This downloadable three-hour 43 part audio program (mp3 format) is presented by Dramatica Theory co-creators Melanie Anne Phillips and Chris Huntley in their only published seminar as co-instructors.
Volume One presents a whole new way of looking at and writing with story structure, including all the following topics:
Part 1 – Introduction
Part 2 – The Story Mind
Part 3 – Story Perspectives
Part 4 – The 12 Essential Questions
Part 5 – The Obstacle Character
Part 6 – James Bond & Character Change
Part 7 – Character Growth
Part 8 – Direction of Character Growth
Part 9 – Is Your Main Character a Do-er or Be-er?
Part 10 – What Is Your Main Character’s Mental Sex?
Part 11 – Your Plot – Action or Decision?
Part 12 – Your Plot – Time Lock or Option Lock?
Part 13 – Your Plot – Success or Failure?
Part 14 – Positioning Your Reader/Audience
Part 15 – The Four “Classes” of Stories
Part 16 – Your Story’s “Concern” and “Range”
Part 17 – Curing Your Story’s Disease
Volume Two covers the structural side of characters from archetypes to complex operatives, including all the following topics:
Part 1 – Characters and the Story Mind
Part 2 – Two Perspectives of Characters
Part 3 – Four Points of View of Your Characters
Part 4 – Your Protagonist Does Not Have to Be Your Main Character
Part 5 – Should Your Main Character Change?
Part 6 – Should Your Main Character Start or Stop?
Part 7 – What is Your Main Character’s Approach?
Part 8 – Defining Male and Female Mental Sex
Part 9 – Archetypes – How the Dramatica Theory was Created
Part 10 – Archetypes in Star Wars
Part 11 – Internal and External Elements of Archetypes
Part 12 – Writing with Four Dimensional Characters
Part 13 – Complex Characters
Part 14 – Objective and Subjective Characters
Volume Three reveals a whole new way of structuring your plot using signposts and journeys, including all the following topics:
There are two forces that converged to create story structure as we know it today. One was an attempt to document our motivations and behaviors, the other is to affect motivations and behavior.
In the first case, storytellers simply noted what they saw, both within their own hearts and minds and in society – both individuals and groups. When they did, the underlying conventions of story structure emerged as truisms that delineated the basic drives and thought processes we all share in common. Any story that missed one had a hole. Any story that inaccurately portrayed one had an inconsistency. And we see these same problems today when someone says “The plot had a hole big enough to drive a truck through,” or “Why did they do that? Nobody in his right mind would do that!”
In the second case, storytellers have an agenda: to change the way people think and/or act. To this end, the telling of stories evolved into two forms. The first of these is the Tale, which is a linear form of communication. Tales begin with one situation and state of mind, then follow the characters through a series of events that leads to another situation and state of mind. The message of a tale is “If you follow this path, you’ll end up better off (or worse off) than if you didn’t take the journey.
Tales, like fairy tales, are often cautionary tales, meaning that they describe a set of behaviors that will lead to something bad. Message being: don’t take this course in life or you will seriously regret it. This is the most simple form of reader/audience manipulation. As long as the series of events is unbroken by logical gaps and makes sense AND the emotional/thought processes of the characters follow a real, human linearity, then the reader/audience is likely to buy into the message (unless they have experience to the contrary).
But, if the reader/audience does have contrary experience, then they may reject the author’s contention and argue that other paths exist that might be even better (or worse) than the one proposed. To counter that rebuttal to his or her tale statement, an author would need to argue the point by proving (to reader/audience satisfaction) that the rebuttal is not as accurate as the original statement. The steps necessary to make that argument lead us into a different form of manipulation communication, the story, which we will cover in the next lesson.
You can view all 113 episodes of this original program for just $19.95
This is the first episode of a 113 part program I originally recorded in 1999 as a webcast, when such events were cutting edge, technologically. All these years later, it remains my best and most complete description of the Dramatica Theory of Story Structure and covers all key concepts and how to apply them to your novel, screenplay or any form of expression in fiction.
Though our understanding of the nuances and ramifications of the theory have grown in time, all the essential notions have remained unchanged, and are just as valuable and useful today as when I sat in front of my massive CRT monitor and shared them with my internet audience from my living room.
With this short glimpse into the past to set the stage, here is a textual exploration of the material covered in this first episode, informed by fifteen additional years of exploration and familiarity with the theory.
