I’ll play around with the PRS, thanks for highlighting that. Also, I look forward to reading through you blog!
I like that explanation of Dramatica’s purpose. Thank you. I’ll bear that in mind as I move forward.
How much time did it take you to get to grips with the program before you started using it to write a story?
I got into historical fiction writing, tours, etc
And I am going to write the books someday, or let’s say complete them. It’s such a drag when your historical situations resonate in ways you don’t want it to with current events so I’m kind of wandering into screenwriting. I’m a hobbyist here.
To answer your question, getting dramatica was one of the top 10 decisions I’ve made in my life. It is fantastic! It gently gets your mind to see stories as a whole, and whatever you understand from the theory you can write some from that point, i.e. someone gave an example on this list of how you just need a few points in an arc and you can fill in a whole circle.
Another thing that’s really great about the program is that you can put a story aside…just write your thoughts in different parts of the software, just write what you think Tinker here Tinker there and you can come back to it ten years later and it’s as though you just walked away from this fresh as the day you stopped typing.
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For what it’s worth, I have a familiarity with both Dramatica and K.M. Weiland’s Structuring Your Novel/Outlining Your Novel/Character Arcs books (though I wouldn’t consider myself an expert on either.)
My own experience (which I think mirrors what others have said here), is that story development models tend to break into two distinct types: what you could call narrative progressions and Dramatica.
Narrative progressions include K.M. Weiland’s work, Save The Cat, Hero’s Journey (in all its many forms), Jeffrey Schecter’s “My Story Can Beat Up Your Story” and a host of others. If you’re looking for a roadmap to ensure you get to a novel that hits not just the “beats” but the sense of pace and progression that’s found in most commercial fiction, then having a sense of the big moments are that you’re building towards can be reassuring.
Dramatica is unique in its approach and I don’t think there’s anything else out there that works the way it does. The focus, as has been said, is on sources of conflict. Dramatica will lead you to a set of coherent viewpoints on those conflicts and provides a means to go in many different non-traditional directions while still arriving at a satisfying story.
The disadvantage of the narrative progression roadmaps is that, well, you’ll learn them very quickly and in a way they stop being useful because the concepts take potentially very complex things (like all the different possible ways in which we might feel as if the story cannot possibly continue, that everything has failed) and toss it into a term like, “Death” or “All Is Lost”. Sure, it’s still true, but it doesn’t cause my brain to generate new and interesting ideas.
You never quite hit the end with Dramatica (or even the end of the beginning, actually, which is what makes it so god-damned hard), so while it is perpetually frustrating, it does give you more avenues to come up with new ideas – your ideas – which is the point of the creative process.
Personally, I’ve reached the stage where my brain alternates between the two models. Sometimes I need that concreteness of thinking in terms of a set of stages that a book goes through, and sometimes I need to think in terms like “Well, is this really a Situation? Or a Fixed Attitude?” There really are times where you want to think not as if you’re trying to reach some conclusion, but rather make sure you’ve explored all the facets of the sources and points of view on the conflicts in your story. Dramatica has that sense of completeness to its model.
I think it’s worth pointing out that K.M. Weiland is in many ways the best of the people out there writing in terms of roadmap models. She’s smart, she gives tons and tons of good information away for free all the time, and she goes beyond just structure with some good ideas on character arcs and such. She’s given out things like her entire (massive) outline for one of her own novels as well as tons of videos and such. That makes it easier to match the methodology she describes with an example of something that was actually written using it. That’s surprisingly hard to find for any other models
I’ve also found Schecter’s book really helpful at points where I just needed to force myself to break out of a spiral of confusion in my writing.
I’ve also gotten lots of benefit from Dramatica, and several of my published novels were written at least in part using the storyform that the software helped me identify. I’ve found @jhull a really valuable resource to consult with when trying to both find the storyform and figure out how to apply it. I’m so grateful that I periodically try to drive him insane by posting contrary interpretations of storyforms here (screw you, Jim! Captain America is the MC of Civil War!)
Probably one final thing worth mentioning is that it’s not a good idea to blend the two at any one time. In other words, don’t try to hybridize a model. Dramatica relies unbelievably heavily on its user community to help make sense of it – there just isn’t a book for novelists on Dramatica that’s sufficiently user-friendly to wrap your head around it. So if you want to jump into the deep end with Dramatica, just do it. Let go of everything else – and that includes all the habits and thought patterns that have helped you up until now – and let the crazy thing take over for a while. A friend of mine did that – forcing himself to go through literally every part of the Story Guide (which is insane) – and at the end his book changed completely from where it had started and was ten times better.
Good luck!
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There is no clean answer to this question.
It started to help me immediately, even though I didn’t really understand everything. Then it hobbled me as I misapplied nearly everything at every turn. Then it started to make sense more, and as @decastell said, you never really get to the end. I continue to make leaps forward in my storytelling, and can see things that never would have landed if I didn’t know Dramatica.
Also, this forum didn’t exist. Dramatica now has many people giving good advice.
