Excerpted from the book, Narrative Dynamics

The Narrative Circuit

If you are familiar with deep Dramatica theory, you know that all the output of the Story Engine is not made available in the Dramatica software.  In fact, the Story Engine generates quite a bit more information about a story’s structure than it makes available to a user.  What information, and why suppress it?  I’ll answer the second question first.

We suppressed information that was so detailed and dramatically “tiny” that it was beyond the scope or magnification in which authors work.  And, even if someone wanted to work with structure to that microscopic micromanaged level, that information had such little impact that it would almost certainly be lost in the background noise of the storytelling.  In other words, the granularity of that suppressed information was smaller than the resolution of an audience’s understanding.  In short – it would be lost in the translation from structure to finished story.  So, to keep from overcomplicating the story structuring process and having the author do work that would never have a practical impact, we decided this kind of material should not be provided by the Story Engine.

Still, just because authors can’t really apply this suppressed information in a useful manner doesn’t mean the information isn’t accurate, especially when using the Story Engine for psychological analysis rather than just for fictional constructs.  So, here’s a brief description of this information, shared here for the purpose of illustrating the limits of the current structural model at its farthest edges, and then being able to further describe what the developing dynamic model can bring to the table.

What is suppressed: PRCO and 1234.  What the hell does that mean?  PRCO stands for Potential, Resistance, Current and Outcome (or Power).  1234 is the sequential order in which the four items in a quad will come into play.  You see this last part in the sequence of the Signposts and Journeys for each of the four throughlines in Dramatica, but the engine only shows you the output for the “type” level or plot level of a story’s structure – the equivalent of the topics each act will cover in each of the four throughlines.  It is suppressed for all the other levels and all the other quads.  (Though some additional sequential information is also available in the Plot Sequence Report in Dramatica.)

In truth, EVERY quad in the structure appears in every story structure, but some, like the Signposts, are the focus of the story.  And yet, if you watch a story unfold, you’ll see that EVERY SINGLE QUAD in a completely structured story will unfold in a predictable sequential manner.  As a side note, the manner in which we discovered this is an intriguing story I may write about someday, but for the purposes of this article, suffice it to say that every quad in a structure at every level will have a 1234 sequence attached to it, and those sequences will differ from one storyform to another.

But what about the PRCO?  Well, consider ever quad as a little dramatic circuit – not a static thing except in the sense that an electronic circuit is static – a battery, a resistor, a light bulb and some wire – but the electrons flow through it and the bulb generates light.  Similarly, in a dramatic circuit – a quad – the four items will act as Potential, Resistance, Current and Outcome (Power) and form a flow that moves one moment into the next and generates energy that sparks the next scene or sequence or act.

Now I could go into great detail about how all this works (it is built into the Story Engine after all) – BUT, that’s not the point.  All you need to know for this article is that in the process of “winding up” the dramatic potential of the story at large, the model is (conceptually) twisted and turned like a Rubik’s cube so that quads are misaligned in a way that creates the tension that drives the story forward.  Or, in terms of psychology, it describes the conflicting forces that are at work in the mind.

And so, every item in every quad will be assigned a 1234 and also a PRCO.  This means that sometimes a scene will begin with a Potential and other scenes will open with a Resistance or Current or Power.  In other words, 1234 and PRCO are independently assigned because they are not tied together psychologically, nor in terms of fiction.

Back to the dynamic model.  The structural model can only tell you if something is a potential or resistance and the order in which it will come into play.  But, only a dynamic model could tell you how MUCH potential or resistance was present and how long its span of time in the sequence will last: its duration.  Plus, the dynamic model could tell you how the intensity of that potential might be changing and how fast it is changing and whether that speed of change is accelerating.

Stepping back then, it is pretty easy to see the usefulness of this both in charting the collective dramatic intensity of an unfolding story upon an audience’s head and heart, and also the manner in which motivations and decisions, effort and activities reach a flash point or recede in real world individual and group psychology.

Read Narrative Dynamics

Available in Paperback and on Kindle

Excerpted from the book, Narrative Dynamics

Introduction

When Chris Huntley and I originally developed the Dramatica Theory of Story back in the early 1990s, we opted to implement our model of narrative as a structure, driven by dynamics.

In such a manifestation, the structure takes center stage, and its components are rearranged according to dynamic rules that reflect the unique potentials of any given narrative.

In this book I present a series of articles I’ve developed about a whole different way of looking at the Dramatica theory – in terms of dynamics, rather than structure.  In fact, the dynamic model is a counterpart, not an alternative, to the existing structural model with which you may be familiar.

