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Continuing with our brief exploration of all the features available through the Dramatica Desktop, in this lesson we'll take a look at Dramatica's Open Story function.
Open Story is more than just a way to open the file you are working on. It is also the gateway to all of Dramatica's Example Stories as well as the Structural Templates for novel and screenplay that will help guide your story development.
Play Video on the Open File feature
Like any software program, when you shut Dramatica down, all the information you entered would be lost unless you save it first. In fact, Dramatica will automatically remind you to save your work before it closes. You can also choose to save at any time by clicking on the "File" menu item at the top left of the Dramatica window, and then selecting Save, Save As, or Save a Copy. The differences among these three functions are fully covered in a later lesson. For now, "Save" will usually do just fine.
Each story you work on will be saved as its own separate file, just as in a word processor you would save each document as its own file. Dramatica Story Files can't be opened in a word processor. They use a special compression format to keep the file size small. If you open them in a word processor, you'll just see a series of unintelligible symbols.
Since each story has its own file, you can work on as many different stories as you like, saving each one with a different name, and then opening each file when you want to do some more work on that particular story.
To work with a Story you've already started and saved, just click on the Open Story tile on the Main Dramatica Desktop or use the "File" menu item and select "Open." Either way, you'll need to navigate or browse to the place you saved the file and then select it to open. If you saved your file to some sort of removable media, such as a floppy disc, CD ROM, or memory card, you'll obviously need to insert that media into your computer before you can find and open the file.
You can also open a Dramatica Story File just by double-clicking on the file itself. If Dramatica is not open at the time, double-clicking on a Story File will open the Dramatica Program and then load the story.
Note that you can open more than one story file at a time in Dramatica, but you have to swap among them to work on each one. You can choose which story file you are working on by selecting it in the "Window" file menu. If you are working on several stories at the same time, be sure which one is currently active so you don't make changes or add information that was really intended for a different file!
Dramatica Pro comes with over 60 separate story files that are intended as examples. Each is a professional analysis of a well-known novel, movie, television episode, or stage play. Each example has complete information on the characters, plot, and theme, as well as a completed and fully illustrated Dramatica Storyform
The Example Stories have two purposes. First, they automatically show up in the Dramatica Software when you are working on your own story to provide samples of how other authors have dealt with the same story points and dramatic situations. Whenever one of the example stories lines up structurally with what you are doing, it will be available in several places in the software for reference.
The second use of Example Stories is for study, in order to look at each work as a whole and learn how master storytellers have structured their stories. When you directly open an Example Story, it will load up in Dramatica as if it were one of your stories. You can then move throughout the software to see all the characters, plot development, thematic arguments, underlying structure, and complete descriptions of how and why it was all done that particular way by the author.
To open an Example Story, you can either use the Open Story tile on the Dramatica Desktop or use the "File" menu item, then select Open. Either way, you'll need to navigate or browse to where the Example Story Files were placed when Dramatica was installed. That can be a bit confusing, so a short cut is to do a search on your computer for all files ending in .dsf All Dramatica Story Files end in a .dsf extension (standing for dramatica story file). So, with a search, you can easily find the example stories AND any stories you have saved, and then just double-click on the file you want to open..
Version 4.0 of Dramatica Pro contains structural templates for novels and screenplays. These templates are simply story files that are completely blank except for some pointers and guidelines that have been written to help you structure your work.
To build a story on one of these templates, you open the template in Dramatica BEFORE you begin a story. Then, you develop your story normally, paying attention to the template's additional advice that crops up along the way.
We'll cover the nature of these templates and how to use them in complete detail later in this course. But for now, just be aware they exist. And if you want to jump ahead and play around with them, just look for them and open them the same as the Example Stories.
Copyright 2003 Melanie Anne Phillips
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