To that end, listen to @decastell: abandon everything else. Not kind of. Completely. It will only hold up your understanding. Eventually, you can bring it back.
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I believe the only thing the demo doesn’t let you do is save or print. So if you’ve used the demo, you should have a good idea of what the software offers. That said, i’d definitely suggest going ahead and making the purchase. I don’t know if there are any discount codes available at the moment, but check Storymind.com for some. (friendly suggestion: if you find more than one code available, try using them all at once)
It would be awesome to have an example of a storyform being turned into a story, but I have yet to see anything like that. There’s just so many ways to do it, though. Dramatica doesn’t really trap your story into a specific presentation the way something like Save the Cat does. (actually, technically, the software supposedly does generate enough information to print out a several hundred pages report detailing a very specific order for everything to be explored, but it’s unavailable for good reasons). I’d suggest that something like Save the Cat “just sits there” waiting to be filled in while Dramatica is as malleable as you want/need it to be. With the Sign Posts and Journeys, you should have everything in the story in chronological order and you are free to unravel it however you please. Is there a specific question you have about turning a Dramatica storyform into a story? I know you’d find lots of good answer on this board.
I’ve been under the impression that you could probably take story information from Dramatica and use it another storytelling structure, like Save the Cat or, presumably, Weiland (i’m not familiar with her work, more on this at the end). But @decastell s comment above seems to warn against it. And for good reason. Why take something as comprehensive and meaningful as Dramatica and cram it into a model that says “you need this beat specifically on this page because lots of movies have this beat on that page” with little or no further explanation?
This is beside the point, but my experience with Weiland began when I stumbled across her article about the eight and a half archetypes to use where she lists Dramatica’s eight archetypes and then adds The Love Interest as an additional half archetype. That article proves @MWollaeger 's statement that she doesn’t understand Dramatica (that probably sounds insulting, but it’s not meant to be, I barely understand Dramatica myself). I decided that was pretty much where my experience with Weiland would end. One of the biggest downsides about Dramatica is that, after I started getting the basics of it, I was no longer entertained by reading the advice of any other story guru because Dramatica is just so much more comprehensive and explanatory.
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Hey Anne,
Welcome! I’m a fellow novelist and dramatica user. You’ve already gotten some great responses, but I wanted to throw in my two cents:
A. Dramatica is by far the most powerful theory of story I have ever come across, bar none. I don’t mean to evangelize; Dramatica is a tool, not a Bible. But it’s a damn-useful one, if you know what you’re doing with it.
As for how Dramatica compares to K.M Weiland’s work (with which I am also familiar- I own a number of her books and have found them very helpful), it’s kind of like comparing some basic photo editor to Photoshop, or Garageband to Logic Studio (if you’re a musician). One is much easier to grasp and apply to your work, the other will require some serious study to get any real use out of it. But if you’re willing to put the time in, you’ll find that there’s very little about story-telling that studying Dramatica can’t help you with.
B. Yes, Dramatica does provide a diagram of sorts to plot your novel-- the PSR, as many people have mentioned, BUT it takes quite a bit of knowledge to use it well. You really have to familiarize yourself with the variations/elements and what they mean, including how they relate to one another. My recommendation is to search for “PSR” on this website and read through every discussion thread you find on the topic. That’s what I did!
C. Have you read through the entire theory book? If not, you can download a copy for free here:
You can learn a LOT of tremendously useful concepts from that book that will make any story you write stronger, no outlay for software needed. Just understanding the nature of the four throughlines in any story and WHY they matter made an incalculable difference in my own writing journey, perfectly explaining why stories I’d tried to write in the past had always “lost their magic” somewhere along the way, because I’d inadvertently abandoned one of the throughlines.
With that said, I’d benchmark it at six months of serious study before you’re can use the software/theory to write better novels. There’s just so much to wrap your head around, it’s going to take a long time for stuff to sink in. But once it does, there’s no going back, and your writing life is forever changed.
Best of luck!
Audrey
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I am just chiming in because nobody mentioned the story embroidery session. Yes, there are videos/podcast where dramatica user group builds a complete story from a scratch using a single storyform. Search for “story embroidery.”
Contributors gets their turn to encode each story points round-robin style. Pretty solid story is created in just under 2 hours or so. Check the videos out. It will help out a lot with your encoding process.
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There is also the one that @mlucas, @Gregolas, @Prish and I did. It’s incomplete but at least shows the process. We really should finish that.
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Thank you very much for sharing your experiences as writers and novelists. It really does help me put in place where Dramatica could fit in my writing life. You’ve pointed at many things now to look into. Story embroidery, the PSR and look at read Hull site and other threads here and so on. Much to do!
I feel like I’ve progressed so much in my understanding since then. It really would be interesting to go finish it now, or maybe pick a section and try to turn it into a scene or something.
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But don’t stop writing to do it!
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To address the question of “how can you use dramatica for prospective writing rather than retrospective analysis,” there are many useful ways, but my most common process is:
- What do I have? What do I feel strongly about? This could be anything from any throughline. It could be a concern, issue, problem, flaw, etc. It could be an outcome, judgment, resolve, etc. It could be any combo.
