What does it mean to think of Elements ending in '-ing'

questions
#1

If we’re supposed to think of everything(?) as having an “ing” at the end to imagine them as processes but

  1. Why must they even be processes? Why can’t the good guys having possession of something (rather than, say, the making the conflict be the process of going on an arduous quest to retrieve it) that the bad guys want be a conflict of Obtaining? And aren’t Mind and Universe supposed to be static?

  2. What about stuff like Past? How can the Past be a process? A process can have occurred in the past, or something started in the past could still be occurring now or have ripple effects, but that sounds like it’s own process rather than a conflict caused by its position in time.

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#2

Why do you think everything has to be a process?

#3

Someone can correct me if I’m wrong, but I think they’re supposed to be processes because that’s what the chart is. It’s a snapshot of the mind’s processes in action. Like a photo of some activity.

The Past is everything that happened before now. Past-ing is the process of dealing / grappling with the past.

Does that help at all?

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#4

I think it comes from Jim.

I think the intent is to help get the conflict from the storypoint and get away from using it as storytelling.

I don’t think it is necessarily a hard and fast rule.

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#5

Remember that everything is connected to everything else.
Remember that the inequity creates problems.

I hate asparagus. Static. Also, not a problem.
My parents have set up an arranged marriage between me and a stalk of asparagus.
My hatred towards asparagus is now in conflict with my marital status. As that gets sorted out, a process happens.

I am a piece of asparagus. Static. Not a problem.
My parents have set up an arranged marriage to a jerk of a human.
I must now try to find other things to make up for my aspagarusness. I clean, I bake, I go earn a living as a lawyer.
I am still asparagus, but I am in the process of becoming more.

I am a scientist. I was on my way to a tenured position until my experiment gave souls to asparagus.
Now I am both a laughing stock and a miracle worker.
No school can touch me. I must now work to prove myself in other ways.
My past will always be my past, but I make it a strength as I forge my way forward as a bioethicist.

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#6

Yeah. I was watching that video on Subtext about Relationship throughlines again and “Obtaining-ing” and “Past-ing” came up. There was also an article a while back.

I tend to assume everything is unless it’s said not to be. Dramatica is so complicated and slippery, I feel like I can’t rely on myself to make any judgments about that kind of thing.

#7

How to Illustrate Effective Narrative Conflict

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#8

But the source of conflict here is not a process. It’s a state that leads to a process. Is that ok as long as it leads to conflict?

Would saying something like “engaging in the Past” mean the same thing as “Past-ing”?

Does “process” mean something like, say, walking (Doing) as one activity, or all the motions that comprise it like raising one leg, placing it in front of the other, etc… or do they both count (just seen at different “magnifications”)?

#9

Yeah, that’s the article

#10

Nothing in a story exists in isolation. Nothing exists in a story except as part of a problem-solving activity.

I don’t really know what you mean by “Engaging in the Past” so this is hard for me to answer.

Always ask yourself how does this cause problems?

tl;dr :muscle:

But also, try to think of things in a story. You won’t date me because you are intimidated by who I have dated in the Past. (Heidi Klum, btw.) Why is this a problem? It’s not a problem because this happened in the past. It’s a problem because right now it’s making you feel like you don’t stack up. So, in this case, the problem is something like, “Measuring yourself against the Past.”

You are overthinking this, but you’ve also disconnected the question from its role in a story. Put everything back into a very short story as you think about it.

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#11

How can you process a problem unless you view it as a process?

I would say ‘having’ is a process.

Keep in mind, now, that every element of the Dramatica model actually represents a process of the mind. These are not elements so much as named processed. For example, in truth we don’t have faith, rather we are engaged in the process of being faithful. The mind is a machine made of time; every gear and pulley is a process, not an object. These functions must be continuously in process or they cease to exist. If the mind stops, it dies. But, from a structural view, if we see a process perpetually ongoing within the span of our observation, such as the Red Spot on Jupiter, we treat the process as an object and call it a storm or even a feature. So, from this perspective, the dynamic questions differ from the rest of the structural model by describing the processes the twist and turn the model into different arrangements. In other words, dynamics in the current model are the processes that arrange the other processes

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#12

That’s simple enough, but is that all one has to do to encode things right? For “How does Obtaining cause problems?” I could say “Obtaining the relic made us the target for every bad guy in the country” which sounds like it comes from a state of ownership, not the process of Obtaining the relic, which I’d think would be something like “The dangerous journey to find the relic killed off most of our crew and now we can hardly defend ourselves on the journey back.” I don’t know if both are valid or just the 2nd one.

