Everything is about the source of the problem!

writing
#1

I’m posting this because I keep making the same mistake over and over. When I sit down to encode a blank storyform, I’ll put someone in a Situation, or have them involved in an Activity, and leave it at that, not encoding why this Situation or Activity is a problem. Eventually I’ll realize that I haven’t actually made a problematic Situation, but a situation that leads to (or stems from, or is otherwise connected to) a problematic Activity or a problematic Fixed Attitude or whatever.

Often, I’ve already become invested in the idea enough to want to see the encoding through, which means I now have to find the correct storyform for it. This can be both frustrating and exciting. Frustrating because I’ve done all the work in one storyform that doesn’t fit and I can’t go further until I have the right form, and exciting because it often changes the way I look at the story I’ve been trying to build and let’s me see all new possibilities for it.

Once I know the story I’ve been encoding should have an MC Concern of Doing rather than How Things Are Changing, everything becomes much clearer and the type of story events that need to take place start flooding in. It’s a great feeling, but how much greater would it be if I did it right the first time?

I’m sure most of the regular posters here know this already and don’t have that problem. But just in case anyone newer to Dramatica stops by, I just wanted to leave a reminder (and for myself as much as anyone), even though it’s been said countless times in other places. EVERYTHING in Dramatica is about the SOURCE of the PROBLEM in a narrative. It’s NOT just a list of items for storytelling.

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#2

Yes! To me, this is one of Dramatica’s biggest strengths. It’s not just changing the way you look at the story wily-nily – it’s aligning the way you consciously look at the story, with what your subconscious “muse” is trying to say. This is when suddenly a cold, boring-sounding term like Fact or Test seems to explode with possibility, as though you can suddenly see deep inside of that term to the beautiful core of dramatic potential buried within.

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#3

Yup. At the very least, I frequently have a similar problem, in that I don’t come up with specific Gists for the values I’ve determined. So I’ll come up with something like an Overall Problem of Process or a Main Character Issue of Ability, but then I won’t write out what that actually means in the context of the story. It makes it very difficult to actually use in the story when I don’t have it clearly written down. Chalk that up to another failure of trying to do everything in my head. :flushed:

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#4

What I like to do is keep reminding myself that the table of elements is more like a vast lens set; you have to “look through” the appreciations, lose focus on them almost as if they weren’t even there – the same way the glass inside a lens is meant to focus, but not be the focus. Focusing on the appreciations AS STORYTELLING makes about as much sense as a cinematographer focusing his/her lens on the lens itself, rather than what’s infront of it.

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#5

Exactly! Hadn’t thought of it that way before.

#6

Glad if you found the analogy useful!

#7

10 posts were merged into an existing topic: What’s wrong with Jurassic Park

Moved these to keep the discussion on topic!

What's wrong with Jurassic Park