Overall Story Concern in the Other Three Throughlines

theory
#21

Problem? What problem? We were talking about inequities. It’s only a problem to someone looking at it with a linear mindset. To someone with a holistic mindset, it’s all about balancing the two to an increasing vibration. What good is health if your best friend in the whole world is pissed off at you because they wanted apples and don’t understand what a doctor is? What good is a happy friend if you’re dead?

By turning it into a problem, you’re justifying a solution. But that does nothing to describe the nature of the space between these justifications.

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#22

The point is that you can’t describe it directly. You have to talk around it. The Greater Good argument requires an objective point-of-view that says this good and that is bad—which can only be effectively argued through story.

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#23

Try this:

  • Describe in one concise sentence the all-encompassing inequity of your favorite film.
  • Something that describes not only the MC’s personal inequity, but at the same time the OS inequity that involves everyone in the story, and also the Relationship story inequity, plus the Influence Character inequity and how that describes the influence on the MC (and possibly others… all of that in one sentence at the same time).
  • Oh and don’t forget to describe what type of problem-solving the story deals in, along with the growth and resolve of the MC… the approach for the MC. And don’t forget in that one sentence to include the Outcome and the author’s Judgement on the story.
  • And the story limit and story drivers.
  • Oh plus, also describe at the same time what the Goal is, along with all the prerequisites, costs, dividends, consequence, requirements, preconditions, forewarnings.
  • And also all the specifics of each throughline. What’s the concern, specific issue, problematic element and how it’s dependent on certain elements, amplified by others, and runs into conflict with another.
  • Then also include what increases the conflict or decreases it, and how each of the POV’s track that, weighing what’s happening against the problematic concern.
  • Again, for all four throughlines at once.

I would argue it’s impossible to describe all that in even a couple of sentences.

And yet… I can say “Star Wars” to you. And having experienced “Star Wars,” you know exactly what I’m talking about right? George Lucas made that indescribable inequity in his mind accessible to you by putting you through the experience of “Star Wars.” And now you have it in your head too. It’s like telepathy. George took a snapshot of that lightning, and now when I say “Star Wars” you can recall that lightning.

And yet… you’re not able to describe all of those criteria in one sentence, right?

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#24

Wouldn’t that person just cut the apple in half, etc?

#25

You seem to be saying that a bunch of smaller inequities that can be described = a larger inequity that can’t be so described. I don’t see any reason why that should be so. The nature of a complex system is that it can’t be described in a few sentences, but that doesn’t mean there’s some ghostly metaphysics behind the individual operations of the system, even if it feels that way to a human being. A bunch of easily described inequities in a system (that’s what engineering is all about, after all), get resolved to a larger effect, like putting a bridge across a river. And you could sort of say that the bridge was creating a balance of some kind, but it seems like you’re reaching for a point if you do insist on that. Complex systems have side effects, but it’s the individual inequities in the system that really give the system its identity. The effects afterwards are another kind of thing, not best described as inequities.

For example, the universe has a glaring inequity in it – life, in the middle of billions of light years of lifelessness. But don’t worry. The 2nd Law of Thermodynamics will eventually make all temperatures equal. Now, there’s a LOT going on in the Universe besides that inequity…but it’s a big one. And … Umm…I’m not quite sure where I was going with this, but I’m sure it was interesting.

#26

I’m not sure I follow. What is the inequity you’re describing there with life in the billions of lightyears of lifelessness? That seems like a system at rest to me.

Have you ever played the game LINKEE? It’s kind of like that. You have four items which are described, and all of them together describe a larger thing.

Example:

  1. Famous artist who painted the Mona Lisa.
  2. It’s like comparing apples and _______
  3. A battle between Chicago and New York’s take on this dish
  4. Artist who broke YouTube with a song about a district in Seoul.

A: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

Now, this is a VERY simple analogy, and one in which you CAN at the end understand what they’re describing. In a Grand Argument Story, there are so many facets and variables that it becomes impossible to put a finger on any one specific inequity. But at the same time, you know exactly what I mean. Like when I say “Star Wars” to you. You know what that is, you know all the dynamics at play, how it turned out, what everyone was going through, the stakes, etc. You can see it in a flash in your mind without having to, or even being ABLE to specifically describe it.

As @jhull always points out… if you could, then we wouldn’t need stories to relay those “mind flashes” to each other. We could just saw a few lines and you get the entire experience of watching “Star Wars.”