Introducing the Story Mind
When we write a story, it takes on a personality of its own, as if it were a real person in its own right. There is a reason for this. Every character represents a different aspect of our own minds, so when they all come together in a story, it begins to act like us, influenced by all those conflicting facets that determine our overall motivation and behavior.
From a theory stand point it is a bit more complicated than that. Each of us has the same basic attributes: reason, skepticism and conscience, for example. We use them all to try and solve problems and maximize happiness in our everyday lives. When we come together in a group toward a common purpose, we gradually self- organize until one person emerges as the voice of reason, another as the skeptic, and another as the conscience of the group.
This is just good survival strategy because if each of use becomes a specialist, collectively the group will be able to see the problem (and potential solutions) far more clearly than if everyone sat around doing all the same jobs as general practitioners.
As it turns out, since member of a group come to play the role of just one part of ourselves, the group as a whole becomes something of a fractal mind – a larger version of what goes on in our own head and hearts.
Our breakthrough that led to the Dramatica theory was a Eureka moment in which we realized stories weren’t just about people trying to accomplish something, but that the full complement of characters created a greater mind – a Story Mind that had just as much of a personality as any individual.
That, of course, is a gross simplification appropriate to this introduction. In truth, it took us three solid years of full-time effort (from 1991 to 1994) to take that insight, use it as a filter through which to examine the conventions of story structure and then document and clarify all of the aspects of human psychology they illuminated.
The end result was a conceptual model not only of story structure, but of the human mind itself. By 1994, we had converted our model into equations and algorithms that described the relationships among human thought processes, and implemented them in software as a Story Engine that became the Dramatica line of story development products.
Very complex, to be sure! But the important element is the simple understanding that in real life,people come together in groups and self-organize as a larger model of the mind in which each plays a role, and that the conventions of story structure reflect this in the individual characters and, collectively, in the overall personality of the story itself.
You can view all 113 episodes of this original program for just $19.95
The process of communication requires at least two parties: the originator and the recipient. In addition, for communication to take place, the originator must be aware of the information or feelings he wishes to transmit, and the recipient must be able to determine that meaning.
Similarly, storytelling requires an author and an audience. And, to tell a story, one must have a story to tell. Only when an author is aware of the message he wishes to impart can he determine how to couch that message so it will be accurately received.
It should be noted that an audience is more than a passive participant in the storytelling process. When we write the phrase, “It was a dark and stormy night,” we have communicated a message, albeit a nebulous one.
In addition to the words, another force is at work creating meaning in the reader’s mind. The readers themselves may have conjured up memories of the fragrance of fresh rain on dry straw, the trembling fear of blinding explosions of lightning, or a feeling of contentment that recalls a soft fur rug in front of a raging fire. But all we wrote was, “It was a dark and stormy night.”
We mentioned nothing in that phrase of straw or lightning or fireside memories. In fact, once the mood is set, the less said, the more the audience can imagine. Did the audience imagine what we, the authors, had in mind? Not likely. Did we communicate? Some. We communicated the idea of a dark and stormy night. The audience, however, did a lot of creating on its own.
While some authors write specifically to communicate to an audience, many others write because they wish to follow their personal Muses. Sometimes writing is a catharsis, or an exploration of self. Sometimes authoring is a sharing of experiences, fragmented images, or just of a point of view. Sometimes authoring is marking a path for an audience to follow, or perhaps just presenting emotional resources the audience can construct into its own vision.
Interactive communications question the validity of a linear story itself, and justifiably so. There are many ways to communicate, and each has just as much value as the next depending upon how one wishes to affect one’s audience.
It has been argued that perhaps the symbols we use are what create concepts, and therefore no common understanding between cultures, races, or times is possible.
On the contrary, there are common concepts: morality, for example. Morality, a common concept? Yes. While not everyone shares the same definition of morality, every culture and individual understands some concept that means “morality” to them.
In other words, the concept of “morality” may have many different meanings — depending on culture or experience — but they all qualify as different meanings of “morality.”
Thus there can be universally shared essential concepts even though they drift apart through various interpretations. It is through this framework of essential concepts that communication is possible.
To communicate a concept, an author must symbolize it, either in words, actions, juxtapositions, interactions — in some form or another. As soon as the concept is symbolized, however, it becomes culturally specific and therefore inaccessible to much of the rest of the world.
Even within a specific culture, the different experiences of each member of an audience will lead to a slightly different interpretation of the complex patterns represented by intricate symbols.
