Domain Help for my current work

writing
#1

I’m conceiving a taboo romance story that primarily focuses on a couple that fall in love at the beginning of the plot and spend the majority of the rest of the plot

a) trying to understand if the feelings are, in fact, love
b) trying to keep their feelings unknown from the other person, let alone ANYONE outside of the parties in question
c) trying to prevent themselves from acting on the feelings

By story’s end, they embrace their desires and accept probable consequences.

Is this OS? RS? Are they a joint-MC? What domains?

Also, their coming together at the end is supposed to feel positive for the characters. I can’t figure out if it’s a Personal Triumph story or just a Happy Ending with extremely high costs.

Let me know if you have any questions to clarify things.

Thanks in advance.

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#2

Is anyone else in the story dealing with similar issues? For instance, because of your use of words like “understand” let’s just assume this is a Physics story for now, even if it’s actually not. Do other characters experience conflict from trying to understand or hide something, or even other types of Physics events?

Does trying to understand feelings and hiding them from others cause the relationship to grow in either a positive or negative direction or create conflict for the relationship?

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#3

I had a MC throughline in Mind, once, and this reminds me of that. It was a Dramatica consultant who pointed that out, adding that it was not common.

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#4

When they fail to keep their feelings restrained and little expressions of affection leak out, then the relationship grows in a positive direction. The tactics they use to prevent the possibility of these expressions (i.e. being cold/stand-offish, avoiding physical proximity, or downright hurting the other) cause conflict and negative growth.

When either of the couple reject other outside love interests, forego spending time with friends, or let their work suffer as a result of taking actions because of their feelings, they create conflict with OS characters. I can see that being Activity as well.

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#5

You’re saying the MC and IC rejecting others, foregoing time with friends, and letting work suffer creates conflict WITH OS characters. But that is different than OS characters also experiencing conflict.

Say we have an MC who tells the other members of his cult that he can’t help summon the great evil tonight because he has to stay home with his wife. So the other cultists get mad and tell him he’s been kicked out of the cult. The MC player has experienced conflict with other OS characters in that they’ve gotten mad and kicked him out of the cult, but those other characters have not experienced conflict yet. Their actions are just part of what makes the MC players problem problematic.

But let’s say the summoning of the great evil took a long time and the cultists were all late to work the next day and summarily fired and can no longer afford the ingredients for their special kool-aid. Now everyone has experienced conflict.

So does everyone in your story actually experience conflict in this area, or is everyone just a part of the conflict that the MC and IC face?

The RS conflict should really be outside of the OS. So if all of your characters and this particular relationship experience conflict from the same issue, then this is probably an OS issue and the relationship in the RS should be about something else. If the other characters aren’t actually experiencing conflict but are just part of the RS’s conflict, and the relationship is experiencing conflict, then I’d say there’s a good chance this is an RS issue.

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#6

One example that comes to mind is Romeo and Juliet. The OS (what all the characters are concerned about) is all about the fighting between the Montagues and the Capulets (Physics/Doing). The RS, obviously, is all about Romeo and Juliet. Their relationship experiences conflict and challenges from the two of them, but also from the actions of other characters, all of it related to problematic thinking and “Manipulation” (Psychology).

Compare this to When Harry Met Sally, in which all of the characters have conflicts relating to Fixed Attitudes (Mind) (especially about the opposite sex) and Innermost Desires (Subconscious), while the RS (Harry and Sally) has a Situation (Universe) problem of always being in some kind of circumstance that prevents them from being together (they’re always in another relationship, etc.).

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#7

It sounds like you have a strong concept for the RS, but not too many details of the other throughlines yet.

One thing you could try is to develop the story more, not worrying about Dramatica too much. I did this when my current story was in conception and it turned out great. (I can even recall thinking that my MC might be in Physics but he actually ended up in Mind!)

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#8

I know I want my MC to be someone who is determined to maintain the stability, friend-and-family group, and generally placid life that he has turned his life around to achieve.

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#9

This is tricky for me. Re: Overall Story, I see my story being very similar to Brief Encounter or In the Mood for Love. I have great Dramatica analysis to get me thinking with regards to Brief Encounter, and I think an analysis of the latter film from more knowledgeable people would go a long way.

I think my trouble is my story, as I imagine it, has a very de-emphasized OS (again, I think) with a lot of implied conflict.

The implied conflict is some that audiences sense without it being overtly stated. They sense it based largely on what they bring as audience members to the situation, their current cultural sense of normativity and propriety.

I’d like to use this story to work on my GAS muscles, but I’m having difficulty assigning throughlines.

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#10

I don’t know if this will help at all, but maybe try escalating the conflict just while storyforming.

