Can Dramatica/Narrova be used to build short stories? If so… is it the same process as for novels?
I think for very long short stories the full storyform could work. But for usual short story lengths (say 500 to 5000+ words) you’re probably best at just picking a single quad and driving your story from that. I would guess that a story longer than 2000 words is usually driven from more than a single quad, but in my opinion, a single quad is still the best way to develop and write the story.
Here is an example flash story of mine, with a quad analysis at the end: Saveyour (Flash Story)
My published short story “The Haunted Overlook” also used this technique. You can find it here if interested: Elegant-Literature-013-Haunted-Hideaway.pdf. I can’t remember what quad it was though, I’d have to check my notes!
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Mike’s got the experience, so I would definitely check out his two stories.
In the documentation we have a section on Writing Short Stories that goes over what a short story means in terms of Dramatica theory, and how best to use Narrova to work on your own.
I went ahead and asked Narrova directly your question (which is what I would do to get started), and it came back with this relatively informative comparison chart:
Interesting take on the discussion to say the least!
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