You know what I think would be really cool? A wiki page which any of us could edit which is just a list of gists (appropriately sorted into through line, problem, issue, etc.) and a voting mechanism. We could add gists we came up with and those gists could be voted on by the community at large so that the bests gists float to the top of the list.
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Fantastic idea. This would greatly help the entire community and new people too.
Nobody else like this idea? I was thinking of writing it after I got my first draft finished this month (and assuming I can find a free host which permits server-side scripting), but not unless thereās a lot of interest in it.
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Iām very interested in this. But weāll need some serious quality control though. We canāt harm proper appreciation of elements of the theory.
I assume the quality control would come from it being a wiki
I like it but you might want to get that okād first. Not sure how that works. Could it be done on here somehow?
Something else I like that Iāve mentioned before would be a list of problems that could be mixed and matched with the gists.
Gists-
superheroes fighting
Failure to conceive of Rats cooking
Fear of Predator animals
Killer on the loose
Is a problem because-
The dragon has been freed
Thereās conflict within the family
No one can go outside after dark
Something along those lines. Writers could pick and choose and the challenge would be in showing how something like ākiller on the looseā is a problem because of āconflict in the familyā. It could be fun. Not every combo would be literary gold, but you could get some interesting stuff going on. Might be a little too close to a Mad Libs though.
I assume the ābecause ofā provides the domain and concern?
I donāt want to chase that idea down too much in this forum as I donāt want to get accused of āpromoting my own versions of Dramaticaā here, but I like the way you think.
One thing that I do find highly annoying is all the existing gists which are just copies with minor variation. Iām talking about things like
- Actualizing Something
- Being a Real Group
- Being Real
- Being Someone Real
- Being Something Real
In my opinion, this sort of filler only makes the hay stack bigger and the task of finding the needle that much harder.
Consolidate it into āhe, she, it, or they is / are realā
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I think the wiki page is a great idea! However, because the Gists that ship with the software are the intellectual property of Write Brothers (Dramatica company), youād want to make sure you didnāt duplicate any of those gists directly. And maybe see what @chuntley thinks of this idea.
Ditto for @jhull since he has Narrative First gist collections with thousands of gists which you can get access to with a paid membership, and his Atomizer includes gist features too.
If I could get a list of their gists, itād be a simple thing to see if the new gist a user is adding (identified as a text string) matches any string in a look up table. That look up table would include all the proprietary gists that other people such as Jhull have already came up with. If there is a match, then the wiki would not permit that gist being added to the site.
New gists would also be given a date of creation to protect gists on the website from later being claimed to be someoneās property.
The ābecause ofā is meant to show what is making the gist problematic. While it seems obvious that a killer on the loose just is problematic, it really isnāt inherently problematic. If a killer is on the loose in a room full of people you ar at war with, for instance, itās not a problem. If a killer is on the loose and this creates conflict within a family as they decide whether or not to keep a gun in the house for protection, then you have a problem. If a killer is on the loose, and thereās a city wide lockdown preventing a character from getting to his medication, you have a problem. If thereās a killer on the loose who has freed the kings dragons as a diversion, you have a problem.
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Thereās been a few times that Iāve found this helpful. For whatever reason āsomeoneā doesnāt bring anything to mind, but then I get to āa particular groupā and suddenly get a great idea.
But, it would identify the domain and concern wouldnāt it? I mean, if you worded it carefully. The user wouldnāt even have to think about domain and concern, but gists like āyou join a neighborhood watch program whose members all have a tenuous grasp of realityā vs. āyour relationship with your family suffers as a result of your paranoiaā would carry certain domains / concerns implicitly.
I donāt know. Iām going to say not necessarily. For instance, if you come up with āRunning a race is a problem because it overworks the MCs bad heartā are you saying that might suggest both Physics and Doing where Physics=running a race and Doing=over exerting a weak heart?
Iād fear Iād end up combining two levels and hurting the story because of it if I looked at it that way. Iād feel like I still needed to make overworking a weak heart a problem and then instead of having a Domain and a Concern, Iād have just one of those and it would be very overloaded,very over justified. Also, I might want the Physics of running a race as the overall problem, but for the plot to deal with the problems around Obtaining a replacement heart. So, yeah, you might could look at it like that, but Iād be careful with it.
Now, I would look at that and say that the MC domain is Situation (on account of having a physical quality of a bad heart). Dramatica explicitly states in reference to the MC having Domain: Situation, āWhat is it like to have the Main Characterās physicality?ā Then, the Concern would be āHow Things are Changingā. Heās not the only character in the race. So, Iād put the Domain: Physics and Concern: Doing in the OS Throughline.
First, see, hereās where the āis a problem becauseā comes in. How in that example is having a bad heart shown to be problematic? Having a bad heart isnāt inherently a problem. It has to be made a problem. You can take the info in that example and twist it to say something like āhaving a bad heart is problematic because it keeps the character from racingā, but that is not whatās in the example above. That is a different problem, different story.
You also look to Progress because this character is in a race and presumably has some concern about his progress against the other competitors. But that also was not in the example and hasnāt been shown to be problematic. That also dismisses the idea that the plot should revolve around the problems associated with obtaining a heart.
Second, letās see if I can adjust the problem to match how youāre seeing it. Having a bad heart is a problem because it prevents the MC from giving his all during the race. You could assume that being unable to give his all is preventing him from making better progress, and maybe that works. But you wouldnāt want to cut yourself off from being able to use the same gist to tell a story with a Past, Present, or Future concern.
This is remarkably difficult to explain once we move beyond the simplest explanation.
Why is having a bad heart a problem? āhaving a bad heart is problematic because it keeps the character from racingā But, why is racing important? What is the inequality being explored? It has something to do with him physically and it has to do with something he was once able to do and can no longer do it.
Letās imagine the two drop downs as youāve described them. Under āWhat is the problem?ā weāve left it blank. Under āWhy is it a problem?ā weāve put āHe is growing more feebleā In other words, simply identifying the Domain and Concern does not tell us what the problem is.
In this example, we havenāt identified a domain or a concern. āGrowing more feebleā is showing why āblankā is a problem. āGrowing more feebleā could be used to identify the domain or concern if used as the gist and then shown to be problematic.
I donāt think this matters structurally. This is a storytelling concern. Racing is important because the MC loves to do it/needs the prize money/has defined himself by his ability to win. Racing is important because being #1/reaping the rewards of hard work/showboating are how the IC challenges others.
Isnāt the inequity always the gap between that which is and that which the character desires? I think the Dramatica example is often of the MC wants a new car but doesnāt have money. The āproblemā is not having a car, but what makes it a problem is desiring a new car.
I could be totally off about this because Iāve never really fully grasped Dramaticaās notion of inequity. But assuming the notion above is correct, then in a sense you could pair almost any problem with any desire because the relationship between the two comes from the throughline perspective. So, for example, the gist might be āforgetting oneās long-lost petā and the desire āwanting a new houseā ā which sound unrelated, but which the author could define a connection between those two things (the MC canāt pick a new house because none of them feel right because what will make the house feel right is if it reminds him of living with his long-lost pet ā¦ or whatever).
Just curious if Iām looking at this correctly?
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