Dynamic halves of the dynamic questions

theory
#1

I’ve been rereading articles regarding mental relativity and the difference between problem solving styles. While reading one called Female Perspectives in Problem Solving, I came across the following:

These external evaluations reflect the Mass, Energy, Space and Time of the environment, but in a dynamic sense. They are (in the same order) “How Much”, “What Direction”, “Beginning When”, “For How Long”.

…and immediately thought of this bit from @jhull’s article, The Lingering and Lasting Effects of a Story’s Outcome:

The Co-Dynamic Pair to the Story Outcome is Lingering/Lasting.

It seems Jim’s article is about how he looked at Outcome and decided the other half of the quad should answer “for how long?” And Melanie’s revelation that the other half of Timelock and Spacelock should be Constricting or loosening answers “what direction?” So I’m putting forward that the other halves of Action or Decision and Good or Bad should answer How much? and Beginning when?

It’s late, so that’s all I’ve got for now, but I will almost certainly be giving this more consideration.

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#2

Correction, constructing and loosening are about options opening into more possibilities or fewer meaning it actually answers something closer to “how much”. That means that Driver and Judgment should answer, then, ‘what direction’ and ‘beginning when’.

I only remembered this morning having created the thread found here. Approaching/Distancing the Goal

Approaching/distancing and encroaching/distancing do seem to have an element of ‘what direction’ and so, I believe, are partially on the right track when pairing with Story Drivers. What’s throwing them off, I think, is that I was seeing that “win/loss” feeling I spoke of in the other thread in relation to the story goal instead of seeing how it was moving or driving the story along at that moment in the story.

Taking another look at this feeling of approaching/distancing with the idea in mind of how these things help to push the story forward, then, I feel like they should be less about the story goal and more about how we get from one Sign Post to the next. In looking at the same examples from the other thread re: John Nash in A Beautiful Mind, I’m going to say what pushed the story from the first SP to the second was his Achieving, meaning when everyone was deciding what to do about him, he was able to achieve something that allowed the decision to be made and the story was pushed forward. On the negative side, he could have also failed and come up with a terribly unoriginal idea that would have helped everyone make their decision and push the story forward.

So that’s one direction covered with Achieving/Failing. The opposing element would be something, I think, like being stuck, or mired in the problem for so long that there’s eventually nothing left to explore and the story is forced to move on to try something else. Whereas Achieving/Failing would answer ‘which direction’ with something like ‘forward or backward’, being stuck or mired would be would be like answering it with ‘standing still’ or ‘going in circles’. The term I like for this is Attempting as it suggests trying to do something but not achieving-not getting anywhere-and then the negative side might be something like Abandoning. Abandoning would be like not seeing a way to try and moving on without even exploring.

So the quad for Story Drivers, if I’m even close, might be something Actions, Decisions, Achieving, Attempting.

I have something for Story Judgment and the question of ‘beginning when’ but will have to come back to it later.

#3

I was going to respond with a more thought out answer, but this requires more time to think it out - really interesting work. Thank you for sharing!

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#4

Can’t wait to hear it. Take note that I am VERY linear in my approach to almost everything, so I do not really expect that I’m handling these more temporal, holistic ideas properly. The part that excites me most was the connection that seemed to exist (to me anyway) between the questions in Melanie’s article and the other halves of the quads already suggested. I would be excited to hear that that connection makes sense, but won’t be surprised if I hear that Achieving/Attempting (or whatever it might be better referred to as) is still too linear. That said, I figure I might as well toss out my idea for Judgment before you offer a response.

If the other half of the Judgment quad should answer ‘beginning when’, then it would address when the Judgment can begin-Past, present, future. This seems to suggest that it’s like how Consequences can already be in place at the start of a story. I would struggle to explain how I got from there to where I’m going, but basically I landed on something like Enacting and Awaiting. Enacting would have to do with making something immediately Good or Bad whether at present or during another time. This might be illustrated with a statement like “its a good thing we left when we did, or we would have been stuck in that traffic.” Awaiting, then, would be looking toward the time a particular Judgment will come about, such as in the statement, “one day we’ll look back on this and laugh, just not today.”

Ok, Ill stop there and see if there’s any response before seeing how I can apply that to the MC dynamics!