Let’s say we have an OS with a very mild problem-conflict like ‘forgetting to put up the cheese means no one can have cheese on their sandwich.’ Just for the sake of storyforming, let’s ramp this up to ‘forgetting to put up the cheese means everyone winds up with flesh eating bacteria and dies a painful horrible death’. Now you have a lot more emphasis on your OS to use as a placeholder until you decide where it goes. Once you’re done with that step, tone it back down.

Think that would help you to see your OS better just long enough to find a form for it?

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#11

Note – if you want your story to be a GAS, it has to have a position (complete argument) that is irrespective of what the Audience brings. Another way to say that is that the story’s Author needs to know what the sources of conflict in each throughline are. Everything in Dramatica is from the Author’s perspective.

However, keep in mind that your story’s Author is both you and your subconscious, so you don’t have to know everything consciously to start the first draft.

To make the sources of conflict more subtle, you can obscure the storyform. I think there are some threads on these boards that you can search for. And here is one blog article by @bobRaskoph :

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#12

When trying decide what Throughline this is, another approach is to ask yourself if these two characters are meant to be a MC and IC pair. It’s been inferred by some others but I don’t think that’s been overtly stated by the author.

If the answer to that question is yes, then their developing romance is the RS. If the answer is no, then their romance must be in the OS and somehow the problem element preventing them from getting together is shared by everyone in the story in some way.

That second story is probably a lot more complicated. It needs an IC to influence whoever winds up being the MC, which has the potential to crowd out the other character involved in the romance, though this could be mitigated by making that character the protagonist.

The other option, making them dual MCs, you already mentioned. In this case the characters have to have the same personal problem. They’ll have to have either the same character as IC or separate ICs that are structurally the same.

Instead of looking at what you have and trying to put it into throughlines, it might be easier at this stage to look at the different directions you could go in and how each choice changes what the story will look like, so you can pick the one you prefer.

It’s possible your difficulty in deciding whether the romance is RS or OS is a sign that you actually want those throughlines to share problem elements. This is a way to sort of have both, though the RS and OS will treat that element differently. This also forces the OS Outcome into Failure, which is relevant since you also mentioned this might be a personal triumph.

Can anyone of an example of a story where there was a prominent romance in the OS involving the MC, but where the MC/IC RS is something totally different?

Spider-Man 2 maybe? Assuming it’s a GAS.

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#13

That just blew my mind. I never consciously made that connection between the RS and OS.

So here’s my question – if your focus on the RS, how do you handle the resolution of the story? For example, @Bastoche says: [quote=“Bastoche, post:1, topic:2229”]
By story’s end, they embrace their desires and accept probable consequences.
[/quote]

Does a resolution like that have to be in the OS, or could “embrace their desires” represent just the RS with something else illustrating the OS Solution?

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#14

I think if Failure is assumed for the Outcome in this story, then ”embrace their desires" probably falls within the RS. So, you have a successful outcome in the RS (which isn’t a structural consideration as far as Dramatica is concerned) and likely a Judgment of Good for the MC. Breakfast at Tiffany’s has this structure, iirc. That’s a movie where the Failure seems less impactful than the Good Judgment and the successful RS because of which parts of the story were emphasized.

One thing to remember, though, is that the Consequences should extend to the other objective characters as well.

More generally, I think it’s fine for that ending to be illuatrated as part of the RS, just so long as the OS is accounted for. In fact, in a Failure story in which you wanted to also illustrate/ emphasize success in the RS, it’s necessary to illustrate those outcomes separately because you’d be showing how the problem element is still at work in the OS while the solution element is at work in the RS. Those elements will always be a dynamic pair in a Failure story, but they’ll look even more different than usual because you’re getting the “they” perspective of the problem and the “we” perspective of the solution.

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#15

Maybe Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (I think this is the instalment where the romance between Harry and Ginny is fairly prominent). Again, assuming that one book or movie is a GAS on its own. The whole series is considered a GAS but of course, that romance is pretty small in the larger context of the series.

There’s Raiders of the Lost Ark which has TWO storyforms but neither has Marian as the IC.

I feel like I’m missing a really obvious one!

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#16

Shrek? He wants to go back and she ends up going too.

#17

Also, if the Story Outcome is Success, there’s still a connection between the OS and the RS. Instead of the two throughlines sharing the Problem/Solution pair, they will share the Symptom/Response (Focus/Direction) pair in a Success story. Not sure if that helps with assigning the Domains for your story, @Bastoche, but maybe it will be useful to you somehow. :slight_smile:

Not to mention the romance between Hermione and Ron!

Probably not, at least according to Jim’s analysis of the film:

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#18

The Devil Wears Prada has two romances going on: Andy and the man she lives with, and Andy and the good looking guy. The OS Problem is expectation and I think that extends to both of these fairly easily.

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