Dramatica and Webcomics

writing
#1

Hi! Forgive me if I’m not posting this in the correct section, but I didn’t see a dedicated section for introductions. Also please forgive the extensive post, but I’m trying to cover both an introduction and a separate topic at once. Later posts should be much shorter.

I’m a rookie storyteller (got the bug back in grade school, and the bite still stings), though I’m a web designer and UI consultant by trade. In my free time I’ve been using Dramatica to produce a weekly Super Mario fancomic at tinyurl.com/mnlclean for the past year – I had an idea for a video game that I thought would be fun to play, but since sending it to Nintendo would’ve guaranteed it ended up on the scrap heap, I decided to do something about it myself and started organizing my thoughts into a simple story to see what the game would be like.

Or, well, I would have, but I’d only discovered Dramatica about a year and half ago (October 2014, as a matter of fact). I found a link to “Heroes Who Don’t Change” (http://narrativefirst.com/articles/heroes-who-dont-changeand) and have been studying the theory with increasing interest until I decided during the summer of 2015 to finally do something with what I’d been learning and leapt into writing the plot. Unfortunately, having only an elementary grasp of the theory’s ideas, the original story form ended up being a half-understood hodge-podge; I’ve since learned that it’s a no-no to give your main character a problem of Expectation and your influence character a problem of Inequity (http://cleanupcrew.thecomicseries.com/comics/42). I’d gained an appreciation for what the various elements and appreciations were and were for by the time I’d started writing this, but I had very little idea of how they all related beyond the basics of dynamic, complementary, and companion pairs within an individual quad at an individual level, so almost the entire original storyform is arbitrary. Narrative First’s recent articles (within the past two months or so) and lurking around the community here have worked wonders.

Luckily, I’ve recently discovered there was such a thing as a demo version of Dramatica Pro which I’ve been using to refine my storyforms and I can safely say that I’ve fixed most everything with the story form not yet written (whoop) but I’m still stuck with my little mishmash of a prologue (not so whoop). So, I’ve decided to emerge and submit my work, such as it is, for review and advice. The prologue’s more or less finished; the last story driver is getting posted tomorrow, but thoughts or suggestions on better storyforms that I could’ve made with what I’ve written would be interesting.

#2

Could the prologue not be part of the storyform? Your post gets me to thinking about prologues. I wonder if a prologue could have its own storyform, as a backstory setup. Interesting.

#3

I suppose, but I was hoping to use it as set up for an ongoing character arc involving the main character of the prologue even though he’s not the comic’s main character, proper.

The “prologue” is technically part of the first act of the story form, which includes the first few chapters.

Prologues themselves I think of as basically very complex book ends, going with epilogues.

#4

Welcome @Jaybird, and yes, you posted in the right place!

#5

Thank you, @jhull.

I’ve been trying to clear things up by trying to write new storyforms by fragmenting the original and spinning a new potential storyform from each throughline, and also going back to the strips I’ve already posted and seeing if there are any emergent storyforms from what I have written.

This is presumptive of me, but does anyone else notice anything particularly about the story so far?

#6

I read up to Comic 26. Fun stuff, though Mario is not normally my cup of tea. I would guess Story Driver is Action. Is Toad the MC and Princess Peach the IC? For throughline summaries, maybe something like:
OS “surviving the attack on the castle”
MC “I live to serve the princess! Oh, did I mention I’m scared sh**less of everything?”
IC “Let’s bake cakes, and keep the kitchen nice and orderly while we’re at it”
RS “The servant should do all the dirty work”

Does that jive at all with your ideas, Jaybird?

#7

That’s actually very close to what I had in mind, especially with the overall and main throughlines, though I was shooting more for Peach trying to ensure everything ends up safe and sound rather than merely bake cakes and so on. She doesn’t like innocents getting involved in the kingdom’s periodic misfortunes… thing is, almost everyone is innocent in her book.

#8

You should try reading book “Dramatica for Screenwriters” available on Amazon. While the Dramatica theory book is immensely dense with examples and information, this book really showcases practical ends of it that I couldn’t quite grasp. And hey. I’m also looking to create webcomics using Dramatica. Good luck!

#9

Thank you all for your feed back. I finally settled on a more coherent storyform, trading Peach’s problem of Inequity for Proven (her critical flaw of desire helps “explain away” previous inconsistencies). Let’s see what I can do for the last four strips of the chapter.

I’ve actually been using Armando’s Instant Dramatica template for some of the strips. I’ll look into the Screenwriters book when I get a chance.