- I use this “must have” info in dramatica to generate candidate storyforms.
- I pick one of the storyforms that sounds exciting. It might end up being something via development & further exciting me or it might die a death in development hell.
- For a given storyform, I inspect the details in all the throughlines, the signposts, the plot sequence report, etc and develop these. Best case, this storyform provides me with exciting insights & opens doors/options and survives into the final story. Worst case, I loop back to previous steps.
Short answer, my essential review of dramatica is: given the difficult problems of objectively assessing your story and the related difficulty that humans have of changing perspectives, dramatica offers the ability to look at your story form several different perspectives which has the practical benefit of exposing holes, contradictions, and distractions in your story.
Sure, you could argue that the marginal utility of going from nothing to dramatica demo is arguably larger than the marginal utility of going from demo to paid version. But I’d pay 10 times the amount for what I’ve gotten out of it. So, if it was a system of, “pay what you will,” I’d pay more much than the sticker price out of gratitude and its value to me. This is not a paid advert. One option is use the hell out of the demo, and if you come to value it at or above the sticker price, then pay at that point.
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I’d like to put a plug in here for @jhull’s free course (on his website) and Armando Saldaña-Mora book Dramatica for Screenwriters as two ways to start applying the theory to building a story right away. I too am a novelist, not a screenwriter, but the vast majority of Armando’s book is not screenwriter specific and the parts that are are useful for a novelist too (in my opinion). The theory book is great and necessary but it’s drinking from a firehose and then you still have to spend hours on this forum and Narrative First to really start to understand it.
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Hello, whitepaws, and welcome.
I’m usually quiet on these forums, and you’ve already received quite a few answers. However, I thought I’d add some of my experience, and hopefully provide something useful, too. (Especially since I’m currently writing my first novel using Dramatica)
When I started with the theory, I shared your concern, if only because of how cold Dramatica seemed at first. I was worried that the theory and program would say a lot about my story, but that I wouldn’t be able to apply it, so I spent a great deal of time experimenting with the demo, the book, etc.
It turned out that Jim’s website, Narrative First, helped diminish this feeling. The “Playground Exercises” described there became the clincher. With those, application of the theory to my story, and any other story I might write, became clear. (Wish I had a link for these…)
Now, in reference to what to do after the building portion is complete: That’s actually where I’m at now with my own story. The PSR, which was mentioned, has been an invaluable tool, but so has the Theme Browser, especially since they provide different views of the story. I’d say I’ve found these the most useful, but I suspect everything in Dramatica has potential. I just haven’t gotten around to a lot of it, yet… There’s so much to explore.
What it comes down to, though, of course, is what you utility you can receive from it. If you aren’t sure how useful it could be, experiment and try using it for something simple. See how the application of the theory works for you. The only caveat that I would mention in this vein is that the wrong story form can be extraordinarily difficult to work with, but once you have the right one, you’d be amazed at what Dramatica knows. (If it works, it works.)
I guess, what I’m saying is this: If you find it’s worth it, then splurge. If not, then may you at least receive some dividends in your experiments that will improve your writing. Good Luck!
Full Disclosure
I actually tried to use concepts from Dramatica to write this post.
Hopefully, I did so correctly. (Ever the student keeps learning.)
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Hi everyone,
I bit the bullet and purchased it. There’s a great Black Friday sale going on at Writer’s store which made it particularly attractive.
Thank you for responding with your experiences of how you put Dramatica to use. I’ll be looking at the screenwriter book @Lakis mentioned and the playground exercises @Hunter mentioned (thank you for the link @RailwayAdventurer !). The objectivity aspect is certainly a strong point. My last novel took a lot longer to finish than I would’ve liked because I was quite emotionally connected, thus making it hard to see the wood for the trees.
I’ll be seeing many of you here in the forum.
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When reading your post, it felt it was very well rounded, gotta say. Hard to describe…but I felt the whole argument covered all bases. The base that struck me strongest was the objectivity aspect you mentioned, but perhaps for a different reader it would be a different aspect of your argument. Or, maybe it’s the completeness that gives this fullness effect.
Is that what a reader feels like after reading a work structured using D? Seriously impressed. Cool that you used the D principles to demonstrate its power.
Hunter:
I’m curious in the process you used to write this post using Dramatica principles? Did you find a quad that felt like the themes you were looking to express? Then wrote a paragraph responding to them in the context of the subject matter? As I’m write this I see it being a valid process–not sure if it what the one you used–and I’m beginning to realize this distinction between objectivity and subjectivity which has been a bit confusing to me in Dramatica. Perhaps its dawning on me little by little.
Actually, yes. While writing that post, I knew I wanted to share my experience, and after I wrote a couple of the events as paragraphs, I realized that they would fit nicely into a quad. I also liked how meta it would be to use Dramatica in this context. With that in mind, I chose the quad that I felt fit best, and filled in the other two paragraphs using it, keeping in mind how each item represents one of KTAD. Funny thing is, though, now I don’t actually remember which one I chose.