I like this phrase. I like the term justification, also. (gotta write this down in the little carry around notebook)
I donât think this is right ⌠both of the justifications are valid, presenting a dilemma. One is chosen over the other, but that doesnât make the other incorrect. You donât really know because it might seem like the right choice only to haunt the characters later.
(Except at the entire story level, where Outcome and Judgment, and to a lesser extent Cost and Dividends, can tell you unequivocally how things turned out. Oh, and I guess in the climactic scenes where the connection to Outcome or Judgment is super clear, like when Luke shuts off his targeting computer. Similarly in a denouement scene that decides the relationship, etc.)
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Thatâs the reason for my long post with revisions, and for my caveat warnings in the initial post about trying to think of a less technical definition.
I will point out that I could make an argument that a choice that haunts the characters later is, in effect, an incorrect choice. As an example of the form of that argument: An old coworker of mine use to joke about having a strategy to win every card game we played: âItâs easy. All you do, is make the right choice every turn.â 
But, thereâs no need to follow that road. In sum total, I agree with what youâve put forward.
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How do you come up with the second justification? Do you ask âWhen is justification 1 not valid?â? When I do that, I end up with something very similarly worded (like replace âshouldâ with âshouldnâtâ) or something that makes sense but has nothing to do with the element (or whatever) of the storybeat.
I think the first thing is to really focus on the UNLESS (so yeah, looking for a context in which #1 is not valid) while also trying to make it different, not just a direct contradiction of the first thing. Bring in a different aspect somehow.
Going through the gist lists might help.
Honestly though, I would wait to do the justifications until after I looked at the quad and came up with basic ideas of what each element will do in the scene. (This is usually plenty of prep for a scene, on its own.) Once you have that, then you can add the justifications to clarify the conflict that each element presents, if you want or need to.
Geez, I actually wrote âwant or need to.â 
Now I canât resist:
The writer wants to plan all the conflict for the scene ahead of time in order to avoid thinking it up on the spot UNLESS the writer should hold off visualizing every aspect of the scene in order to have more fun writing.
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I completely agree with this. I also want to add that finding that second justification is an entirely creative aspect of the process. Itâs a question Dramatica wonât answer. Youâll have to generate ideas for that justification with whatever method of brainstorming works for you. Some possibilities might be mind-mapping, physical exercise, or stream-of-consciousness.
What you donât see in my post above about the justification for Mind is the 10 to 20 minutes and multiple iterations and experimentation that I went through. And, Iâm working with an existing draft.
As with any creative process, thereâs going to be trial and error, but thatâs part of the fun, I think.
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I remember reading novels where the same âpatternâ was repeated different ways with different characters and overviews (tiny snippets kind of things), and it made the books so much more enjoyable. I know this might not make much sense, but your comments here are bridge for my brain ⌠I see this as a way to repeat the âpatternâ âthemeâ âideaâ âconceptâ of the subjective story, several times in a novel with different characters and situations. I guess it would be a trade off, using the same storyform setup. Also, it would be fun to experiment repeating other quads with different characters.
Ort couldnât the two justifications be two storyforms overlapping or a subjective story encounter?
Note that Jimâs new article is very clear that you can go with your intuition and not worry about the correspondences. (In fact, the new article even suggests different defaults than his original article? e.g. Can with Ability, Need with Knowledge.)
Can, Want, Need, and Should emerge from Knowledge, Thought, Ability, and Desireâbut they do not hold exclusive rights to a previous process. Once the mind becomes conscious of the availability of the Second Level, all bets are off in regards to its exact origin. Translation? When writing a story, you can mix and match between levels in support of your intuition.
https://narrativefirst.com/articles/the-complete-guide-to-justification/
The new article also talks about this â Linear / Holistic doesnât seem to affect justification at this level. But the further levels of justification (which use the other Variation quads under Psychology â the Becoming and Conceptualizing ones) are affected by Linear/Holistic.
I also notice that the language in the new examples seems to use âbecauseâ a lot of the time instead of âin order toâ. I really like that flexibility. You can do a LOT more with both of those than you can with just âin order toâ.
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Here are my thoughts that I plan to experiment with to find the answers?
Let me know what you think:
This approach builds up justifications either linear or holistic.
Is it possible to start with the fourth level and move down to the first level?
Are the linear and holistic the only pathways to justification or can someone have up to the 24 sequences that are present when moving through a four levels of justification.
Linear - z pattern.
Holistic - u pattern.
This is the best pathway for trying to hide things but what if you donât want to hide things and you want to expose yourself to things that break down your justifications by having the other 22 pathways involved.
Justifications rely on increasing tension and hiding of sorts.
Can breaking down justifications be a movement in the opposite direction?
Can one play up to 24 scenarios moving in different sequences through those the 4 levels of justification?
In other words writing justifications with all the 24 letters of the dramatica alphabet to see what happens.
