Instant Dramatica
Musings from Armando Saldaņa
Mora
Admit it, Mr. Crichton...
Hi. I'll give myself a short introduction and then I'd like to
discuss a question that surely troubles all Dramatica users:
I'm Armando Saldaņa. I live in Mexico city and -as supposed-
Spanish is my first language, so forgive my horrifying use of English. I've been writing
constantly for about 12 years, I've been selling fiction for the last five years, and I've
been working on the Mexican television for the last year (yes, even script editor for the
program of the guy on the cockroach suit). I've met Dramatica six months ago and became an
instant addict, I even argue with my wife in terms of "You're not reducing my
morality focus on your universe domain, you... Contagonist!"
Now for the question: I'm sure that the first question you had about
Dramatica (specially after finding out the price) was "Does this stuff really
works?" So you try to find out of a well known writer or story that was made using
Dramatica and, guess what? you won't find none! And mostly because no one wants to tell.
That's right. In the business you're as valuable as your "talent" (meant: your
capacity to produce magic stories that everyone loves out of nowhere), and if a producer
finds out you're using a creative software, he'll think "Well, the software wrote it,
not that megalomaniac screenwriting bum! Cancel his check!" So you make a leap of
fate and buy the program, you study it hard, struggles through it and write a complete
story... Now here's the catch! I bet that most of you thought when the story was finished
"Is this it? Gee, I could have written this myself in half the time with a hand tied
up my back!" I made and experiment and went through my past teleplays. Through my new
Dramatica look they seemed horrible to me! They were no structure, nothing happened, no
one changed or had any challenge, every event seemed tacked on... So the next question
arose: have the theory changed me or is it the software apreciations showing it's magic in
my present work? let me rephrase: Can I now write Dramatica stories without using the
software?
Have any of this happened to you?
What can you say about the "Does this stuff really works"
predicament?
