Another way is to always look at the level underneath. For example, for the OS, ask yourself do the issues that affect everyone on the story have more to do with Learning, Understanding, Doing and Obtaining? Or are they more about Memory, Subconscious, Preconscious and Conscious?
OS Mind stories have a particular feel. Think of The Wizard of Oz. Of course on one level it’s a story about a journey which sounds like an activity. But when you get to the end, you discover that the source of everyone’s problems have a lot more to do with their “heart’s desire”. Someday I want to do a group analysis of Fahrenheit 451 which I read not too long ago. I could be wrong, but I would bet it has an OS in Mind.
Let’s look at the mom in the van of men singing polkas. She’s learning that she should be more patient with annoying things, OS solution-re-evaluation. She is one of the OS characters, a protagonist of sorts, working toward the resolution of the mental-break which caused the problem. This is what you’re saying, right?
But she is the only one actually making the space smaller, so perhaps she is working on the RS (possibility/ probability with regards to transportation to close the distance–attempt vs repulsion). Yet these are caused by Universe (RS domain). Caused by the relationship pulling them. Correct?
All of Kevin’s physical comedy, the traps and tricks on the burglars, are planned and plotted for the sake of manipulation. Caused by a desire to manipulate. Is that it? And through his manipulating of the robbers he is able to stop being manipulated by his family’s view “evaluation” of him (his cousin’s/uncle’s/mother’s insults he keeps remembering) and find personal resolution. As the protagonist, he’s a boy chasing off burglars, as a MC he’s a Kevin scared about being alone and incompetent. The protagonist influences the MC.
Well, yeah! Bless his heart.
So, about “you.” Does the IC story, and all that character does, have to remain distant from the storymind? Or is it possible to know what he’s thinking and why–even outside the MC’s viewpoint–without spoiling the me/you difference? My gut tells me that as long as he’s keeping secrets from the reader, it doesn’t matter if we know his thoughts.
I’d have to watch it again to do a breakdown of any particular scene, but what I’m saying is that the reason the mom has to call off vacation, the reason she has to wait in the airport for an available flight, the reason she has to hitch a ride with John Candy and his band of weirdos, the reason for all of her angst is, more or less, because-and it could be worded much better, but just to aim it directly at the term in question-she didn’t have Kevin in Mind while trying to leave the house. Broadly speaking, everything she goes through after not Minding Kevin is conflict she goes through in attempts to correct the problem.
Again, haven’t seen it in a while, but going off memory, I’d say the reason for the polka van scene is so John Candy can tell her that they’ve all also left a kid behind in some form. I don’t know where in the form it would fall, but it seems to play like a warning. “Hey, we’ve had Mind problems and look at us. If you don’t fix this, you will be like us!” I can see wanting to look at the RS aspects of it, but I’m thinking it may be kind of a foretelling of Consequences (not that I know what those are in the storyform off the top of my head) if she fails to fix the problem.
Mmm. It seems like you’re saying Kevin is setting traps because he wants to manipulate. That seems like too much of a view from within. And I don’t know that Kevin wants to manipulate anything so much as just protect the house.
I don’t know the official Dramatica view of those scenes, and I’m not the best person to analyze, but I’ll give you two ways I think we could look at them.
As OS scenes, the burglars and Kevin are all experiencing conflict because the burglars believe/have it in Mind that Kevin, being a child, is harmless. This Mindset gets them all sorts of into conflict. Also, the reason Kevin is there is because, again, Mom didn’t think about him until they were on a plane.
As MC scenes, Kevin is there because he was a jerk to his family who wanted them to disappear, because he’s dealing with a change in attitudes (meaning Psychology) of growing from what the French call lesincompetente to being the man of the house.
Keeping the IC distant probably helps keep the message nice and clear. But personally—and I am not an expert here—I think you can see into the ICs mind and still maintain structure.
Right. Don’t forget that by this part of the story, Kevin has embraced his Change and gone away from being an irksome, immature* Be-er. He’s embracing the Physics needed to protect the house and teach (Learning) the burglars a lesson.
* being immature and being irksome are both gists for Psychology.