As an illustration of the difference between the two, if you think of the structural model as being made of particles, the dynamic model is made of waves.  If the structural model is seen as digital, the dynamic model is analog.  If the structural model describes a neural network, the dynamic model describes the biochemistry, If the structural defines the elements of a story (or psychology) and how they relate, the dynamic model defines how the elements transmute or decay into other elements and how relationships among elements are changing.

In usage, the structural model can tell you, for example, that a main character is driven by logic; the dynamic model can tell you how strongly they are driven and how the intensity of that drive changes over time.  The structural model can predict if a story will end in success or failure; the dynamic model can tell you the degree of success or failure.

In a nutshell, the structural model documents the fixed logic of a story’s structure, the dynamic model charts the ebb and flow of its passions.  Cognitive and Affective, Yin and Yang, Space and Time.  Head and heart.

Read Narrative Dynamics – Available in Paperback and on Kindle

The last couple of days I’ve been thinking about what elements would be in quads of dynamics.  In the current Dramatica structural model, dynamics are only in pairs, such as Timelock and Optionlock.  So, if these two items were in a quad of dynamics, what would the other two items be?

Today, I have my answer, and its ramifications and implications range much farther than I thought – all the way into new perspectives from which to appreciate the existing Dramatica structural model.  In fact, it turns out that every structural quad already contains shadows and influences of dynamic quads inherent within and integral to their functioning.  In other words, the structural model would not operate at all, if it did not already include reflections and harmonics of the dynamic model which had not yet been developed.

Think of a hologram as opposed to a photograph.  if you cut a photo in two, each has only half the object.  But if you cut a hologram in two, each half sees the whole picture but only from half the points of view.   In the current model of Dramatica we only have the half of the hologram, yet it sees the entire nature of narrative, just from a portion of the available perspectives.

In fact, just as in the Dramatica model itself, there are four points of view from which to explore narrative – a Structural view of Structure, a Structural view of Dynamics, a Dynamic view of Structure, and a Dynamic view of Dynamics.

The current model provides only the first of these – the Structural view of Structure.  But wait a minute….  How then is it possible that it contains dynamics at all?  Because the nature of a quad of anything is that three of the four items will appear to be of the same family while the fourth item will seem a bit out of place – out of left field – as it sort of belongs halfway but has a foot in another camp.

In fact, this is true.  Quads are not truly all part of the same plane, but a squashed helix.  They are a flat projection onto a two dimensional plan of a 3D phenomenon – like looking at a Slinky toy end-on so that it appears to be a circle.

From this perspective, we perceive one circuit around the helix as a family passing through four quadrants – like going through 90, 180, 270 and 360 degrees in a cartesian plane in trigonometry.

But that vertical rise that is flattened out doesn’t disappear, it is just swept under the carpet as we mentally try to make the first three items in a quad appear as much as possible as part of the same family so we can get a mental grip on them – ascribe a common umbrella understanding to the group.

Still, by the time you get to that last item in the quad family, you have all this left-over vertical rise in your pocket and you have to shove it into the quad before you move on to the next.  And so, the last item in the quad picks up all the slack which moves it halfway between belonging in one family and half way into belonging to the next by nature, by meaning.

This is the structural view of a quad.  A more accurate view would see each element as moving 1/4 of the way toward the next family, but then the whole quad could no longer be treated as a single family unit.  So what’s wrong with that?  Only by grouping four perspectives (the Mass, Energy, Space and Time of a thing) into a single family, are we able to understand the structural nature of the thing as it exists.

This is why the circle seems closed, why it becomes a closed system as a quad, why it appears to create a family, why it seems structure, why it seems as if each family is a closed unit within that circle that make it a structural element in an even larger quad.

What we lose, however is the vertical aspect – the vertical quad as the helix continues upward through the Z axis through four iterations – for levels – a quad of dynamics which represent that we cannot see any thing from all four perspectives at once.  We can only take one point of view at a time.  To see all four, we must shift from one to another, and that takes time, as represented in the vertical axis.

Essentially, this accounts for the fact that by the time we have seen all four perspectives, what we are observing may have changed, or we may have changed in the process.  Again, this creates a new quad – the the Object is the same and We are the same, the Object is the same and We are changed, the Object has changed and We are the same, the Object has changed and We have changed.

That was the structural view of those four relationships.  The dynamic view would be:  The Object and Observer do not change each other, the Object changes the Observer, the Object is changed by the Observer, the Object and the Observer change each other.

