The company got an Academy award for helping writers, and so they started from a very good base. There are articles available online about it. You can write without the software. What you know about story structure from it is already in your brain. If you like the flow of writing without it, that’s ok, and that is how some people write. I met someone at a weekend workshop in Burbank who told me he used the theory for the writing but not the software program.
I took a successful short story I had written in a past writing class, and I flushed it out as another short story using Dramatica. They were the same story, but different in writing execution. They both worked, with one being ‘packed’ with story stuff and the original being a light sketch in comparison. Think Jane Eyre compared to Good Bye Mr. Chips. We’ve had the famous writers discussions over various dram writing forums/lists. IMHO, they use what they need, and I can’t imagine they would want to reveal their combination of craft input that makes them unique.
I totally understand that motivation. Writing in general can be an exceedingly frustrating endeavour (Ira Glass made a video a few years back that explains one of the reasons why – the better we get, the better our taste becomes, and our ability almost never catches up to our taste) and Dramatica adds its own layer of frustration unless you’re either a master with it or you just happen to adore it at first sight. I’m neither of those things, and so I most often find it frustrating and, in fact, I find myself resenting both the tool and the way it’s often discussed on the forum. But that’s my problem, and, it seems, your problem, too.
My job as a writer isn’t to find the perfect method or theoretical model. I owe no allegiance to Dramatica, nor does anyone owe me proof or validation about its merits. I use it at those moments when its particular perspective – the one that insists on quads all over the place – are likely to be helpful. But it all still comes back down to the prose for me: you try to write a great sentence, then another, then another. If the sentence sucks, the structure becomes irrelevant. When the perfect sentence for the story demands a change in structure, then I’ll toss away all my lovely structures and outlines in a heartbeat.
Here’s the first sentence of the novel I just delivered to my publishers:
The desert is a liar.
That’s it. A simple, five word sentence. You might not even like it. But for me, it’s perfect, it’s what I want to say, and it takes over from everything else – outline be damned. The funny thing, though, is that by the time I’m happy with the book, it turns out it does fit nicely within a Dramatica storyform. More importantly, at some stage in the process, I found something in Dramatica that gave an insight I needed.
Sorry for the long post. It’s about to become longer. It occurs to me that maybe it would help to give one small aspect of Dramatica that I personally find to be invaluable with every book I write and which I don’t think needs to be frustrating or difficult at all: the four throughlines.
Having a clear sense of an Overall Story that is distinct from the Main Character story which is distinct from the Influence Character story which is itself distinct from the Relationship story helps me every single time. Sometimes it’s tricky with a novel because you’ll often have additional storyforms or partial storyforms as part of the book, but making sure I’ve got those four big ones always helps and it never frustrates me.
The domains now – those always frustrate the hell out of me. But again, what they’re asking you to do is consider whether your story is operating within all four of the ways humans interact with themselves and the universe around them, through Activities, Situation, Fixed Attitudes, and Manipulation (or whichever version of the terms is in vogue this year.) You don’t have to buy into anything metaphysical about Dramatica in order to see that a good superhero story needs to have conflicts deriving from more than just punching and kicking, and, in fact, even the most literary work needs to have conflicts coming from more than just a set of attitudes or people’s psychology.
Just use the parts that work for you – measured only by how good the text on the page is – and leave the rest until either you’re ready for it or you discover you don’t need it. At no point in the process will it ever matter whether other writers use it or not.
I found Dramatica looking to improve my writing. But it was the second or third time I’d looked at it. The earlier times, it made no sense to me. Now I get a lot out of it.
I don’t believe Dramatica to be the Only True Way or any nonsense like that. I’m not actually sure how belief enters into it. It either works for you and makes sense to you at the time or it doesn’t. If it doesn’t make sense to you right now, maybe you’re not ready for it? I don’t mean that in any “I’m better than you” sense, because we all learn in different ways and understand things which others don’t.
