Help Understand the Four Through-lines!

questions
#41

I think it really does come down to I, you, we, them.

Talking about “I, you, we, them” in the context of any politically charged issue can make a lot of things clearer because the differences in the perspectives are that much more pronounced. Here’s an example.

“Them” - ain’t no Americans willing to do the work illegal aliens will do
“I” - I’m a poor coal miner living in Appalachia, trying to support a family in a dying industry, give me the opportunity, I beg you. Just give me a fair wage.
“You” - you’re a lazy, shiftless, blind racist if you don’t support illegal migration
"We’ - what are our values as Americans?

#42

I see it more as having a particular viewpoint on something (so kinda the same, really)
From my perspective, I’m standing motionless on the earth, while the entire universe moves all around me (that’s right, from my perspective the universe is literally revolving around me!)
From your perspective, the universe revolves around you.
From an objective perspective, the universe is a large swirling mass of chaos where everyone and everything is moving around each other.

To bring this back to the previous posts, The way this applies to my A, D boxes is that in box three the perspective was from within the A box, which is why D had to be brought in line with A. But in box four the perspective is from within the D box, which is why A had to brought in line with D.

#43

That’s what I thought, too, @Hunter
I thought Jim might say “birth is not an inequity”, but that birth as storyencoding, to steal from Chris, can convey the inequity to the audience.

#44

So there is at least the SUBJECT of the inequity, yes? Whether or not one can say exactly what it specifically is. I feel like that gives some substance to it. It was just feeling so wildly random and unassigned in theory. Thanks!

#45

Sometimes the way Jim presents it makes it sound like there’s this thing at the heart of the story causing problems, but you can’t see it in its entirety. You can only see part of it from any one perspective so the best you can do is look at all four perspectives at once to see this thing and guess at what it is. And that may be right, he’s certainly the one to go to for advice on that over me. But the way it makes sense to me is not to think that there’s some thing or event or idea such as “birth” or “death” or some aspect of the human condition at the center of the story creating problems, but instead to just look at the inequity–that is, the imbalance between Knowledge, Thought, Ability, and Desire–as the thing at the center of the story causing problems. So rather than saying that some aspect of the inequity at the heart of the story is an “alien threat”, you might say the inequity at the heart of the story is too much Universe, not enough Mind. But you’d have to do that for four area instead of just the two. So if there’s no problem, no matter where you stand, K, T, A, and D would all look balanced. But then once there’s a problem, you might say “If I stand at K and They stand at A, then the problem looks like way too much K, way too little A, not quite enough T, and a little too much D”. Or at least something to that effect. And in that way the inequity that you’re describing just is the imbalance between processes, the difference in level between K and T and A and D. The subject of the inequity could be conveyed as Universe of Aliens, Mind of Aliens, etc, or it could be conveyed as Universe of Aliens, Mind of Pirates or something completely unrelated. Doesn’t really matter what the subject is, it matters where the imbalance of the elements falls.

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#46

I struggle with this issue of the indefinable “inequity” of a story as well, because it always risks reducing the concept of inequity to being irrelevant within the actual practice of writing the story – If I can’t as an author explain what it is, then I’m unlikely to do much with it when putting text on the page. However I think your mention of SUBJECT might be particularly helpful here in distinguishing the inequity as defined by four different points of view versus what those four points of view are struggling with.

In Four Weddings and a Funeral, it sure seems like everyone is wrestling with marriage, specifically, finding someone to be attached to before you die. There are lots of different conflicts around marriage, and varying points of view, but all those points of view are wrestling with the question of marriage and whether to settle or wait for the right person. Whiplash seems to be about excellence, what price you should pay to achieve it, and how to go about paying that price. It’s not about four different perspectives on becoming a great musician. It’s about what it means to become a great musician, and that subject is illuminated by looking at it from four different perspectives.

I imagine that in some stories the subject matter is somewhat more abstract, and thus you can have an MC dealing with a situation of being (in my favourite failed example) stuck in a well, while everyone else is dealing with who’s going to become mayor. But somewhere in there is a subject matter that all four perspectives are dealing with.

Assuming this is correct (and I’m sure I’ll get my well-deserved beating from @jhull if it’s not), then for me as a novelist this kind of solves the cognitive dissonance of the indefinable inequity (or rather, the inequity only defined by a theoretical ‘fence’ set by four perspectives). When I sit down to write a book, I ask myself, “what do I want to write about” and the various perspectives emerge from that. I never sit down and think, “what four abstracted perspectives do I want to write about” and then seek out a subject. Dramatica’s value for me always comes in when I think, “I want to write about marriage. Or swordfighting. Or gastric bypass surgery” and then, “Okay, well I’d better have four different perspectives on that subject in order to explore it meaningfully.”

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#47

Just went back and read the article. Technically he describes the Goal this way. He describes the problem as continually charging in to fight. That’s how Grandmaster et al fit in.

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#48

The concept of the inequity at the heart of the story’s drive and storyform is mostly useful when you want to understand why and how stories work. It’s also useful to explain how a the story points in a storyform are connected. It is part of the explanation for WHY stories are constructed the way they are and how it all fits together.

The abstract concept “inequity” represents is not particularly useful from a practical perspective. Conflict, drive, problem, etc., inform the writer of what needs to appear in a story to make a solid, meaningful argument. The artist/writer brings his or her own flair to a work in the subject matter choice, the fleshing out, and the storytelling presentation.

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