If the Dramatica chart were only seen in the flat projection, the whole vertical progression – the structural view and therefore also first step toward  a dynamic view of narrative – would be all we had.  But, since the Dramatica model can also be seen in  a three-dimensional chart (the familiar four towers) – the nature of the helices can be seen in the progression around the quads, families of quads and so on, from the bottom of the model to the top, or from the top down.

With this in mind, we can see that the flat projection, the 3D projection, and the sequence of progression through the elements along the helices are three parts of another quad family in the current model.  What is the fourth part?  The eight dynamic questions themselves.

These questions are the part of the model that is most out of left field, most different from the other three, and the one that picks up all the slack of the journey toward a purely dynamic model.

The eight dynamic questions function to twist and turn the model, whereas the other three aspects are passive, structural, positioned by their “natures” as opposed to their functions.

Keep in mind, now, that every element of the Dramatica model actually represents a process of the mind.  These are not elements so much as named processed.  For example, in truth we don’t have faith, rather we are engaged in the process of being faithful.  The mind is a machine made of time; every gear and pulley is a process, not an object.  These functions must be continuously  in process or they cease to exist.  If the mind stops, it dies.  But, from a structural view, if we see a process perpetually ongoing within the span of our observation, such as the Red Spot on Jupiter, we treat the process as an object and call it a storm or even a feature.  So, from this perspective, the dynamic questions differ from the rest of the structural model by describing the processes the twist and turn the model into different arrangements.  In other words, dynamics in the current model are the processes that arrange the other processes.

Simply put, if the structural model can be seen as fractals of families within families – quads within quads – then each element or item in the model can be seen as a variable in which the value is the intensity or power of each process.  Change the power and you fill a different number in the variable and get a different kind of iteration from one fractal level to the next.

The dynamic questions then, are not changing the value of the variables, but the value of the operations in the equations.  In other words, dynamics are changing the value of the functions in the equations – which operations will be employed in which order, which changes not the nature of the iterations, but the nature of the iterator.

Now this is pretty much what we already knew.  But I was always plagued by wondering why the dynamics were in eight pairs rather that eight quads.  I had tried to combine these sixteen values into four quads of four, but they never fit.  It was like each pair was half a quad.  But why would that be?

My best guess was that, like the four item in any quad, you can only see one foot, while the other is in a different family.  So, from a structural view of structure, you can only see half of each of the dynamic quads.

Now that just motivated me.  While I realized that for the structural view of structure, the Dramatica model was complete and, therefore, both accurately analytic and predictive, but it was only one fourth of the capital “T” truth.  I wanted to know what was in the other three fourths – especially that final fourth – that last of four complete models that is the dynamic view of dynamics – the one that will contain four aspects of its own and the very last one will half one foot in the next family – the family beyond mind, beyond universe, a hint of something outside our own existence, just as the dynamic questions are a hint of what lies beyond structure.

I’ll probably never see it through that far in my lifetime, but that tantalizing possibility keeps me working, every day, on trying to get there, to catch a glimpse of that Great Unknown before I shuffle off this mortal helix.

Which brings me (at last) to the subject of this article: my new discovery that finally allows me to bridge the gap from the dynamic questions (the fourth aspect of the current structural model, the current super class, to the next super class: the structural view of dynamics.

It began, as stated, with my recent ponderings as to what dynamic quads would contain.  Specifically (as my mental example for a thought exercise) if the current pair of dynamics of Timelock and Optionlock were in a quad, what would the other to items be?

I tried a number of different candidates, but all of them were insufficient to the task; they did not meet all the requirements of a truly balanced quad.  But of late, there was one pair that seemed, at least initially, to satisfy all the test I know for determining if a potential quad is fully functional.

This part isn’t much of a revelation – just the first step to some really astounding discoveries, but it is an essential step….   So, here’s were the best candidates I had: the promising pair of dynamics was Constricting and Loosening.

Simply put, while the current pair of Timelock and Optionlock describe narratives that are brought to a conclusion by running out of time or running out of options, the new pair   describes narratives that, at the conclusion, finds time or option (space) constrictions to be becoming tighter or looser.  In essence, are time or space opening up into more possibilities or are they closing down into fewer?

Now at first, this didn’t ring quite true.  There was something about it that bothered me….  From a purely structural view of structure, this new pair should be simply Tighter or Looser at the end, not becoming Tighter or Looser.

But then I realized that I had it right the first time.  This is no longer the structural view of structure super class.  We are now in the structural view of dynamics super class.  And so, just as a piece of the hologram has the whole picture but only part of the perspectives, for the first time in my quarter of a century of Dramatica theory development, I had to engage in the one cardinal sin of narrative model construction – “never shift perspective.”

