Help Understand the Four Through-lines!

questions
#18

Thanks Chris. I believe it’s starting to click. While I understand the way the storyform functions, I don’t understand how the storyform can define and reveal the inequity when no one, not even the author, knows or says what the inequity is.

  • How does the storyform define something if there’s no definition?
  • How does an author determine what inequity they’re showcasing?

Is there an easy analogy to help “get it”?

I think I was confused by something in one of the breakdown articles about the new Bladerunner:
“The purpose of these Throughlines, therefore, is to offer different ways to see the same inequity. The storyform that develops from these perspectives presents a single approach towards resolving that fundamental inequity.
In Blade Runner: 2049, that inequity is birth.”

That last line led me to think one could define exactly what the inequity is in a single term, and I started searching for/wondering what they were in other stories.

#19

Quick pop in that may or may not be correct.

Perhaps it might be better worded as “In Blad Runner: 2049, that inequity [revolves around] birth.”

I don’t know. Just a thought.

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#20

From an old article with some outdated ideas (the article itself stated this), but everything I’ve seen still points in this direction:

At the most basic level, we have Mind and we have Universe, as indicated in the introduction to this book. An inequity is not caused solely by one or the other but by the difference between the two. So, an inequity is neither in Mind nor Universe, but between them.

From this article:

Also, check out this article.

http://dramatica.com/questions/within-the-context-of-story-structure-what-is-an-inequity

#21

You can define something by surrounding it with known items, like a fence can define a property or a serial of points can define a shape, even though you’d never be able to determine the shape from any one of the points.

The author determines the inequity by the storyforming choices the author makes.

#22

That makes sense… but ultimately the author does know he’s defining a property, or a shape, yes?
That’s the part that I keep tripping over.

#23

@jhull, I was searching through old discussions to get better clarification on the concept of the inequity and came upon THIS POST in which you detailed out an example.

Being primarily a visual learner, I had to draw it out.
Is this right? Did I place where Dramatica points out the inequities correctly?
(The arrows are pointing at the thought bubbles between the “Justification Bubbles”)

Screenshot 2018-07-18 14.29.16.png1040×791 168 KB

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#24

Just a few quick points about the metaphors I was writing about
1.) If you use the official Dramatica terms, then use those terms. The only reason you’d ever want to use the metaphors I was discussing are to simplify things largely by not having to use the official Dramatica terms. Discussing “wall” and “stone” alongside “Fixed Attitude, Action, Situation, and Manipulation” is going to just create more confusion

2.) One of the simplifying points of “the wall and the stone” metaphor is to reduce things to A v. B. Tangling A and B together is just going to increase confusion. So, it can clarify to say that Thor’s friends v. Government is a wall dynamic (Thor’s friends are in conflict with pervasive government corruption / apathy) and you can compare that wall story to the stone story of Thor carrying Valkyrie through a number of trials regarding personal responsibility in citizenship, ultimately to have Valkyrie change Thor. But, what is going to be really confusing is tangling discussions of bits of the wall and the stone together when discussing the storyform.

#25

Here’s the link to the article that came from if you’d like to see it, although I think it’s pretty close to the exact same thing.

I know you’re talking to Jim, so I apologize for continuing to butt in, but I don’t seem to be able to help myself. And since I feel like my last illustration was validated, I feel okay with offering another.

I don’t have a picture to offer, though I suppose I could sketch something, but with the car example it helps me to imagine the desire for a car and the ability to buy a car as sitting on opposite ends of a balance beam. If you have no desire and no ability, or if you have both the desire and the ability, they are balanced. If you have the desire but not the ability, then one side goes up and the other down. Doesn’t matter which one goes which way. They are both out of balance. The inequity isn’t anything between the two or the balance beam they are on, but their new positions relative to one another. The fact that they are no longer in line is the inequity, or the imbalance.

So to resolve the inequity, you can place yourself even with one process and try to bring the other process in line with the one you’ve chosen. If you pick ability, then you have to bring your desires in line with your ability. Start desiring a cheaper car or get rid of the desire altogether. Both are valid options bring a desire for a new car in line with an inability to purchase the desired car.

If you place yourself with desire, then you have to bring your ability to purchase the car in line with your desire to own it. This is where you need more money to change your inability to buy a car to an ability. And that’s where needing a job and going to school and otherwise building up the justifications you’ve illustrated come into the picture.

