Worried my Domains are wrong

writing
#1

I started a project a couple of years ago, and after outlining and writing about a third of the first draft, I had to step away for awhile. Recently, I returned to the project and worked on the draft a bit more, but as I’ve looked over the outline and thought about the storyform with a couple of years more knowledge, I’ve begun to worry that I’ve got the Domains all screwed up.

The story is a mystery that takes place in a school for kids aspiring to be superheroes. Some of the kids are born with their powers. Some have technological type powers. And some possess magical objects. In the story someone starts stealing the magical devices.

My original storyform has the OS in Activity-Obtaining. This felt obvious at the time; after all, the story is about a thief and trying to catch/ stop the thief.

Now, I’m wondering if it shouldn’t be in Situation. Looking through official storyforms, it seems as though mysteries commonly have an OS in Situation, i.e., The Silence of the Lambs, Chinatown, and The Fugitive (or Psychology, when the goal is to figure out who did it, and capturing the criminal is less emphasized as in Laura and In the Heat of the Night).

Is the difference that those stories (even the Psychology ones) focus on a pre-existing set of circumstances and no further crimes are actually being committed over the course of the story? Does the storyform for The Silence of the Lambs change if Buffalo Bill actually kidnaps and kills multiple victims during the story?

Or is just a matter of where the other throughlines fall?

#2

A few weeks ago I flipped the storyform for the novel I’ve been working on for a while from OS Physics to OS Psychology. I also changed the Concern quads too. Too early to tell for sure, but the re-outlining has gone better so far.

OS Situation/Universe stories are the hardest to identify for me (even though in retrospect I’m pretty sure my first novel was in Situation). One commonality of those stories is that something seems to be out of whack in the Universe – there’s a lot of stories where someone is wrongly accused or wrongly imprisoned. Thematically it’s like there’s some great injustice that everyone is stuck in. Not sure that’s an objective definition, just how I’ve been trying to think about it lately.

That said, I don’t think mysteries are necessarily more represented in Universe. I would guess that Psychology or Physics are more common depending on the feel you’re going for.

Have you tried the Dramatica in 30 Seconds exercise? I found that to be a helpful and fairly quick way to run through a bunch of different options for the Domain and Concern levels.

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#3

I don’t have an answer for whether storyforms change if x,y, or z happens – I presume they do. But I’ll leave that for someone smarter.

As to your domains: what is your goal, specifically? Capturing the thief is Obtaining, for sure. And stealing the devices sounds like an OS Concern of Obtaining.

If you’re looking at mystery as a ‘genre’, every domain handles them differently but as @Lakis said, they tend to be Psychology or Physics stories. This is (yet another) thing I’m learning from the Contextual Subgenres:

Psychology mysteries tend to be stories where the ‘detective’ is attempting to piece together a mystery riddled with misdirects, cover-ups and conspiracy. These stories usually are about mysteries that have already happened. e.g. piecing together who attempted to rob the mayor or conceiving of a murderer’s identity. They’re trying to investigate while the suspects are (psychologically) manipulating them.

Physics mysteries tend to be stories where the ‘detective’ is attempting to investigate a mystery that is usually ongoing. e.g. learning who’s hacking a Fortune 500 company’s computers every night or understanding where the money went. They’re trying to investigate while the crime is still (physically) being committed.

Haven’t looked into Universe or Mind yet. But I think, from your description, your story feels more like Physics than Universe. Stealing devices is 100% Obtaining.

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#4

Filtering the storyforms in the Analysis section, it appears to me that Situation and Psychology have the most mysteries. There are one or two in Activity and none in Fixed Attitude. Of course, this isn’t a very big sample size, I might be missing some due to my own lack of familiarity with all the stories, and “mystery” is admittedly a fairly nebulous label.

I think determining whether a mystery falls into Situation or Activity has a lot to do with with whether the crimes are ongoing as @jhay alluded to and whether they pre-exist the story. In The Silence of the Lambs, Buffalo Bill kidnaps the senator’s daughter, which is an inequitable Situation itself on top of Buffalo Bill being out there and needing to be caught.

I was just looking through OS Activity storyforms and came across Scream, which has a mystery at its core and a series of crimes happening throughout the story. The status quo has been shattered by a series of killings, and they must be stopped. Whereas in_The Silence of the Lambs_, the status quo itself is problematic; a serial killer operates in this world with impunity.

What is Dramatica in 30 Seconds? It sounds interesting, but I’ve never heard of it.

The goal for this story would have to be “stop the thief.” This is the second story in a series, and I think I confused myself thinking about a broader storyform that covers a few installments. From an objective perspective, the school has been targeted by a shady character because of all these students with these magical devices (but that’s in the big picture), and the thefts play into that (which is what this installment is focused on).