Chris and I drilled that mantra into ourselves all of these years so that the current super class is all K-based (Knowledge based) while the other three super classes would be T, A, and D based (Thought, Ability and Desire).  KTAD are the mental equivalents of MEST (Mass, Energy, Space and Time).  They are the mental harmonic of the physical world, for any dynamic system that is generated from a structure will reflect the same patterns as the structure from which it is born.  In other words, form and function follow each other, just as our mental dynamics lead us to reorganize the universe in our image, structurally.

But in this case, we have actually moved for the first time into a new super class – the T (Thought) super class.  And therefore, while the development of this new model would also require a consistent perspective, it would, naturally, be a different perspective.

So, recognizing that the structural view of structure could only see half of the quads of dynamics in the pairs of dynamics, then the other pair of dynamics in these quads would need to be seen from the T super class perspective.  And, from that point of view, processes cannot be seen as states (as having tightened or loosened by the end) but as processes (tightening or loosening by the end).  Subtle but essential, for wherever one might begin to pull a loose thread to unravel the new dynamic model, all that follows will grow from these first seeds.

(As a side note, I expect that in the final super class (the dynamic view of dynamics), it will require a continuously shifting perspective within the model itself, rather than a consistent one, as it must represent, ultimately, the rate at which the nature of change is changes as one process iterates into another.)

Back to the subject at hand, there is a second thought exercise I had been cogitating upon yesterday while making the 90 minute drive back to my home in the mountains from a meeting at Write Brothers (the company Chris – co-creator of Dramatica – co-owns with Steve – programmer of the Dramatica engine).

This thought exercise was: If we think about something round and round in circles, such as worrying about the potential outcome of something, our anxiety grows and grows.  Why does this happen, and how is it reflected in the dynamic model I’m building?

This thought came about because we had to re-register our car in California when we moved back here from Oregon for the project I’m doing with Write Brothers Incorporated (WBI).  I had been putting the smog check off right to the last possible minute before the deadline because the more I thought about the ramification of it possibly failing the text (money, inconvenience, perhaps the need to buy a whole new car), the more anxious I became.

And yet, there was no new information – just running around the same mental circle over and over.  Still, with every circuit my anxiety grew.  How is that reflected in the current model?  It isn’t.  Clearly it is a dynamic, so how would it be reflected in the dynamic model?  Didn’t have a clue.

Then, this morning, I put two and two together and combined my thoughts about Tightening and Loosening with the problem of increasing anxiety from an unchanging mental process endlessly repeated.  And it hit me.  Mental processes don’t operate in a vacuum as it would appear in the structural model.  Rather, they generate results.  They create product, they manufacture yield.

Every process manufactures something.  In the case of my smog check, the yield was increasing amounts of anxiety.  The more I thought about it, the more anxious I became.  In the dynamic half of the Timelock/Optionlock quad then, it wouldn’t be about process but about yield.  Essentially, are the result of the narrative such that the constriction of time or options is becoming tighter or looser?

Extending this, might not the whole next super class – the structural view of dynamics – be looking as the results or yield of a narrative – the increasing or decreasing forces at play?  I think so.  I believe this perspective defines the nature of the new dynamic model – how building or diminishing forces influence one other in a series of ups and downs by every point measured until the end of the narrative is defined by reaching an equilibrium – not a fixed state as in the structural model in which all processes of change have ceased and all potential is gone – but in a stability of ongoing processes in which, collectively, all forces hold each other in check and no further increasing or decreasing of any of them will occur.

Well, then, what does this mean to the current model and how does it fit in with my other recently published speculations about the nature of narrative dynamics?  The first thing that came to mind was a recent article I’d written describing how new patterns can be formed in the mind and then locked in place impervious to any internal ability to change them, and how external forces can be applied to the mind to affect change from the outside.

The mind is a closed system, just as narratives are closed systems.  They deal only with the elements within the narrative, which is the scope of the story, and make the assumption that no other forces outside that scope have any impact on the narrative.

In real life (which narrative seek to document), our minds are constantly assaulted by forces outside our own internal cogitations.  How others respond to us or act for or against us and physical maladies that have nothing to do with the nature our mental processes yet greatly affect their operation are both examples of why our minds are not truly closed systems.

While the operating systems of our mind may be closed barring physical damage to the brain, just as the structural view of structure never changes in an unbroken narrative, forces outside the system will determine the patterns into which it falls, just as the dynamic model (the structural view of dynamics super class) works outside the current structural model to determine how the structural operating system of the narrative is twisted and turned.

