Slicing and Dicing: Piper's Domains

questions
#1

Happy New Year, everyone!

I have a question about implementing slicing and dicing and especially how it’s used in the Pixar short Piper. @jhull says on Narrative First that Piper has all four throughlines, although the IC and RS are somewhat light, and the eight dynamic story points. He mentions a couple of these story points in his analysis, such as Resolve, Outcome, Judgement, and “guideposts” (I’m not certain which throughline they’re for), which include the Potential of Inaction, the Resistance of Reaction, the Conflict of Protection, and the Outcome of Proaction.

Assuming that these guideposts refer to the MC throughline, then what is the MC Domain? Strategy, the variation that the guideposts fall under, or is that the OS Domain? Also, what are the other Domains? Are they Prerequisites, Analysis, and Preconditions, the other variations under Learning, or something else?

While there are many approaches to slicing and dicing for short stories, I think that knowing the Domains of a concrete example such as Piper would be beneficial to those who wish to apply these concepts to their short stories.

Source: https://narrativefirst.com/blog/2016/07/piper-a-complete-story-in-six-minutes

1 Like
#2

Been a while since I’ve seen it. And even though the name of the article is “A Complete Story In Six Minutes” Piper doesn’t have a complete storyform. It does, however, seem to have bits from each throughline. I’d say Piper as the MC has problems with her fear of the ocean, so maybe Mind. Everyone is trying to get food but is hampered by the waves. So OS in Physics? Just a guess.

#3

The short film certainly doesn’t have a full storyform, but what I think Jim meant is that it’s complete “within the scope of the argument,” as Melanie puts it (see first source). When I said “Domain,” I didn’t necessarily mean that it applied to the Domain level, since the “guideposts” (signposts?) were represented by Elements rather than by Types. Melanie says that it’s possible, albeit unusual, to represent a level of the Dramatica chart by another level, such as Elements representing plot (see second source). I’m not certain if Jim meant that Piper employed this rare technique or not, which is why I’m confused.

Sources: http://storymind.com/content/122.htm
http://dramaticapedia.com/2011/04/11/word-salad-slicing-and-dicing-story-structure/

#4

Ok. I think I get it now. You’re wondering if the throughlines would be Strategy, Preconditions, Prerequisites, and Analysis instead of Universe, Physics, Psychology, and Mind?

#5

Yes, at least that’s what I think, based on the fact that the “guideposts” are the elements under Strategy.

#6

So where do you see prerequisite and precondition coming into play in the story?
And if those are the Domain level, are you seeing Inaction, Reaction, etc as plot/concern level?

#7

Admittedly, I’m not certain. An article on the Dramatica site (see source), which led me to believe that those Variations could potentially act as “Domains” in the case of Piper, offers an approach to writing a short story by assigning a throughline to each member of the quad containing the Variations in question. It’s likely that I’m completely on the wrong track to believe that this is how the throughlines are represented in the story, but since Jim didn’t mention what the “Domains” of the four throughlines were, I can’t be sure.

Ultimately, I’m trying to expand my understanding of slicing and dicing by figuring out how the throughlines are represented in Piper. Granted, Jim does provide a couple of examples of short stories that use slicing and dicing in the article “The Structure of a Short Story,” namely “The Variant” and “The Flying Kreisslers,” but they appear to employ different techniques than Piper.

Yes, since I associated “guidepost” with signposts, being on the Concern level.

Sources: http://dramatica.com/questions/how-do-i-write-a-short-story-with-dramatica
https://narrativefirst.com/articles/the-structure-of-a-short-story

1 Like
#8

I watched it again earlier, but couldn’t pay as much thought to it as I’d like to. I’m not real comfortable with Prereqs and Precons, either. I kind of have some ideas where they might play in, but want to think about it a bit more before I start trying to offer anything.

What makes it hard to say where the throughlines would fall is that I can really see where Inaction, Reaction, Protection, and Proaction show up (specifically because Jim pointed them out in his article) but have trouble seeing all of the other elements under Precon, Prereq, and Analysis at play. I’m guessing they just largely aren’t there. At the moment I’m wondering if it has an entire slice of the issue level, but only dices with Strategy (please forgive my clumsy use of those terms).

i’ve read many of those articles as well. I feel like you’re on the right track, but I haven’t really explored the technique of “slicing and dicing” very much. It’s something I always want to look at more, but feel like I need to keep working on the basics of using the entire Dramatica chart before I start playing with it like that.

1 Like
#9

It certainly is a more advanced concept, especially in the manner Piper uses it. I’ll get back to you if/when I figure out anything. Thanks for your replies! :grinning:

1 Like
#10

I’ve been entranced with @jhull 's article on this short and the short itself. And a question occurred to me, if you changed the order of the guidepost elements (Inaction->Reaction->Protection->Proactive) does that automatically change the flavor of ending you have or could you end with say Inaction and still have a success good ending? Can you tell a story with any quad, in any order? Or is the order suggested by the quad somehow?

1 Like
#11

I’ve learned a couple of things related to this topic that might shed some light on it.

I’ve been wondering that for a while, since the order of signposts for a “full” story alters the meaning, so it would seem that the same principle would apply when working with elements as guideposts.

According to the theory book, you can in fact tell a short story using any quad, but whether any order can be used or not is not mentioned. The book states under the section “Ultra-Short Stories” on page 383 that “The minimal story consists of four dramatic units in a quad. This is the tiniest story that can create an interference pattern between the flow of space and time, encoding both reason and emotion in a way than can be decoded by an audience. However, ANY quad will do, which leads to a great number of minimal stories.”

Unfortunately, this doesn’t provide any clue how the dynamic story points would be handled in a short story like this. Piper has all eight dynamic story points, but only a couple of them are clear. For example, what’s Piper’s (the MC’s) approach if her “Domain” is an Element or even a Variation?

1 Like