On the other hand, it is the acceptance of common symbols of communication that defines a culture. For example, when we see a child fall and cry, we do not need to know what language he speaks or what culture he comes from in order to understand logistically what has happened.
If we observe the same event in a narrative, however, it may be that in the author’s culture a child who succumbs to tears is held in low esteem. In that case, then the emotions of sadness we may feel in our culture are not at all those intended by the author.
The accuracy with which an author is able to successfully convey both concept and context defines the success of any communication. And so, communication requires both a sound narrative and an effective translation of that narrative into symbolic language.
These requirements create an immensely rich and complex form which (though often practiced intuitively) can be deconstructed, understood, and manipulated with purpose and skill.
To begin such a deconstruction, let us next examine the origins of communication and the narrative form.
Characters, Plot, Theme and Genre have a secret meaning behind their obvious relevance to stories. In fact, they provide a clue as to why stories exist in the first place.
Stories exist because they represent what we do as individuals and how we relate to one another socially. They provide vicarious experiences without the risk or permanent high passion of real life. And, in the hands of a skilled author, offer a compelling message about the best way to behave in situations that represent or mimic the kinds of circumstances we encounter in our own lives.
Within this context, we can see that Characters illustrate the different kinds of drives and points of view we have, and the message of the story describes how each of these attributes or attitudes fares in regard to the problem at hand.
Plot delineates different methods, means or techniques we might employ to solve that kinds of problem.
Theme outlines the propriety of one value standard over another.
Genre provides an overall perspective that is fully explored over the course of the story.
In this way, a story focuses on a particular scenario that stands as an analogy to any number of similar scenarios we face very day.
This much of an understanding of story structure is fairly obvious, even at face value. But, beneath all that is an even more remarkable truth of what Characters, Plot, Theme and Genre truly are.
For a moment, consider why authors started writing stories in the first place. Better still, consider why people started telling stories in the first place. First you tell the truth to communicate. Then you embellish to leverage. Then you fashion a fiction to make a point.
The fiction you create must bear a substantive reflection of the real world or your audience will not accept the validity of your message. And so, early storytellers sought to accurately represent how individuals go about dealing with problem and making decisions and also how people interact collectively.
Over many generations, the art of storytelling arrived at certain conventions of story structure that represented truisms of human nature. And in this way, we arrive at today’s stories in which there are Characters, Plot, Theme and Genre.
As it turns out, there is a remarkable attribute of these structural conventions: while each is a story element, collectively they create a story that has its own identity, its own personality as if it were a person in its own right in which story elements represent facets of this overall Story Mind.
How did this happen? Because it accurately reflects what happens in real life. In our own lives, each of us has qualities such as reason and skepticism. We use them all to solve problems and make decisions.
When we gather together in groups toward a common purpose, such as a collective goal, the group gradually self-organizes into specific jobs or roles, each of which focuses on just one of our human attributes. For example, every organized group will have at least one member who stands out as the voice of reason while another will assume the role of the group’s skeptic.
Why does this happen? The process of self-organization occurs for two reasons: One, to solve a group problem we need to look at it from all the same angles we use in solving personal problems or we won’t have covered all the possibilities in which to find solutions. Two, if as a group each of us tried to look at all aspects of the problem identically, we don’t get nearly the resolution on the problem, not nearly the degree of detail and deep thought that the group can achieve if each individual becomes a specialist and focuses on just one aspect of the issue.
And so, the group member representing the voice of reason in the group spends most of his time looking into which potential solutions make the most sense and not paying nearly as much attention to other ways of examining the problem. The skeptic in the group is always looking for flaws in potential solutions – alerting the group to shortcomings that may disqualify some solutions in favor of others.
In this way, as the problem solving process continues, the group comes to structure itself as a big mind – a group identity with a common purpose in which each participant represents a different facet of our own individual minds and in which the problem solving processes in which they all engage reflect those very same processes that go on in our own minds between our own facets.
The end result? Stories seek to present the true nature and organization of human beings in a setting of fictional subject matter to make a point about how we the audience (both as individuals and as members of groups) should best go about solving particular kinds of problems.
And now we finally see the secret identity of Characters, Plot, Theme and Genre: by their very nature they reveal the form and function of our own minds, exploded outward into the elements of story structure itself.