The eight pairs of dynamics in the current model are not the outside forces of change themselves – just the tip of the iceberg – the interface between structure and dynamics as seen from the structural side, the other half of the interface being seen from the dynamic side in the additional eight pairs of dynamics, such as Tightening and Loosing, that will complete the quads of dynamics – complete the hologram.

In my previous speculative article, I compared mental “states” (or patterns of cognition and/or affection [emotion]) to standing waves – ongoing forces that have reached an equilibrium within the mind.  But why would such patterns maintain themselves (as commitments and responsibilities, as obligations and rationalization) in the face of external pressures that should alter them.  How do patterns of the mind end up fixed in place, like prejudice or fixation, like a black hole in space that exerts gravity but will not open up regardless of the outside environment?

In the article, I used a personal experience of an acquaintance to describe how we initially respond to our environment to achieve equilibrium with it.  But these are merely standing waves of processes, like the new dynamic model, that are easily undone when our environment changes.

But if the external forces that established these standing waves are suddenly removed (like moving out of a family due to an argument or like having a sudden relief of anxiety) it is like compressed gas in a can being suddenly released – it chills all that is around it and freezes things in place – in this case mental patterns.

If the release of pressure is gradual, there is no chill, no freeze, and the standing waves realign.  But if it is fast enough, the effect will range form a firming up into slush (increase in resistance to change) to a complete freeze (maximum resistance to change) and that pattern will remain until another outside force melts that which has been frozen.

To unfreeze new pressure must be brought to bear on the mind with sufficient speed to create heat – heat enough to melt the previously frozen patterns.  This compression can happen quickly for a flash-thaw (which is the equivalent of a leap of faith where a character changes its nature in an instant) to a slow thaw in which a character is gradually warmed into flexibility.

And, naturally, these processes can completely fix in place or remove patterns of mind, but may also only serve to make them slushy.

And so, we return to the new dynamic model (the second of the four super classes) in which Tightening or Loosening are the dynamic side of these interface quads.  While the current structural view of structure model describes how forces completely freeze or melt patterns of mind, the new structural view of dynamics model describes how patterns of mind are made more sluggish or more slushy.

If the current super class is focused on determining position, the new dynamic model will focus on velocity.  The third super class (dynamic view of structure)will center on changes in velocity and the final super class (dynamic view of dynamics) will explore changes in the rate of change of velocity.

So, it all ties in together – structure, dynamics, a fluid mind or one firming up through the four quads of justification (as seen in the current structural model as progressing from Knowledge, Thought, Ability and Desire to Can, Need, Want and Should, through Situation, Circumstances, Sense of Self and State of Being to Commitment, Responsibility, Rationalization and Obligation).

Next step – figure out the other halves of the other seven dynamic quads and then use that information to iterate into a complete dynamic model of identical size and resolution to the current structural projection.

Oh, and the car passed the smog check.

Melanie Anne Phillips

Also from Melanie Anne Phillips…

These days, everyone is talking about “narrative.” But the common understanding of narrative structure is an uneven amalgam of statistics and truisms. In actuality, narrative structure is the clockwork that serves up creativity.

Got a new kitten two days ago. Vet said that it needed two vaccinations – Distemper and Leukemia. The used to give them two weeks apart so they wouldn’t interfere with each other. But, they discovered they also didn’t interfere if you gave them both at the same time. But if they were given at different times closer than two weeks together, they’d interfere.

Imagine that! Two processes, one for the Distemper vaccination reaction and the other for Leukemia. Two processes that need to be separated or simultaneous or they interfere…. Nodal points in time the same way we get standing waves in space. Peaks and valleys and slopes of different steepness all around.

Consider harmonics in music or in vibrations. Two different frequencies and combine as fractional harmonics at different points – sevenths, fifths, thirds, and others can create dissonance. It is why music can pass through discordant moments on the way to another conjunction that satisfies, or why a song that ends discordantly creates an unsettled mood.

Think of dramatics – rising tension, trials one must overcome, tragic endings vs. triumphant ones. Embrace the chemistry of characters as processes that mesh in repetitive undulations or clash in perpetual static.

In the real world, such oscillations can lead to bridges that shimmy until they collapse. In electronics, the relationship between the components of a circuit and the metal box that holds them can create a phantom capacitor between the two, which in turn becomes part of the circuit and even appears in the schematic as such.

Now, consider that just as a tennis racket (a spatial construct) can have a sweet spot, so too can a narrative (a temporal construct) have a sweet spot. Sweet spots in time… what would they be?

They would be story points. Specifically, dynamic story points.

