I just read your scene, Diane, and it definitely kept me hooked. Also, it had an underlying tension (subtext!) that deepened the entire scene. Wonderful demonstration!
I wish I could’ve joined tonight’s class but I was running late after rearranging some things in my living room. I tried to join late, but the meeting was in full swing and for some reason I couldn’t enter. Perhaps next week 
So @Jeremy,
I think you’re going to be shocked. I made a mistake above. And I profusely apologize for it, to everyone. Although, in the scheme of things it doesn’t really change anything…
But I didn’t write this in the order of TRUTH, EVIDENCE, SUSPICION, FALSEHOOD.
I wrote it in the REVERSE order FALSEHOOD, SUSPICION, EVIDENCE, TRUTH. Just in between writing it and posting it I forgot what I did.
But more or less it comes out to be 7 steps
All bundled together with a healthy dose of memories affecting the perspectives.
I’m pretty sure if I switched the order to T, E, S, F that it would come out as a different kind of scene.
Thank you.
Are you respectively mapping desire, ability, thought, knowledge to (layman’s words) want/won’t, can/can’t, need/needn’t, should/shouldn’t?
Then from there, are you using the layman’s words to get a feel?
Then, once you get the feel for the right word, are you mapping the laymen’s word back to its appropriate KTAD?
Then, that gives you the root motivation, thus the accurate justification phrase?
(I have to say, this feels like slowing down the lightening fast processes of the brain in order to explain the way it works things out.)
Ultimately, it leads to a justification phrase that contains the entire KTAD within it.
Did I get that right?
Oh wait a second…in the article: Constructing Sources of Conflict for Your Story
@jhull writes:
We justify the zero level with its corresponding Method in the first level. Can justifies Knowledge, Want justifies Thought, Need justifies Ability, and Should justifies Desire.
So, I mapped the layman’s words to the wrong Zero Level Zen word up above, but the rest of my post still stands.
OKAY! I think I’ll go for a walk now 
Different order = different context = different meaning.
One las thing!
The holistic justification process doesn’t seem to follow the justification pattern discussed in this thread. Can’t wait to sink my teeth into that one.
Words that might be used for the holistic justification process?
Here’s a thread discussing holistic word choices:
Not sure how to put them into phrases just yet…
Ooh - I found some lovely words for the Holistic justification process a la @jassnip and the Writer’s Room Class Season 2 Episode 18 | Nov 9th, 2019 Signposts and Story Drivers in a Holistic Story
Linear:: Holistic:
P = Exposure/Interruption
R = Immersion
C = Backfire/Explosion/Tipping Point
O = Incorporation/Fusion/Reshuffling
I’m just throwing out a guess, but since holistic “problem solving“ is more about balance, I’m thinking something like “one should balance Ability with Desire in order to continue a process unless one needs to balance Ability with Desire in order to change directions.”
Hello all! Awesome stuff here. Just wanted to say how amazing this technique is, and how it truly is the subtext of your story, the underlying pieces that you add texture and flavor to in storytelling. As I come up with JvsJ for each part of a scene I can literally feel the justifications being “stripped away” and growing towards the premise of my story. Has anyone else noticed that?
Jim, this quote from you here is kind of blowing my mind. [quote=“jhull, post:29, topic:2858”]
Can is based on Ability and motivates Commitments that accept Circumstances
Want stems from Desire and drives Rationalizations that allow for Situations
Should builds out from Thought and generates Obligations that surface one’s State of Being
Need finds its core in Knowledge and determines Responsibility that manifests a Sense of Self
[/quote]
What does this mean as far as usage goes? It makes sense, but I’m having difficulty seeing that and then understanding how exactly “Can” justifies Knowledge, “Want” for Thought and so on…Do you think you could explain this? Thanks!!!
Hi @MaddyV,
It is quite complex to explain because it all has to do with the Dramatica model and how justifications work in the Dramatica model. But, there are two classes (so far) in the Writer’s Room in Subtext where people are discussing it in depth.
I know the Writer’s Room requires a subscription to access it, but you can always unsubscribe afterwards (btw, I have no financial stake in the subscription or anything like that. I’m just a student user.). I think this week’s Writer’s Room session will also cover the justification process. So, there will be three sessions in a row pretty much addressing this one topic.
Hope that helps.
Oh, thank you, but I am already a subscriber and have participated in those classes haha! I just don’t recall anyone really clarifying why Can justifies Knowledge, etc. I recognize the other part of it (Can based on Ability motivating Commitments that accept Circumstances, etc) as part of the Psychology quads, just wanted to know if there is more we can learn from those statements). Because Can being linked to Ability makes a lot more sense to me than Can and Knowledge, but Can is justifying Knowledge. Same for the others, Want stemming from Desire makes sense, so how does Want justify Thought? And so on!
I think it has to do with how the model twists when justifications are applied. I’m sure others will enjoy explaining that more (@Greg ?).
For me it also helps to recognize that Can, Want, Should, Need are short-forms for Permission, Deficiency, Expediency and Need respectively. So Can is not just ability – it’s one’s ability limited by what is allowed, which has an aspect of knowledge to it (knowing what is allowed). Want is not just desire – it’s motivation based on lack (what one thinks is lacking). Should has to do with repercussions, which only matter when they affect something we truly care about deep down (Desire). Finally, for Need – that which is required – the Dramatica definition states “needs are always based on a purpose.” This ties it into Ability – being able to fulfil that purpose.