You don’t have to look at stories any particular way to be a good storyteller. For me Dramatica’s been tremendously helpful. If it’s not helpful to you then use what works for you.
That won’t happen. In fact artists gain from a little percolation. I studied under an artist who was locally well-known in Seattle during the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s, Stuart Moldrem. He told me that it was, actually, good for an artist to take a break from the process. The brain and whatever internal mechanisms were at play benefited from stepping away, doing something else in life for awhile.
Yellow, you still out there? I’m an absolute amateur in both writing and Dramatica-ing, but am willing to drop my process from storyform to story outline for a single throughline in a post if you think seeing something like that might help.
I’ve been thinking about this over the last several days.
This conversation was constructive and positive until @Jhull decided to make it personal. People who believe in something, who truly believe in something, don’t get all aggressive about it unless its a religion or something. I’ve never seen a discussion about mathematics fall into personal attacks. Feeling the need to fall into personal attacks reveals some deep level insecurity and that insecurity by somebody as highly placed in Dramatica as @jhull is speaks very, very poorly as to Dramatica’s validity.
So, when the guys at the top are insecure about it, I don’t feel any need to stick around.
I know I’m gonna regret jumping in with this, but…
It seems we have a real inequity here. @jhull has made a comment that some have found offensive. This is out of balance (that is, it’s an inequity) with their desire to not be offended. Mental Relativity tells us that they will choose one of these areas and decide that that one is not causing a problem and will then assign all conflict arising from this imbalance to the other area (more or less, anyway).
In this case, one could decide not to find the comments offensive. Maybe they aren’t personal attacks, they could say. Maybe the comments are responding directly to the posts that were made, and heck, this is written word on the internet which can be hard to know how to take because we can’t hear the tone in it, they could say. Then maybe they could decide that it’s better to assume the comments were just made matter-of-factly and move on. No need to sub(-or would it be pre-?)consciously read it in an angry or belittling tone of voice.
Or they could decide that finding the comments offensive isn’t where the conflict is coming from and assign all the conflict to the comments themselves. Can’t really undo the comments. All you can do, I suppose, is to respond to them in whatever way you feel might leave things feeling the most balanced. I wonder if that worked.
If you’re wondering, deciding not to take offense to things said on the internet is working just fine for me.
The only inequity here is the same person using two different accounts to create trouble. Do you work in Fairborn and your home is in Dayton? Or is it the other way around?
I have a tremendous intolerance for trolls and people that waste other people’s time.
Soooo Dramatica can’t be valid because of an expert’s supposed “insecurity?” You just ad hominem-ed, in the same breath as denouncing it.
Pot meet kettle. [quote=“jhull, post:31, topic:1989”]
The only inequity here is the same person using two different accounts to create trouble.
[/quote]
LOL I was so irritated by the poster’s last comment that I started to write a long response, until at some point I thought “why am I wasting my time on this?”
That said, I myself have gotten a lot out of everyone else’s thoughtful responses here – so thanks to the community for that.
And as always your hard work on all this is much appreciated Jim.
Not cool, @jhull. You are practically doxxing someone - when only you have access to that person’s IP address. Not cool at all.
Beware your data, people.
YS was asking perfectly legitimate questions and raising a concern. The thread turned turned spikey and defensive. Fine. But then, you go and practically doxx YS/B_Newman to get back at him after you put a heart on his previous response to you.
It actually doesn’t matter if YS had to don a different alias to finish up his thought process. To me, says he was feeling threatened enough to have to do that.
In the end, I just need to say it’s not cool practically doxxing someone.
PS. I’m identifying YS as a male for convenience, but I don’t actually know.
There is a reason Admin panels for discussion forums like this provide information about users–to prevent trolling and other abusive behaviors that disrupt community discussion. It has nothing to do with “doxxing” (which I had to look up, because apparently its a word I need to know now).
YS has a history of disruptive behavior. He only created the BN account after I warned him twice about posts in the past. I didn’t say anything prior because I wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt and the opportunity to start fresh with a new user identity.