Imagine the very first storytellers. Actually, what they told would certainly not be considered a story by today’s standards. Rather, they probably began with simple communications with but a single meaning at a time.
Even animals recognize a cry of pain or a coo of love from another creature, even across species. So it is not a great leap to imagine that rather than just crying out in immediate response, early man might have come to intentionally make sounds to indicate his physical and emotional conditions. Ask any cat or dog owner if their pets don’t speak with them!
Nevertheless, a grunt, coo, scream or growl does not a story make. First we need to ratchet things up a bit and take one small step away from simple sounds that have direct physical or emotional meanings.
For example, if you are hungry you might make a “longing” sound and point at your belly with a wistful pointing motion. As simple and silly as this seems, it is actually quite a leap in communication. No longer are we tied to single symbols or single experiences; not we can string them together to create more complex meanings.
What about jumping up another level and stringing a few complex meanings together? Well, before you know it, early humans were chatting in non-verbal sentences, describing journeys, experiences, and even warnings.
And, of course, language would evolve as more and more people had more and more to say and discovered the benefits of a common vocabulary.
Now such a sophisticated communication is still not a story. But it is a tale. A tale is simply a statement that starting from a particular place and state of mid, if you follow a particular path, you’ll end up at a particular destination.
That’s what fairy tales are all about. Paraphrased, they all basically say, “If you find yourself in a given situation, you should (or should not) follow this given path because it will lead to something good (or bad).
As long as the physical and emotional journey is credible, the statement is sound. Now, your audience may simply disagree with your conclusion as author of the tale, but if your statement is sound, at least they can’t argue with your logic.
Of course, the very first tales were probably true stories about someone’s encounter with a bear or directions to find the berry bush that makes everything look funny when you eat them. But it wouldn’t take long or our early storytellers to realize that they could create fictions that summed up the value of their experience in a single, message-oriented tale.
But beyond this, a clever storyteller with an agenda might realize that he could influence people to take (or avoid taking) particular actions in specific cases. No longer were tales just descriptions of real events, means of imparting the value of experience, or entertaining fictions. Suddenly then became a tool with which to manipulate others.
To do this, there must be no gaps, no missed beats, no emotional inconsistencies. And in addition, the tale must be captivating enough to grab and hold the intended audience – to pull them in and involve them so deeply that they are changed by the experience.
And yet, despite all its power, the tale has limitations. Primary among these is that the tale speaks only to a single specific situation and a single specific course of action. So, as a storyteller, you’d need to fashion a whole new tale for each specific path you wished to “prove” was a good one or a bad one.
But wouldn’t it be far more powerful to prove not only that a path was good or bad but that of all the alternative paths that might have been taken, the one is question is the best or worst?
Now, the simplest way to do this is to simply say so. You write a tale about just one course taken from a given situation, and then state at the end that it is the best or worst. So, rather than being a simple statement, this new kind of tale has become a blanket statement.
If your tale is being told just to your own village, to the people you grew up with, then there is a good chance they will accept such a blanket statement since your tale probably reflects a local truism – some “given” that is already accepted by your audience as true. The tale simply serves to reinforce existing beliefs, and at the end everyone nods their heads in agreement with the outcome.
But what happens when the tale is told in another village. What if their givens are not the same. There may be one or two in the crowd who question the storyteller and ask, “I can see why that path is good, but why would it be better than xxxxxx?”
When confronted with an alternative approach, the storyteller might then briefly describe how the suggested path might unfold, and why is it not as good (or bad) as the one presented in the tale itself.
Again, being among friends (or at least among those who share a similar if not identical world-view) they will likely be easily convinced. And, it is also likely that due to that similar outlook, only a few alternative paths might be suggested, and all rather easily dismissed.
The development of story structure probably languished in this form for centuries, as nothing more advanced or sophisticated was really needed.
Enter that advent of mass media. As soon as books began to circulate across micro-cultural boundaries, ad soon as plays were performed in traveling road shows, to important things happened that forced the further development of the tale into what has ultimately become the structure of story.
First, the audiences became wide, varied and was no longer drawn from a homogeneous pool of consensus. Rather, they cam from many walks of life, with a variety of beliefs and agendas. And so, as the tale traveled, blanket statements were not nearly as easily accepted. Many more alternative approaches would be suggested or considered individually by audience members. So, such a tale would be considered heavy-handed propaganda and discounted unceremoniously.