Does it matter which justification goes first? Like for MC, if I have a story point of Past and I write:
I should be haunted by the past in order to have the desire to avoid repeating past mistakes
UNLESS
I need to ignore the events of the past in order to desire trying again at what I once failed.
Iâm not trying to say that being haunted by the past is good (if this was OS, itâd start as âPeople should be haunted by the pastâŚâ which sounds like an endorsement). What Iâm saying is thatâs where my MC currently is and the alternative is ignoring the past. Is that how it works?
Do I even need to stick that second justification into a scene? I guess Iâd write that as MC being obsessed with a past mistake, but needing to try again and trying to forget about the past failure in order to work up the courage to try again.
Iâd say that order will ultimately matter with this, yes. Order is context and context is meaning. That said, i donât know which order means what. It could be that the first justification is the one the characters starts out with and the second is the one that gets in the way. Or it could be that the first is the one getting in the way of the second one, which is the one they start out with. It may be a linear/holistic thing, but my sense of it is that itâs either a start/stop or a changed/steadfast thing.
The way I currently use it is for a Changed story, the MC will start the story with the first justification and change to the second. In a steadfast story, they start and end with the second. And I can see it making sense in another type of story for the steadfast MC to start and stop the story with first justification.
Yes. The difference between the first and second justification is what creates conflict. So you can focus on the characters attempt to go with either one, but the other needs to come into play.
So the way I would see your example playing out would be that in scenes where the character allows themselves to be haunted by the past (justification 1), they lose the desire to try again (context 2), and when they ignore events of the past (j2), they lose the desire to avoid making mistakes (c2).
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I never did this on purpose, but I found that when I wrote out my justifications I always wrote them in the order that @Greg described â the one that they move to came after the UNLESS.
I didnât find that there was any judgment implied. It was like you said:
Why should a character even move to the second one? Does it depend on change vs steadfast? Maybe the characterâs problem is being stuck.
Keep in mind I was only using it at the scene level⌠But once presented with the second half, the character seems to move to it naturally. As the author, you kind of just hit them with the circumstances of that second half and it falls into place.
Hereâs an obvious example from one of my scenes:
Max & Devin (DEDUCTION): I need to use a process of elimination (that eliminates Devin) in order to be able to save Becca UNLESS we can deduce from Beccaâs message that we know she is safe
So Max has deduced from whatâs going on that itâs beyond Devinâs experience and he canât help, and Devin doesnât like this, but then a text message comes in saying Becca is all right. Itâs a super simple example (an obvious deduction) but it works. The point is, it was my job as author to throw in that text message in order to move the story along.
A bit more involved:
(NON-ACCURATE): (Devin) I wonât tolerate discussing Becca right now because it makes me think about her UNLESS (Eric) you should use your mistake in order to get better at picking up desirable women
So for that scene, it was up to the Eric character to kind of give voice to the second half.
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The story is about determining which justification is appropriate. The character is trying to hold both justifications to be true at the same time. This is what creates conflict. They have one justification, but they canât hold onto that AND bring about the context within the second justification. The reason a character would switch would be because theyâve built up that second justification to be more appropriate than the first.
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So I could have the 2nd justification be an option that never gets used?
Or does the character have to fall into the 2nd justification?
Does one justification always need to be objective and the other subjective?
The purpose of pitting two justifications against each other is conflictâorder plays no appreciable part in an inequity.
One doesnât happen before the other any more than light appears before dark. Light also appears after dark. Pitting the two against each other (as in the Sources of Conflict exercise) is a matter of light and dark, not light then dark.
If youâre seeing a temporal difference between the two then youâre projecting a narrative context onto them, and moving beyond the purity of the inequity into the realm of your biases.
In short, I would avoid complicating this approach by grating on a temporal aspect (order significance).
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This is really interesting. Since reading about this topic I always thought about it from a macro/objective point of view. Two truths being played out with some characters/MC beliving one thing and some other characters/IC believing another.
I never thought about it from the point of view of one character having two truths and being conflicted by them in a certain situation and having to choose one over another.
Just so I can truly get my head around it, I have an example â let me know if this is correct?
So there is a school kid who is a massive geek. He has three geeky friends that he is close to â like brothers. One of his truths is that he will do anything to protect them. If they are attacked physically or mentally, he will have their back â even if it means getting his ass kicked.
His second truth is that he will agree with whatever the cool rich kids say and do because he wants their approval.
Up until now he hasnât had a problem as the truths have been kept separate. He has stood up for his friends when they were being bullied by the poor burn out kids, and he has laughed at the cool rich kidsâ jokes and agreed with their sexist comments.
Then one day he sees his friends being bullied by the rich cool kids. What does he do? Does he stick up for his friends or does he side with the cool rich kids. He cant do both.
Is that correct? Is this a good example?
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Itâs a great example.
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Awesome. Glad Iâve got my head around that.
Out of interest, how would that be written as a âUNLESSâ statement?
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