Help, I can't stop overthinking

I think there is something important missing from this conversation, and that is the storytelling.

A story’s meaning and its entertainment value are both important, and nobody should shy away from a great moment of storytelling. And most of my good storytelling moment come a couple drafts into a story.

Spending too much time on the storyform up front can lock up the story, and inhibit intuitive bursts of creativity. It can also make us not recognize when someone points out that there is a storytelling problem because we rely on the storyform to get us across the finish line.

I recently wrote something, and then rewrote it seven times as I got notes on it. It improved every single time, and I think it was after the 5th go around that I flipped the MC from a Do-er to a Be-er. This forced waaay fewer changes in the script than you would imagine, but it allowed me to focus every scene better and I think a deep dive would expose what I did to a Dramatica user. Along the way, the OS did not change, and I could hone the story with each pass.

Interestingly, there is a side character who has one block of dialogue. Even though it’s presented as a throw away–there only to help pass some time–most people mention it, but nobody has ever tied it to the theme. It is literally the OS Issue put into words. I bring it up, because people only think they notice it because of the storytelling–which is why I think we risk miswriting a story when we ignore storytelling.

2 Likes