When you start thinking about the source of inequity, sometimes you ask yourself weird questions. The school has been infiltrated by a person with ulterior motives… is that actually inequitable in and of itself? This feels more like a Situation to me and for a couple of days my answer to this question would have been “Yes, of course,” but right now I’m thinking, "No. It doesn’t matter what the person wants to do. Simply being in the school and going to class isn’t inequitable (assuming the story isn’t about the student who didn’t get to attend because her spot was taken by the thief); rather, the inequity arises when the thief acts. Hopefully, that’s correct.

#5

It’s an exercise developed by Armando in Dramatica for Screenwriters but you can access it using the query system (story guide) in the Dramatica application (assuming we have same version?). I think the instructions there mostly cover what he says in the book.

Basically you create a four paragraph synopsis just using Driver + Consequence, Goal + Requirements + Forewarning + Limit, Driver + Outcome. For your purposes though, I think specifically encoding some different Goal and Consequence options in storytelling might help you figure out the Domains.

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#6

Is it possible that your series storyform is in Situation, and this particular story is an Activity story? Theft is definitely Obtaining – it’s obtaining something that doesn’t belong to you.

I’m not well-versed in Situation stories enough to give you a concrete answer as to whether or not your story fits that definition. But I am 99% sure it’s an Obtaining story.

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#7

Yes, I believe so, now. This is what I was trying to say, but I reckon I was talking around it too much instead of just saying it.

Ah, thank you. I’ll check that out.

Your suggestion about Consequences is a good one. If remember correctly, Goal of Obtaining has a Consequence of Becoming/ Changing One’s Nature? That pretty much nails my story since failure to stop the thief and recover the stolen goods means those stolen from will lose their powers and become ineligible to attend the school, and the school itself will suffer some major change due to its inability to protect the students in its care.

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#8

Would it help clarify a Goal by thinking “What ends the story for the characters?”

#9

I think you have to be really careful with this. In The Silence of the Lambs, for instance, capturing or killing Buffalo Bill ends the OS, but that doesn’t clearly point to a Domain.

#10

it really depends on where the conflict is coming from.

A groups of students’ search for the thief (Physics) gets them detention because only the super teachers are supposed to be doing this.
The presence of a thief in their midst (Universe) causes the students to bicker anytime someone gets a little too close to someone else’s magical item.
The students belief that they know who the thief is (Mind) drives an innocent teacher to leave the school to avoid further harassment.
The students overprotective behavior (Psychology) after a string of thefts leads to many squabbles in the hallways.

Your Domain is the genre of your story. If you have an entertainment genre of Horror, most of the entertainment will come from elements of horror-monsters, murderers, scary things. If you have a genre of Western, most elements of entertainment will come from elements of The Old West-gunfights, saloon brawls, horseback chases, journeys in covered wagons. If you have a Dramatica genre of Physics, most problems are going to arise from Physics-high speed chases leading to crashes, starting fights and letting the bad guy escape, holding a competition turning brothers against each other. If you have a Dramatica genre of Universe, most problems will arise from Universal elements-a killer on the loose causes a festival to be cancelled, a meteor headed toward the earth leads to rampant crime, the existence of ghosts creates inner turmoil for an atheist, and etc. It just depends on what type of problems you want to write about.

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#11

I think @Gregolas is spot on here: identify the primary conflict you want to emphasize. I agree that it can be difficult at times to suss out what that is, since most of Dramatica’s 75 story points are sources of conflict and therefore every type of throughline adds its flavor of conflict to the story. But here is where I think we as writers need to remember to tell the kind of story we want to tell rather than creating a full storyform first and trying to deduce what kind of story that we just described.

For example, my current piece is a theatrical play, and also a mystery. The OS is actually in Universe, because the story is about 8 people stuck on a derelict boat after the captain has been murdered. They can’t get off the vessel, they know a murderer is in their midst, and they believe the killer will strike again. Looking at that premise from another angle, I could easily say that it’s about catching the killer, but the feel of the story centers around the claustrophobia and increasing paranoia of being trapped in a confined environment with a predator.

So my neophyte advice is to let your gut tell you what your story feels like, and then let Dramatica embellish the details and ensure you have a complete story.

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#12

Roger Rabbit had an effective infiltration angle with a solving aspect.

#13

That’s funny; I was just thinking about Who Framed Roger Rabbit this morning. Has anyone tried to find a storyform for it?

If not, a quick guess:

OS - Psychology: “Who framed Roger Rabbit?”
MC - Fixed Attitude: Eddie Valiant doesn’t like toons.
IC - Situation: Roger Rabbit is framed; he’s a famous actor in a slump
RS - Activity: Eddie’s and Roger’s friendship develops as they work together to solve the mystery.

Or not, other possibilities are occurring to me now. Anyway, if anyone’s interested I might start an analysis thread on it.

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