In Dramatica narrative theory , story points (such as Goal, Main Character Problem, and Benchmark) are all spatial story points – sweet spots in space that represent the harmonic conjunction of point of view and item being observed. Consider – the Dramatica chart is a periodic table of story elements, but not story points. Each element is an item that might be examined, such as Memory or Hope or Conscience.

These elements are not objects but processes. For example, “Hope” is not really a thing but rather the process of “Hoping.” And so we see that the Dramatica chart categorizes these processes of the mind into families and sub-families, just like the periodic table of elements in Chemistry or Physics.

But when one of these items is seen as a Goal (such as a Goal of Memory, which might be trying to remember or trying to forget) suddenly we are looking at it from a particular point of view – as the story’s Goal. This contextualizes the process element by combining its nature with how it is being perceived. This blending of object and observer, item under study and pint of view – this creates perspective. And perspective is a nodal point – a spatial sweet spot.

Think now of Dramatica’s story dynamics – Change or Steadfast, Linear or Holistic, Start or Stop, Action or Decision to name a few. These are nodal points in the temporal flow: sweet spots in time. Each represents a point at which the processes and forces in the progression of a narrative combine in conjunction and define the nature and direction of the resultant vector of the dramatics. Each define a wave form and together define the complex wave form of a narrative’s dynamic fabric.

Now turn to Dramatica’s Signposts and Journeys – these are the nodal points between space and time. In other words, these are the sweet spots between structure and dynamics, between structural and dynamic story points – between spatial and temporal narrative sweet spots.

Looking forward – we know that there must be as many temporal or dynamic story points as there are spatial or structural story points. We just haven’t identified them all yet, save the eight that are currently in the Dramatica model. (Eight are the minimum requirement to align structure and dynamics so that the spatial structure and temporal progression of a story can be tied to one another – meaning tied to the order of events – change the order of events and the meaning changes, change the meaning and the order of events must change, just like a given pattern of a Rubik’s Cube require a certain sequence of moves to achieve it.

Therefore, these dynamic or temporal story points – these nodal points in the confluence of processes – these nexuses of convergent waveforms – these sweet spots in time – are out there, waiting to be discovered. This is part and parcel of my ongoing work in identifying and documenting the process elements in a model of narrative dynamics – the other side of the Dramatica coin – the side that represents the passion of story, rather than its logic, the ebb and flow of dramatics, rather than their structure – the waves to Dramatica’s particles, with the entire combined model forming the predictive interface between the two.

Much like signposts and journeys enable the translation of narrative meaning to narrative sequence, such a model would hold insight into the relationship between time and space, the smallest sub-atomic particles and the world of quantum theory across that bridge from matter to probability.

All made possible because of a new kitten in conjunction with a random bit of information about the functioning of vaccinations.

And that, children, is how new theory is created.

Melanie Anne Phillips

Also from Melanie Anne Phillips…

~ Caution – Deep Narrative Theory Ahead ~

What’s “Ability” have to do with story structure?

In this article I’m going to talk about how the Dramatica Theory of Narrative Structure uses the term “ability” and how it applies not only to story structure and characters but to real people, real life and psychology as well.

Ability is one of the dramatic elements that the Dramatica software define your story’s message and thematic conflict.  There are sixty-four thematic elements in Dramatica – a whole spectrum of human traits and qualities that might be good or bad ones to have, depending upon the story.

If you look in Dramatica’s “Periodic Table of Story Elements” chart (you can download a free PDF of the chart at http://storymind.com/free-downloads/ddomain.pdf ) you’ll find  “ability” in one of the little squares.  To locate it, look in the family called the “Physics” class in the upper left-hand corner of the chart and examine the very smallest items listed there.  You’ll find it in a group of four dramatic elements, “Knowledge, Thought, Ability and Desire”.

To begin with, a brief word about the Dramatica chart itself.  The chart is sort of like a Rubik’s Cube.  It holds all the elements which must appear in every complete story to avoid holes.  Conceptually, you can twist it and turn it, just like a Rubik’s Cube, and when you do, it is like winding up a clock – you create dramatic potential.

How is this dramatic potential created?  The chart represents all the categories of things we think about.  Notice that the chart is nested, like wheels within wheels.  That’s the way our minds work.  And if we are to make a solid story structure with no holes, we have to make sure all ways of thinking about the story’s central problem or issues are covered.

So, the chart is really a model of the mind.  When you twist it and turn it represents the kinds of stress (and experience) we encounter in everyday life.  Sometimes things get wound up as tight as they can and get stuck there.  And this is where a story always starts.  Anything before that point is backstory, anything after it is story.

