I am writing a series of three books. There are two aspects of story here, the overall story told over the course of the three books, and the individual stories contained in each of the three books. How should I use Dramatica, on an individual book basis, or for the series as a whole?
Outlining a Television Series with Dramatica should help you out (just substitute novel for series). In short, whenever you want that feeling of completeness, of something being “said” you’ll want a storyform.
I recently consulted on another multi-year, multi-season television project. We actually came up with two complete storyforms for the entire Series (two different sets of MC/IC that needed to be addressed), and started to develop a storyform for the first season and eventually the Pilot episode.
It can be an overwhelming experience at first – trying to manage all these thematics – but it is doable and will ultimately be what you have to run into eventually. It’s not like Dramatica is creating more work for you, it’s just showing you precisely the amount of work you’re getting yourself into!
So back to your trilogy - I would do one storyform for all three books and then a storyform for each book that folds into the larger story.
Since you’re doing three stories, you might want to take your OS for the three and use its journeys as your separate books since there are three journeys in a story. You’d just have to figure out a complete story using the signposts as the endpoints, so that your book 1 ends at your OS’s Act I. I would think your signposts would work well to produce a cliffhanger/hook into the next story, assuming your OS is structured in that linear fashion.
For instance, Book 1 focuses on the journey between signposts 1 and 2, Book 2 focuses on the journey between signposts 2 and 3, and Book 3 focuses on the journey between signposts 3 and 4. Each book would subsequently have its own “feel” because of the natural shift while ultimately working toward the bigger overall story.
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