This isn’t the first time someone has disrupted conversation, then left in a huff, only to return some time later. Last person who did that ended up becoming a client
I liked, or “hearted” his comment, because there is nothing more hilarious to me than somebody saying the “worse thing about Dramatica is Jim Hull.”
He wasn’t just finishing up his thought process – he was pretending to be someone else in order to make his opinion seem more widely shared than it was, which is pretty manipulative. I feel like that’s a pretty egregious abuse of anonymity – trolling 101. Whether or not the content of his concern was legitimate, behavior like this can really erode trust and the usefulness of a forum.
Unless you are sitting inside his head, not sure how you can say that. To be fair to you, I also projected a possible reason why he donned a new alias. Maybe it’s a combo, or none at all.
Yes, he donned a different alias - and I already mentioned how I saw that. Yes, it is manipulative…if you couldn’t see through it. Some of us did see through his Playing a Role…making him not the most accomplished manipulator, gotta say. I can’t stand manipulators, but as far as manipulators go he was pretty weak. (The first line of his new alias post pretty much gave it away).
The moderator, however, is in a position of power. Doxxing (the release of private info without permission into a public forum) is a threatening gesture.
To be clear, I could care less about who YS is or that he donned an alias or what…the doxxing was my issue…no need for me to repeat a third time. I trust message has been received
So not only have I been labeled the “worse thing about Dramatica” in this post, now I’ve been accused of threatening or intending to harm someone through “doxxing”. Which you’ve said no less than five times now.
So I would say you’ve made your point.
Your interpretation of my post as a threatening gesture is every bit subjective as your contention that:
You give YS/BN the benefit of the doubt as to his intentions, but you brazenly identify mine as illegal. Over and over again.
I sincerely hope that your gesture of “Peace!” is your final indication that you’re done with your accusations.
I discovered Dramatica about the same time Turner Classic Movies channel started. The novelty had the husband and I watch many, many old movies. I was amazed to find the Contaginist an actual character who showed up, most, if not all the time. And that character made the story more interesting, delightful, and/or created depth. No one in writing and/or drama history had pointed it out before. That satisfied me there was something solid to the Dramatica story theory. There are going to be ways people use the software that are different. That’s the way it is with tech.
I took a beginning graphics art class, recently, and I had been using a tool in Photoshop since the 90’s a certain way (out of desperation because I knew nothing about it, then to almost now). The teacher had not known it could do such a fantastic, amazing thing. The point? Leave yourself open to creating your own magic with tech.
This seems like an appropriate time to thank Jim for everything he does to serve Dramatica – the theory itself, the community, and through them the craft of writing as a whole.
So Jim, thank you, from the bottom of my heart!
I had considered a bunch of responses to the other stuff going on in this thread, but decided it was best to stay quiet. However, one thing I will say now … I really enjoyed working with YS especially when he first joined the forum. His story ideas were awesome and great fun to analyse and work with.
However, over time I noticed something strange – he would often ask questions, but then not respond to people’s (often very helpful) answers. No hearts, nothing. It was impossible to tell whether he didn’t like the answers, or didn’t understand, or if they helped him but he was just being quiet and getting down to the actual writing.
Nothing wrong with that behaviour per se, but I think it would be good if we could all endeavour to express our gratitude whenever others take the time to help us with what is sometimes a complex and difficult (but ultimately worthwhile) theory.
I suspect part of the challenge he was experiencing is that while the forum is an excellent place to get help with Dramatica, it’s not an especially productive place to wrestle with the theory. For some people – myself included – wrestling with Dramatica is an unavoidable consequence of trying to derive usable benefits while writing a story. For any number of predictable reasons, bringing those doubts to the Dramatica forum only serves to stir up conflict; eventually you hit a point where you’re still not convinced but you’ve now got several people feeling like you’re slagging something they strongly believe in and have invested considerable time and energy into learning.