The story part is the process of unwinding that tension.  So why does a story feel like tension is building, rather than lessening?  This is because stories are about the forces that bring a person to change or, often, to a point of change.

As the story mind unwinds, it puts more and more pressure on the main character (who may be gradually changed by the process or may remain intransigent until he changes all at once).  It’s kind of like the forces that  create earthquakes.  Tectonic plates push against each other driven by a background force (the mantle).  That force is described by the wound up Dramatica chart of the story mind.

Sometimes, in geology, this force gradually raises or lowers land in the two adjacent plate.  Other times it builds up pressure until things snap all at once in an earthquake.  So too in psychology, people (characters) are sometimes slowly changed by the gradual application of pressure as the story mind clock is unwinding; other times that pressure applied by the clock mechanism just builds up until the character snaps in Leap Of Faith – that single “moment of truth” in which a character must decide either to change his ways or stick by his guns believing his current way is stronger than the pressure bought to bear – he believes he just has to outlast the forces against him.

Sometimes he’s right to change, sometimes he’s right to remain steadfast, and sometimes he’s wrong.  But either way, in the end, the clock has unwound and the potential has been balanced.

Hey, what happened to “ability”?  Okay, okay, I’m getting to that….

The chart (here we go again!) is filled with semantic terms – things like Hope and Physics and Learning and Ability.  If you go down to the bottom of the chart in the PDF you’ll see a three-dimensional representation of how all these terms are stacked together.  In the flat chart, they look like wheels within wheels.  In the 3-D version, they look like levels.

These “levels” represent degrees of detail in the way the mind works.  At the most broadstroke level (the top) there are just four items – Universe, Physics, Mind and Psychology.  They are kind of like the Primary Colors of the mind – the Red, Blue, Green and Saturation (effectively the addition of something along the black/white gray scale).

Those for items in additive color theory are four categories describing what can create a continuous spectrum.  In a spectrum is really kind of arbitrary where you draw the line between red and blue.  Similarly, Universe, Mind, Physics and Psychology are specific primary considerations of the mind.

Universe is the external state of things – our situation or envirnoment.  Mind is the internal state – an attitude, fixation or bias.  Physics looks at external activities – processes and mechanisms.  Psychology looks at internal activities – manners of thinking in logic and feeling.

Beneath that top level of the chart are three other levels.  Each one provides a greater degree of detail on how the mind looks at the world and at itself.  It is kind of like adding “Scarlet” and “Cardinal” as subcategories to the overall concept of “Red”.

Now the top level of the Dramatica chart describe the structural aspects of “Genre”  Genre is the most broadstroke way of looking at a story’s structure.   The next level down has a bit more dramatic detail and describes the Plot of a story.  The third level down maps out Theme, and the bottom level (the one with the most detail) explores the nature of a story’s Characters.

So there you have the chart from the top down, Genre, Plot, Theme and Characters.  And as far as the mind goes, it represents the wheels within wheels and the sprectrum of how we go about considering things.  In fact, we move all around that chart when we try to solve a problem.  But the order is not arbitrary.  The mind has to go through certain “in-betweens” to get from one kind of consideration to another or from one emotion to another.  You see this kind of thing in the stages of grief and even in Freud’s psycho-sexual stages of development.

All that being said now, we finally return to Ability – the actual topic of this article.  You’ll find Ability, then, at the very bottom of the chart – in the Characters level – in the upper left hand corner of the Physics class.  In this article I won’t go into why it is in Physics or why it is in the upper left, but rest assured I’ll get to that eventually in some article or other.

Let’s now consider “Ability” in its “quad” of four Character Elements.  The others are Knowledge, Thought, Ability and Desire.  I really don’t have space in this article to go into detail about them at this time, but suffice it to say that Knowledge, Thought, Ability and Desire are the internal equivalents of Universe, Mind, Physics and Pyschology.  They are the conceptual equivalents of Mass, Energy, Space and Time.  (Chew on that for awhile!)

So the smallest elements are directly connect (conceptually) to the largest in the chart.  This represents what we call the “size of mind constant” which is what determines the scope of an argument necessary to fill the minds of readers or an audience.  In short, there is a maximum depth of detail one can perceive while still holding the “big picture” in one’s mind at the very same time.

Ability – right….

Ability is not what you can do.  It is what you are “able” to do.  What’s the difference?  What you “can” do is essentially your ability limited by your desire.  Ability describes the maximum potential that might be accomplished.  But people are limited by what they should do, what they feel obligated to do, and what they want to do.  If you take all that into consideration, what’s left is what a person actually “can” do.