This is definitely true. I don’t think it takes away from the experience of the story at all to show the IC’s mind and thoughts. He doesn’t have to keep secrets from the reader either.
I don’t want to take this too far off topic, but have you done Jim’s playground exercises? I am working through them again for a current project – I’d forgotten how helpful they were for a few things. In addition to generating a lot of different story ideas, following his directions is the best practice for really learning how to illustrate story points as a source of conflict rather than just storytelling. Finally, his description of how to illustrate the IC perspective (see the last two articles) is a really helpful way to get a feel for the difference between different throughlines.
The reason this should work is that showing your ICs thoughts is just storytelling. The IC could say it or think it or show it or whatever within the storytelling, and since storytelling is separate from the storyform it doesn’t affect the storyform. The storyform is an analogy for a mind and the storytelling, I guess, is an analogy for the storyform. Or at least it’s which analogy your storyform is using to get the message across.
Notwithstanding Jim’s AWESOME clip, I think you’re at the point now @didomachiatto where you need to take a step back and see how simple it is by looking at examples.
Can you see how Obi-Wan is “You” in Star Wars (1977) while Luke is “I”?
Ditto with Morpheus and Neo in the Matrix, Westley and Buttercup in The Princess Bride, etc. etc. with whatever stories you feel you could grasp best.
If the terms “You” and “I” don’t jive, then use impact/influence and personal struggle.
I agree with you 100% Greg, however just wanted to point out that you could (and probably this would just happen naturally) still show IC story points in a scene from the IC’s POV. So while showing thoughts is a storytelling technique, the conflicts shown by thoughts might point at items like IC Issue or Problem or Focus etc. Which are part of the structure.
!!! Is this the IC? Embracing the Physics means has changed because of the IC! @mlucas ! Your writing it like this really helps!!
So if my IC is Mind, but my MC is Steadfast, would that be (for failure/good):
Julie rejects the Mind pushing her toward Instinct (subconscious) enabling her to succeed in spite of the failure Costs of Being.
Thanks, I’ll take a look at that.
What’s really weird is that I’ve come back to the point I was at several weeks ago, realizing I was doing what I was supposed to all along. Something threw my rhythm off and self-doubt started. I especially like @mlucas’s advice:[quote=“mlucas, post:22, topic:2616”]
I think you’re at the point now @didomachiatto where you need to take a step back and see how simple it is by looking at examples.
Can you see how Obi-Wan is “You” in Star Wars (1977) while Luke is “I”?
Ditto with Morpheus and Neo in the Matrix, Westley and Buttercup in The Princess Bride
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Right, the idea is that the Changed character adopts the Steadfast character’s perspective. It’s usually easy to see Domain (which is where Be-er to Do-er and vice versa comes in), and sometimes you can see the alternate Concern and even Issue / Problem in the newly adopted perspective.
I’m very late and have nothing to add to the main thread, but as someone who’s been very ‘I still don’t think Home Alone is in mind and I cannot be convinced that it is’ since that first analysis thread, this ultra-simple explanation (and everyone else’s comments) has just suddenly made everything click!
Well @jhay it looks like @jhull is making a case that the official analysis of this movie is wrong, so maybe you should trust yourself more after all!
Now all I need is for @glennbecker to convince everyone that the official analysis of Silence of the Lambs is wrong and I’ll have to go back and edit a bunch of old posts…
Sounds like he’s moved closer to where I was initially! When I rewatched it for the contextual subgenres, it felt NOTHING like the other mind movies and yours was the only argument that made any sense to me (though I still wasn’t totally onboard), so I am somewhat glad to have that confirmed.
Lesson learned: doubt the story experts! (just kidding)
As long as you provide the right amount of Investigation, I’m willing to Re-evaluate any storyform.
Let’s just not make a big Production out of it…
This post was another reason I was inspired to take another look at Home Alone. And there is a precedent for this kind of thing. The official storyform for Terminator changed. As did Sixth Sense. And Reservoir Dogs. And Toy Story.
The more we understand what is going on, the more accurately we can assign these storyforms and apply the Dramatica theory of story.
All this to say I appreciate the Tests (yes, a Silence of the Lambs reference ). I’d rather the trust was based in truth and depth of understanding, rather than label.