There is a difference between asking challenging questions, and being disruptive. YS was the former–he had a pattern of expressing frustrations, not questions, and then–after someone took time out of their day to help–would simply disappear without engaging at all. Only to reappear a different day to vent more frustrations.
This approach eventually amounts to spamming the board which in turn denigrates the quality of information found here.
So, in this case, it’s really not about wrestling with Dramatica.
As far as slagging off something people “believe” in–
–there is a difference between faith and acceptance.
You need faith to get into Heaven. Or to convince someone you’re marriage material.
You need acceptance that there are patterns for every level of Pac-Man if you want to learn how to beat the game. And you need acceptance if you want to inspire someone with the idea that it’s OK to be gay.
Dramatica is not a religion–it’s a theory of story. Faith doesn’t factor in. You don’t have to “believe” anything.
It’s a theory with one major given: That every complete story is an analogy to a single human mind trying to solve a problem.
Everything you find beneficial about the theory: the Act order, the Plot Sequence Report, the concept of Changed and Steadfast Main Characters–all of it stems from that core given.
Accept that given and you can then learn how to write a story with it–and of you’re interested, how all the above works. Reject that and you’re wasting your time here.
This isn’t acceptance without proof–that’s faith. We have over 400 storyforms and twenty years of experience analyzing and creating stories with Dramatica. We have first hand knowledge of feature films, animated films, television series and even novels that used some aspect of Dramatica to help create their story.
They used that given of story as an analogy for the mind’s problem-solving process and they created great stories.
Faith is found under Obtaining. Acceptance is found–naturally–under Learning.
Asking someone to help you “believe” in Dramatica is a non-starter–it’s a broken story.
Unless you want Dramatica to help you get into Heaven.
I haven’t read all his posts, and I imagine you’re describing them accurately, but this actually is what it looks like when someone’s frustrated from wrestling with a subject. Yes, it would be better if they took the time to frame their questions in more productive ways, and even more so if they took the time to respond to the help people try to give them.
I’m not defending anyone’s posts, only suggesting that it’s better to take someone at their word – in this case, that he was finding himself losing confidence in Dramatica – rather than imputing motives when it isn’t necessary. Look, my point is simple: not every problem one has with Dramatica is suited for being solved on the forums here. Answers are always offered, but after a time, frustration with the questioner appears and it can get sufficiently aggressive that it’s more discouraging than helpful.
Before you respond to that, let me make the following observation:
String theory is not a religion – it’s a cosmological theory. Yet it carries assumptions, and there are contrasting theories, so yes, there comes a point where you have to decide which of those theories you believe.
Astronomy isn’t a religion, but when individuals over-extend it, for example, trying to use it to describe the lives of human beings, it becomes astrology, and is, regrettably, nonsense.
That’s not actually true. Newton’s theory of gravity works great, but it’s both incomplete and, when you work down to the bottom assumptions, incorrect. The formulas work (on earth and at a scale we relate to, anyway), which is great – and they work even though they totally fail to account for things that happen on larger and smaller scales.
I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: I have no idea if Dramatica is true or not. As a writer, I’m not in search of a theory that explains why stories work – I’m only interested in tools that help me write better ones.
Two problems here: first this was precisely what YS was complaining about: twenty years of the theory being out there and nobody can name famous authors or screenwriters who use it other than a few brief mentions from the past and some hack fantasy writer who still doesn’t have his long-deserved Pulitzer prize for literature.
Second, I know when you see those 400 storyforms they look like perfect explanations of the movies described, but to me – and I’ve looked at them a lot – they aren’t helpful at all. 400 storyforms without illustrations to show why each plot point fits with the element allocated to it does me no good. I find myself continuously going back to the ones that came with the software because at least few of those have some illustrations for the plot points. Now, maybe I’m the odd one out on this. Maybe most other users can look at those storyforms and instantly see how they fit, but I can’t.
This doesn’t mean you’re wrong. I’m only trying to explain why, for any number of people, it’s not just about accepting evidence – because that evidence isn’t always visible or compelling if you don’t “get” Dramatica already.