In fact,  if we start adding on limitations you  move from Ability to Can and up to even higher levels of “justification” in which the essential qualities of our minds, “Knowledge, Thought, Ability and Desire” are held in check by extended considerations about the impact or ramifications of acting to our full potential.

One quad greater in justification you find “Can, Need, Want, and Should” in Dramatica’s story mind chart.  Then it gets even more limited by Responsibility, Obligation, Commitment and Rationalization.  Finally we end up “justifying” so much that we are no longer thinking about Ability (or Knowledge or Thought or Desire) but about our “Situation, Circumstance, Sense of Self and State of Being”.  That’s about as far away as you can get from the basic elements of the human mind and is the starting point of where stories begin when they are fully wound up.  (You’ll find all of these at the Variation Level in the “Psychology” class in the Dramatica chart, for they are the kinds of issues that most directly affect each of our own unique brands of our common human psychology.

A story begins when the Main Character is stuck up in that highest level of justification.  Nobody gets there because they are stupid or mean.  They get there because their unique life experience has brought them repeated exposures to what appear to be real connections between things like, “One bad apple spoils the bunch” or “Where there’s smoke , there’s fire.”

These connections, such things as –  that one needs to adopt a certain attitude to succeed or that a certain kind of person is always lazy or dishonest – these things are not always universally true, but may have been universally true in the Main Character’s experience.  Really, its how we all build up our personalities.  We all share the same basic psychology but how it gets “wound up” by experience determines how we see the world.  When we get wound up all the way, we’ve had enough experience to reach a conclusion that things are always “that way” and to stop considering the issue.  And that is how everything from “winning drive” to “prejudice” is formed – not by ill intents or a dull mind buy by the fact that no two life experiences are the same.

The conclusions we come to, based on our justifications, free out minds to not have to reconsider every connection we see.  If we had to, we’d become bogged down in endlessly reconsidering everything, and that just isn’t a good survival trait if you have to make a quick decision for fight or flight.

So, we come to certain justification and build upon those with others until we have established a series of mental dependencies and assumptions that runs so deep we can’t see the bottom of it – the one bad brick that screwed up the foundation to begin with.  And that’s why psychotherapy takes twenty years to reach the point a Main Character can reach in a two hour movie or a two hundred page book.

Now we see how Ability (and all the other Dramatica terms) fit into story and into psychology.  Each is just another brick in the wall.  And each can be at any level of the mind and at any level of justification.  So, Ability might be the problem in one story (the character has too much or too little of it) or it might be the solution in another (by discovering an ability or coming to accept one lacks a certain ability the story’s problem – or at least the Main Character’s personal problem – can be solved).  Ability might be the thematic topic of one story and the thematic counterpoint of another (more on this in other articles).

Ability might crop up in all kinds of ways, but the important thing to remember is that wherever you find it, however you use it, it represents the maximum potential, not necessarily the practical limit that can be actually applied.

Well, enough of this.  To close things off, here’s the Dramatica Dictionary description of the world Ability that Chris and I worked out some twenty years ago, straight out of the Dramatica diction (available online at http://storymind.com/dramatica/dictionary/index.htm :

Ability • Most terms in Dramatica are used to mean only one thing. Thought, Knowledge, Ability, and Desire, however, have two uses each, serving both as Variations and Elements. This is a result of their role as central considerations in both Theme and Character

[Variation] • dyn.pr. Desire<–>Ability • being suited to handle a task; the innate capacity to do or be • Ability describes the actual capacity to accomplish something. However, even the greatest Ability may need experience to become practical. Also, Ability may be hindered by limitations placed on a character and/or limitations imposed by the character upon himself. • syn. talent, knack, capability, innate capacity, faculty, inherant proficiency

[Element] • dyn.pr. Desire<–>Ability • being suited to handle a task; the innate capacity to do or be • An aspect of the Ability element is an innate capacity to do or to be. This means that some Abilities pertain to what what can affect physically and also what one can rearrange mentally. The positive side of Ability is that things can be done or experienced that would otherwise be impossible. The negative side is that just because something can be done does not mean it should be done. And, just because one can be a certain way does not mean it is beneficial to self or others. In other words, sometimes Ability is more a curse than a blessing because it can lead to the exercise of capacities that may be negative • syn. talent, knack, capability, innate capacity, faculty, inherent proficiency

Melanie Anne Phillips
Co-creator, Dramatica

Author’s Note:  Once we developed the model of Dramatica, we programmed it in a patented interactive story engine in our Dramatica Story Structure Software.  Give it a look…

Here’s something else I made for writers…