And second, due to the mass distribution of the tale, the original storyteller would not be present to defend his work. Whatever other paths might occur to the audience would not be addressed, robbing the work of its previous ability to be revised on the spot as part of the performance.
In response to this reception, many authors no doubt retreated from the blanket statement form of the tale to the simple statement, thereby avoiding ridicule and strengthening the power of the tale. After all, is it not better to make a smaller impact than no impact at all?
And yet, there were some authors who took another tack. They tried to anticipate the alternative approaches that other audiences might suggest, and took the radical step of including and disposing of those other paths in the tale itself. A brilliant move, really. Now, even when the storyteller wasn’t physically present, he could still counter rebuttals to his blanket statement.
Of course, the key to the success of this approach is to make sure you cover all the bases. If even one reasonable alternative is left un-addressed, then at least part of your audience won’t buy the message.
As mass-distribution moved tales farther a field from the point of cultural origin, more and more alternatives we required. By the coming of the age of recorded media, a tale might reach such a wide audience and cross such boundaries that every reasonable alternative would come up sometime, somewhere.
Eventually, the tale had been forced to grow from a simple statement, to a blanket statement, to a complete argument incorporating all the ways anyone might look at an issue. This effectively created a new and distinct form of communication that we recognize as the story structure we know today.
By definition then, a tale is a statement and a story is an argument. And in making that argument, the structure of a story must include all they ways anyone might look at an issue. Therefore, it certainly includes all the ways a single mind might reasonably look at an issue. And, effectively, the structure of a story becomes a map of the mind’s problem solving processes.
No one ever intended it. But as a byproduct of the development of communication from simple tale to complex story, the underlying structure of a story has evolved into a model of the mind itself.
Back in 1991 my writing partner Chris Huntley and I set out to document that model of the mind as a means of discovering the elements that would ensure perfect story structure. The result was a whole new theory of narrative called Dramatica.
We published our findings in a book, Dramatica: A New Theory of Story, and along with our partner Stephen Greenfield, developed a software tool (also called Dramatica) that employs the theory to help writers structure their novels or screenplays.
You can read all about the theory and how we developed it here, and you can check out the Dramatica software and all our products and programs for writers here.
We all know that a story needs a sound structure. But no one reads a book or goes to a movie to enjoy a good structure. And no author writes because he or she is driven to create a great structure. Rather, audiences and authors come to opposite sides of a story because of their passions – the author driven to express his or hers, and the audience hoping to ignite its own.
What draws us to a story in the first place is our attraction to the subject matter and the style. As an audience, we might be intrigued by the potential applications of a new discovery of science, the exploration of a newly rediscovered ancient city, or the life of a celebrity. We might love a taut mystery, a fulfilling romance, or a chilling horror story.
As authors what inspires us to write a story may be a bit of dialog we heard in a restaurant, a notion for a character, a setting, time period, or a clever twist of plot we’d like to explore. Or, we might have a deep-seated need to express a childhood experience, work out an irrational fear, or make a public statement about a social injustice.
No matter what our attraction as audience or author, our passions trigger our imaginations. So why should an author worry about structure? Because passion rides on structure, and if the structure is flawed or even broken, then the passionate expression from author to audience will fail.
Structure, when created properly, is invisible, serving only as the carrier wave that delivers the passion to the audience. But when structure is flawed, it adds static to the flow of emotion, breaking up and possibly scrambling the passion so badly that the audience does not “hear” the author’s message.
The attempt to ensure a sound structure is an intellectual pursuit. Questions such as “Who is my Protagonist?” “Where should my story begin?” “What happens in Act Two?” or “What is my message?” force an author to turn away from his or her passion and embrace logistics instead.
As a result, authors often becomes mired in the nuts and bolts of storytelling, staring at a blank page not because of a lack of inspiration, but because they can’t figure out how to make their passions make sense.
Worse, the re-writing process is often grueling and frustrating, forcing the author to accept unwanted changes in the flow of emotion for the sake of logic. So what is an author to do? Is there any way out of this dilemma?
Absolutely! That’s why I created StoryWeaver Software with its Step By Step approach to story development. StoryWeaver focuses on the creative process rather than just the nuts and bolts of structure. In it, you’ll journey through Inspiration, Development, Exposition, and Storytelling. By the end of the path, you’ll have designed your story’s world, who’s in it, what happens to them, and what it all means. Try it for 90 days, risk free!
You must be logged in to post a comment.