. “Why am I keeping that urge to murder at bay? YOLO” Lol!
I’ll look at that form and see what interesting ways to play with it I can think of and probably come back tomorrow. Getting late for me. Maybe @mlucas will chip in in the meantime.
Yes! Definitely a very exquisite and confusing aspect of Dramatica!. And probably a large part of what makes it work so well.
I’m still curious as to what impact swapping the Costs and Dividends would have on the story and audience. I know it would turn a GAS into a tale, but what would it do to the overall feel of the story? Is there a way to assess the actual impact?
I haven’t forgotten about this thread. I’m just not sure how to come at it. When you say “swapping costs and dividends” I assume you’re talking about switching the storytelling between those points. If so, I don’t think that necessarily breaks the story, but it would certainly change the way the characters and audience view the problem.
Let’s look at the gambler. My computer is doing some sort of update that looks like it’s going to take a while, so I don’t have access to Dramatica at the moment to pull up the form. But let’s say his goal is to quit gambling. A cost to this goal might be having to constantly fight the urge to gamble. But the dividend is additional cash in his pocket to spend on other things. Seems pretty straight forward.
But now let’s see what happens if you switch them. The cost to the goal is having extra cash to spend? And the dividend is that he gets to fight the urge to gamble? Is this what you mean when you ask about swapping them? Because I think you can still build a story around that, but it’s much less straight forward.
One thing you’re gonna need to do is address the questions your audience is going to have regarding this. Why is having extra cash to spend a price this gambler has to pay rather than a dividend? Why is fighting the urge to gamble a benefit? Assuming there are answers to these questions, I as an audience to this story, am already going to be intrigued by the type of story this that leads to this setup. But if I see this dividend and cost and get intrigued, but the story doesn’t offer good reasons for this strange flipping of cost and dividend, then I’m going to be pretty disappointed.
So that’s one scenario I think can come from flipping costs and dividends. By flipping the expected C and D, the story might suggest there’s some reason for it that provides a lot of anticipation in the audience, but it also means you better have a good reason for flipping them.
Is that kind of what you’re looking for?
@Gregolas,
I actually meant swapping them at the Domain level… e. g. swapping The Future with Innermost Desires in my storyform, but leaving everything else the same, and then illustrating those costs and dividends with something appropriate to the story.
If the gambler’s Costs are concerned with his Innermost Desires, and his Dividends with the Future, I want to swap them so that they make more sense (to me)… So he may get the dividend of achieving his Innermost Desires, but it costs him his Future. I’m just wondering what impact this has on the meaning/theme/feel, and what the impact on the audience is.
The above reminds me of a Stephen King story. I don’t remember much about it now, but it was something about a guy that had to spend every penny he had every day in order to get more money or something. So to get rid of the money he would dump whatever remained in the storm drain at the end of the day. So that’s one example of a story that would explain why having extra cash was bad. If you’re already trying to get rid of your money, then more money is presumably a bigger issue.
Maybe fighting the urge to gamble could be a good thing for the MC because fighting this addiction allows him to try his mind so that when the telepath tries to read the MCs mind to get the secret, the MC is strong enough to block him.
So I think at the very least, flipping the C and D like that are going to force some creativity.
Gotcha. Thats an interesting idea. I’ll contemplate it untily computer is up again and the try to offer an answer.
Let’s say the gambler finds an easy way to win every time at blackjack. He’s always wanted to be rich, so this seems more like a dividend to me… but with my current storyform, Innermost Desires is the cost, not the dividend. The Future is the dividend, which would make sense to me if my ending were the traditional happy one.
But in my particular story (a Personal Triumph story), I want lessons to be learned for my MC as a change character, so “easy money leads to ruin” is the theme I’m trying to get across. My MC finally sees that his actions will lead to ruin, and so makes a change for the better at the end.
Changing everything around in the software to make this fit has devastating results on my MC, making him a Be-er, as well as a start instead of stop character, with a female mental sex (old terminology)… and this is what I don’t want since I don’t recognize him anymore with such changes.
Okay. That makes sense to me.
So you have a Failure story about a gambler that has found an easy way to be rich in a story about how easy money leads to ruin.
What I think we’re talking about in your example is a character who subjectively sees easy money as a dividend while your story mind sees it as a cost. In order to successfully solve the problem this character would need to pay the cost of giving up this way of making easy money. Since the story is failure, I assume that he doesn’t pay this cost and ends up continuing to make his easy money to the point that the goal is not achieved. The dividend of the Future, if he were to give up this blackjack trick, might be that he doesnt have to worry about the casino sending the police after him in the future because they decided he was cheating. Since he doesn’t pay the cost of not making easy money, he doesn’t get to enjoy the dividend meaning that he is always worried that the police will come for him in the future.
How’s that?
Most of that falls into line with what I was thinking… My story is not exactly about a gambler. I know no one here would steal ideas but since I’m posting this publicly, I’m sort of speaking in code. One never knows how many unregistered users browse these pages and say, that’s an awesome idea… Sorry I’m just a bit protective over my stories.
Anyway, my story is about Obtaining. The MC as well as all of the OS characters want to obtain and/or get rid of things.