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#13

It’s not a state if they can voluntarily leave the state, i.e. by leaving the relic in a hotel room.

I would say the encoding would be something like “Trying to maintain possession of the relic causes problems”, or “Trying not to lose (negative obtaining) the object causes problems” or “The bad guys all want to obtain the relic, which causes problems”

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#14

Something that’s helped me understand processes is @jhull’s advice to not think of time as linear, but to see the whole story happening at once. There’s a lot of things going on in a story, but I can say to you, “Casablanca” and envelop all of it at once… and you know what I mean. What that story feels like all at once.

It’s like the inner workings of clock. Looking at the individual parts, things are spinning, or ticking, or springing, or turning. Each of its parts going through its own unique process. But one can stand back from the device and simply see a wristwatch.

So with stories, I’ve found it helps to look at seemingly bizarre things like Past-ing in context to understand them. It’s very hard to “get it” on a purely conceptual level. Watch films, pick them apart…

  • In a History of Violence, Viggo has some pretty intense skeletons in his closet, and those things from the past are catching up to him.
  • In Field of Dreams, the Past is showing up for everyone in the story.
  • In Young Frankenstein, the history between Frederick and the Monster/Victor is the main force at play driving that relationship.

In all of these, we see the Players facing problems with things that deal with the past.

Honestly, the original Dramatica definition says it pretty well:

The past is not unchanging. Often we learn new things which change our understanding of what past events truly meant and create new appreciations of how things really fit together. A story that focuses on the Past may be much more than a documentation of what happened. Frequently it is a re-evaluation of the meaning of what has occurred that can lead to changing one’s understanding of what is happening in the present or will eventually happen in the future.

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#15

Think of states as unchanging processes. They’re like standing waves. Still a wave, still moving, but ‘frozen’ in place at the same time.

In order to make Obtaining a problem, it needs to be the process of obtaining or possessing that causes conflict. So if your story is ‘the process of possessing the relic made us a target’ then you have an Obtaining story.

If your story is ‘we stole the relic, regretted it, and immediately gave it back thereby ending the process of possession but the police are still after us because we still took the relic’ then It might be something else. That might be the process of being the person that took the relic, the process of having that past.

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#16

Imagine if someone, maybe a parent, said, “I doubt you’ll ever amount to anything.” Those words cause you to doubt your potential. So you overwork yourself, trying to get perfect grades in school. And you start stressing out and becoming more and more anxious as you doubt your potential. This develops into you having a hard time connecting with other people because your mind goes blank every time you try to talk to someone. You stay up late watching videos on how to be a good friend, how to make friends. It’s this doubt in your potential that keeps you lying in bed, worrying all night. And it’s also doubt that keeps you from ever improving and escaping your hopeless situation.

As I understand it, that’s what doubt-ing is. The idea is that the elements are something to be expressed and illustrated. If doubt causes you to run away from home, then running away from home is an act of doubt-ing. If doubt causes you struggle speaking to other people, then, in this context, struggling to speak with others is doubt-ing.

The doubts themselves are something static on their own, but “doubt-ing” is the process of these doubts actively expressing themselves and being illustrated within the story.

This process is an opportunity to show why the doubts are good or bad, and why these specific doubts are a problem or a solution within the context of this story. If doubting myself causes me to run away from home, but that’s what saves me from a zombie apocalypse… maybe doubting my potential is a good thing in this story? Maybe a critical moment is when I choose to NOT take a leap of faith over the Grand Canyon, because unlike everyone else, I know I’m literally incapable of jumping over the Grand Canyon. So maybe I need to remain doubt or disbelief in my own capabilities if I want to stay alive. Maybe the doubts I described in the first paragraph are the backstory for why my character views doubt to be a bad thing (it made them nervous and unable to connect with others), and the story leads to them realizing that in some contexts, it’s okay and even healthy to doubt yourself (expressed through choosing to not attempt jumping over the Grand Canyon).

Basically, my main point is that if you have an element, let it be expressed. And preferably, illustrate it in ways beyond a character simply saying “I’m so doubtful. I don’t think I can do this.” Have them travel across the multiverse, have them dance, have them sing, have them murder, have them smell like pizza, and so on. Those are all valid forms of doubt-ing if you allow them to be.

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