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#27

Yes, exactly this. (Although sadly, nowadays you have to qualify the lightning flash of “Star Wars” with “I mean Ep IV, 1977” :slight_smile: .)

That is why stories exist, for that lightning flash.

Now, sometimes there is a moment near the end of a book or film that seems to distill the whole story down to its essence, and you feel in that moment like you can see and understand the whole thing super clearly. And you CAN – but only because you’ve experienced the story up to that point.

I’m pretty sure those distilling moments are related to the Crucial Element, at least most of the time. I’m going to pick on @Lakis 's novel August in the Vanishing City for an example:

He grabs her, covering her hand with his own, and pulls her toward him. And for a moment, the thin, uncrossable line separating them is breached.

That’s the last line of the book, and gave me chills because in some ineffable way it really does capture the whole story, all the throughlines. The Crucial Element of Ability is really strong here, connecting the RS, MC, and OS throughlines directly, with some help from the IC. Amazing since @Lakis wrote it before he knew about Dramatica!

Anyway, that’s what I’m talking about. In those moments – as author or reader/audience – you feel like you could describe the central inequity and every aspect of the story in a few words. But if you try, you never have the language – the best you can do is convince someone else that “it’s really amazing because of X and Y and Z” and get them to read it.

(As an aside I think it’s a good lesson to think about your Crucial Element toward the end of your draft – that’s when you’ll have the best understanding of what it means in your story – and let that come out someplace important.)

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#28

That’s how I felt in the 90’s when I was binging on TCM’s new movie channel, watching all the oldies I had never seen, before. This was at the time of discovering Dramatica and going to Burbank for some weekend workshops.

Amazing, because I saw that the Contagonist character existed and provided great depth and variety to the old films. Amazing, because not even Plato or Aristotle or Shakespeare had pointed the character out, (at least not that I had heard of). Those amazed moments sure are cool.

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#29

I don’t know what this Ep IV stuff is that you’re talking about :wink:
And also: https://www.thestarwarstrilogy.com/project-4k77/

And yeah, there’s a moment at the end of every story, or just after viewing it in its entirety where you can “feel” it. I would equate it to the ability to describe exactly how you love your child. It’s there, it’s a real, tangible thing, you can experience it, but you really can’t put it into a log line that encompasses everything perfectly.

From my understanding, the Crucial Element is definitely the hinge pin which describes the closest thing to the overall inequity–but it’s still not the inequity itself. It takes you super close, but like you said, you never have the language.

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#30

The reason we can’t describe an inequity is the same reason we can’t see ultraviolet or infrared with the naked eye. We’re just not equipped to do it. We say that inequities exist in the space between the elements, so it’s easy to think that we can just look at the space and see what’s there. But that’s just not how it works. And here’s why.

Assuming Dramatica is correct, there are only four processes going on within the mind. When we observe something, we observe from a perspective of one of those four processes. When we observe something, we observe it as one of those four processes. So even if we look at the space between elements, we are still only able to observe in shades of KTAD. Just as we know that infrared exists, we know that the space between elements exist. But just as we observe infrared through a lens and see in “Predator vision”-that is, colors we already are capable of seeing but arranged in a different pattern to show us where the infrared is, my apologies to those not familiar with the movie Predator-so, too, are we stuck observing the space between elements with the “Predator vision” of KTAD. It’s not that it’s just outside of our physical or mental capabilities. If you squint really hard or look really close or concentrate really hard, you will still never see infrared with unaided human eyes. It just lies outside of human perception, outside of the human perspective.

What we can see are the processes of the working mind. We can observe that there are dynamics at work creating relationships between them. We can even separate out the various dynamics and see how they work together to create a system governed by relativity (and yes, I used Dramatica to come up with those four things). But to look directly at the inequity itself just is to look into the unknowable void. It’s like finding an infinitely circling spiral that gets ever and ever smaller. No matter how close you zoom in, the spiral never reaches the center because that would be the end of the spiral that never ends. It’s like discovering the laws of the quantum universe only to realize that there’s an even more bizarre sub-quantum world with even stranger and more unknowable rules governing it.

For these reasons, the inequity at the heart of the four processes is Humanity’s Great Blind Spot and it always will be.

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#31

It’s tempting to smack the big stone at my feet with my walking stick and say “I refute you thus.”

But an elegant explanation. Thank you.

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#32

Refutations create the Energy that moves the Knowledge of explanations toward the Desired greater understanding…or something like that. I say refute away, sir. How else will the collective greater understanding be moved?