So going back to what I was saying before, you can’t say that there’s something between wanting a car and being able to afford a car that both sides are looking at and that can be described as the inequity at the heart of it (the linchpin idea). Rather, the imbalance between them is the inequity and the statement “I want a car but can’t afford one” approximates that imbalance to your audience. Now add two more processes (Knowledge and Thought) to quadrangulate the problem and your audience starts getting a pretty good idea of the shape of the inequity at the heart of the story.

Now that said, I am clearly not an expert and that “visual illustration” of the balance beam is just what helps me to see it.

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#26

What kind of interesting story can be built around the inequality is that the ability to have a car is greater than the desire?

The closest I can think of is where the desire increases due to other people demanding that you get a car so that they don’t have to drive you all over. But, that probably points more to non-financial factors in your ability to have a car (such as you suffering from post-traumatic emotional effects from a crash in which your child was killed).

#27

Because, again, I can’t help myself, here’s my sketch of an inequity.

70410792-C34F-4FD1-B253-7244489BD742.jpeg1063×3960 501 KB

Box 1 is where A is in line with D. No inequity.
Box 2 is showing an imbalance. A and D are not in line.
Box 3 shows how you chose A and brought D in line. Box 4 shows how you chose D and brought A in line.

#28

That’s what I was wondering. “I can buy a car but don’t want one. Eh, I’ll buy it anyway because I can.” Bringing desire in line with ability.
Or “I can buy a car but don’t want one. Well, I can’t afford to waste money on crap I don’t want. I’m not wasting money on a car.” Bringing Ability in line with desire.

#29

I’m imagining a rich kid who has everything he could ever want in life and is deeply alienated as a result. In the story, the ability to buy a car becomes a stand-in for the larger problem of what happens to your desire for living when everything is given to you.

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#30

There’s also something odd/counter-intuitive about the way inequities get encoded in stories using Dramatica which is that the illustrations of a Problem/Solution don’t need to correspond directly.

Problem: “The ability of citizens to buy too many cars is destroying the environment.”

Solution: “The citizens must learn to care (desire) more about the environment.”

The solution here isn’t saying you need replace ability with desire. Just that the solution to too much ability is more desire.

Does that make sense? (Am I explaining this correctly @Gregolas?)

#31

Hopefully, yes, however the audience may see the shape even if the author doesn’t. Conversely, the author may think he’s included enough points to define the shape but does not realize he’s made assumptions that the audience doesn’t make and they may not “get it.” There is no NEED for conscious author’s intent for the audience to pick it up so long as an intent is expressed.

For me, one of the bits of ‘magic’ of a storyform is that it has built-in meaning – by design. You may not understand the full meaning of a storyform as an author, but if you describe a storyform through some form of communication, your audience will make the connections even if you do not explicitly make them yourself. That comes from our (human) built-in need to make sense of patterns – to make sense out of the senseless and to experience feeling in connections. Grand argument stories contain the points, proximities, vectors, and movements necessary for making a coherent case about how to deal with complex rational and emotional problems. You need only express the argument**, the audience will do the rest of the work.

** Matching your intent as an author with a storyform is a separate, but no less important, matter.

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#32

That’s how I understand it. But It seems like you could go too far, too. Like if the problem was the ability to buy cars destroying the environment, and the solution was a greater desire to eat cake, I’m not sure how I would be able to make that leap. Though I’m interested how a story like that would play out.

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#33

I’m not catching the difference you’re trying to portray in your 1, 3, and 4th illustrations.

#34

Here’s the difference:

  1. They were at the same level, always. They’re in balance.
  2. They were out of balance as in 2. D has been raised. They’re in balance.
  3. They were out of balance as in 2. A has been lowered. They’re in balance.

Is this right, @Gregolas?

#35

Pretty much. Box 1 is in balance. No inequity. Box 2 is out of balance, there’s inequity.

In box 3 this character has decided there is no problem with where A is and locked it in place. To solve the problem, then, D had to be brought into balance with A.

In box 4, the character decided there was no problem with D and locked it in place. To solve the problem A had to be brought into balance with D.

The point of that goofy illustration, though, was also partly to hint at the idea in this:

You can’t see anything between A and D causing the problem. Instead the inequity just is the imbalance between them. And as I mentioned, adding K and T to the diagram would help us have a better picture of the imbalance. Anyway, that’s my interpretation of what Jim, Chris, and Melanie have written in various places.

#36

Also, I think the inability to bring A and D in balance is what would fill the Overall Inequity circle and set off the justification process in @JohnDusenberrys chart.

#37

If you wanna know what happens to kids like this watch the show My Super Sweet 16. It’s pretty horrifying

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