I was afraid of this happening…
what I wrote above in the thread[quote=“jassnip, post:17, topic:2858”]
(Knowledge/Can, Thought/Want, Ability/Need, Desire/Should)
[/quote]
What Jim said later[quote=“jhull, post:29, topic:2858”]
Can is based on Ability and motivates Commitments that accept Circumstances
Want stems from Desire and drives Rationalizations that allow for Situations
Should builds out from Thought and generates Obligations that surface one’s State of Being
Need finds its core in Knowledge and determines Responsibility that manifests a Sense of Self
[/quote]
@jhull Are they both correct? Or only the 2nd one.
They are both correct.
Meaning is context–a quad shifts what it means when the context, or scope changes.
When looking at Can, Want, Need, and Should in isolation - they line up with Knowledge, Thought, Ability, and Desire respectively.
When you pull back and look at the quad as only 1/4 of the larger quad of Psychology the meaning of each shifts in relation to the other 48 Elements.
I’m having trouble thinking of mutually exclusive illustrations of the same story point that are not just negations of one another, especially when it’s at a more detailed level like problems.
In Jim’s example one illustration is “can’t live forever” and the other is basically “can live forever” in different words.
On the other hand, jassnip’s examples don’t feel all that mutually exclusive to me…
In any case, I made some small tool in order to get some inspiration: https://raskoph.lima-city.de/dramatica/justification
read Constructing sources of conflict this morning. great articles.
hull constructing conflict.pdf (18.0 KB)
by the way, this is fun:
I think “is more important than” is a good phrase here. Family is more important than art, art is more important than family. Not negation, a plea for the right proportions at the right time, the right prioritizing. A way of saying “both are important, but neither one is equally important at all times in all cases.” Jim’s thought that this is the wound up position, with the single mind appreciating both justifications and unable to choose between the two until the unwinding process ends up with one position ‘proven’ and the other unproven, and then the writer makes a good/bad judgement on what the process has objectively delivered–the story mind can’t choose between them because in the wound up position, nothing is tested, no proof has been offered–the unwinding is the testing and offering of the proof. “Let’s see what happens, then we’ll decide.”
So we’re just going back to context. Family and Art are not mutually exclusive in general, but within this context they are.
I suppose I made it harder for myself by not considering a common baseline.
On the other hand, going back to Jim’s article examples…
“honor every living creature as sacred” and “kill another”, “feel safe” and “take risks” sound mutually exclusive on their own without specific context and without being strict negations.
I might just be talking through my hat here, but I wonder if this is a Linear/Holistic thing?
So, Wall Street, Linear:
“Greed, for lack of a better word, is good and serves the world.”
“Greed is bad and destroy’s families and people.”
Negation, passing a binary yes/no judgement on a value statement–which feels false, because the great thing about Gecko’s argument is that, in some ways, he’s right. But not in all ways. How many problems of the world result from someone getting a bit of truth (in context) and universalizing it for all cases at all times for all people?
Also, passing a yes/no judgement on a value statement – I mean, who the hell do we think we are? This doesn’t seem to me to be the proper business of rational human beings, who, if they are rational, have to recognize the limitations of that approach. If they DON’T recognize the limitations of that approach, I start to ask questions about their motivations and agenda. There’s a desire for power lurking in there somewhere under the blankets.
I was reading Jim on Melanie on C++ programming, and thinking how a lot of the theory comes out of a time of OOP and noun-based programming, but the world has moved on in the last several years to functional verb-based programming. And the idea of the individual self as being a source of desires is giving away to a set of desires, copied from others, usually, and their particular state at a particular point in time, being the best statement about a ‘self’ that we can honestly make, without wandering off into abstraction and fictionalizing. Not to knock fictionalizing
Wall Street, Holistic:
“Business is more important than family.”
“Family is more important than business.”
If winning/losing is big in the linear mode, finding the right balance is what’s key in holistic. In holistic, the justifications seem to revolve around scope – business is more important because its scope is larger, family is just about the people in the family. Family’s responding argument might be, without the healthy, productive, happy families, where will you get people to buy things from your business, or work for them? And what’s the point of life anyway? Making a better business or making better people?
Something like that.
Not technically mutually exclusive, according to the current interpretation of ancient Aztec beliefs. It was considered an honor to be a sacrifice. Thus, the life of the one killed was still sacred and honored, both while living in the moments before, and after death. Thus, within that albeit ancient and what would more likely now be considered a mind-warping perspective, they can exist at once.
Many psychologists and theories in that field have more recently tended to assume that humans are, in general, not rational, and in doing so there has been a flood of more interesting and more accurate results in many cases. That said, the paragraph from which I’ve pulled this quote could itself be used as a set of justifications for a story. In fact, I think it’d be a rather interesting one at that, especially since people are complicated.
What I’m most excited to see though, is the more Yin/Yang style interpretations of the theory finally being presented more directly and more clearly. They’ve been there since the start, e.g., “Dynamic Pairs are not opposites.” But, it’s nice to see the ideas being clarified in all areas of the theory, and with practical use in mind. I suspect these Justification ideas are only the start of that, and I’m excited to see what comes next.