What follows is an excerpt from an early unpublished draft of the book that ultimately became, Dramatica: A New Theory of Story. This section introduces the concept of a Story Mind – the notion that characters, plot, theme, and genre are all facets of a larger super mind that is the structure of the story itself

*

            Stories have traditionally been viewed as a series of events affecting independently-acting characters — but not to Dramatica.  Dramatica sees every character, conflict, action or decision as aspects of a single mind trying to solve a problem.  This mind, the Story Mind,™ is not the mind of the author, the audience, nor any of the characters, but of the story itself.  The process of problem solving is the unfolding of the story.

But why a mind?  Certainly this was not the intent behind the introduction of stories as an art form.  Rather, from the days of the first storytellers right up through the present, when a technique worked, it was repeated and copied and became part of the “conventions” of storytelling.  Such concepts as the Act and the Scene, Character, Plot and Theme, evolved by such trial and error.

And yet, the focus was never on WHY these things should exist, but how to employ them.  The Dramatica Theory states that stories exist because they help us deal with problems in our own lives.  Further, this is because stories give us two views of the problem.

One view is through the eyes of a Main Character.  This is a Subjective view, the view FROM the Story Mind as it deals with the problem.  This is much like our own limited view or our own problems.

But stories also provide us with the Author’s Objective view, the view OF the story mind as it deals with a problem.  This is more like a “God’s eye view” that we don’t have in real life.

In a sense, we can relate emotionally to a story because we empathize with the Main Character’s Subjective view, and yet relate logically to the problem through the Author’s Objective view.

This is much like the difference between standing in the shoes of the soldier in the trenches or the general on the hill.  Both are watching the same battle, but they see it in completely different terms.

In this way, stories provide us with a view that is akin to our own attempt to deal with our personal problems while providing an objective view of how our problems relate to the “Bigger Picture”.  That is why we enjoy stories, why they even exist, and why they are structured as they are.

Armed with this Rosetta Stone concept we spent 12 years re-examining stories and creating a map of the Story Mind.  Ultimately, we succeeded.

The Dramatica Model of the Story Mind is similar to a Rubik’s Cube.  Just as a Rubik’s Cube has a finite number of pieces, families of parts (corners, edge pieces) and specific rules for movement, the Dramatica model has a finite size, specific natures to its parts, coordinated rules for movement, and the possibility to create an almost infinite variety of stories — each unique, each accurate to the model, and each true to the author’s own intent.

The concept of a limited number of pieces frequently precipitates a “gut reaction” that the system must itself be limiting and formulaic.  Rather, without some kind of limit, structure cannot exist.  Further, the number of parts has little to do with the potential variety when dyanmics are added to the system.  For example, DNA has only FOUR basic building blocks, and yet when arranged in the dyamic matrix of the double helix DHN chain, is able to create all the forms of life that inhabit the planet.

The key to a system that has identity, but not at the expense of variety, is a flexible structure.  In a Rubik’s cube, corners stay corners and edges stay edges no matter how you turn it.  And because all the parts are linked, when you make a change on the side you are concentrating on, it makes appropriate changes on the sides of the structure you are not paying attention to.

And THAT is the value of Dramatica to an author: that it defines the elements of story, how they are related and how to maipulate them.  Plot, Theme, Character, Conflict, the purpose of Acts, Scenes, Action and Decision, all are represented in the Dramatica model, and all are interrelated.  It is the flexible nature of the structure that allows an author to create a story that has form without formula.

*

Read the entire unpublished draft here.

Read the free online edition of Dramatica – A New Theory of Story in its final form.

Get a paperback of the published version for easy reference on Amazon.

How Stories Came to Be

What follows is an excerpt from an early unpublished draft of the book that ultimately became, Dramatica: A New Theory of Story. This section provides an explanation of how stories emerged from the evolution of communication.

*

Any writer who has sought to understand the workings of story is familiar with the terms “Character”, “Plot”, “Theme”, “Genre”, “Premise”, “Act”, “Scene”, and many others.    Although there is much agreement on the generalities of these concepts, they have proven to be elusive when precise definitions are attempted.  Dramatica presents the first definitive explanation of exactly what stories are and precisely how they are structured.

The dramatic conventions that form the framework of stories today did not spring fully developed upon us.  Rather, the creation of these conventions was an evolutionary process dating far into our past.  It was not an arbitrary effort, but served specific needs.

Early in the art of communication, knowledge could be exchanged about such things as where to find food, or how one felt – happy or sad .  Information regarding the location or state of things requires only a description.  However, when relating an event or series of events, a more sophisticated kind of knowledge needs to be communicated. 

Tales

Imagine the very first story teller, perhaps a cave dweller who has just returned from a run-in with a bear.  This has been an important event in her life and she desires to share it.  She will not only need to convey the concepts “bear” and “myself”, but must also describe what happened.

Her presentation then, might document what led up to her discovery of the bear, the interactions between them, and the manner in which she returned safely to tell the tale.

Tale: a statement (fictional or non-fictional) that describes a problem, the methods employed in the attempt to solve the  problem, and how it all came out.

We can imagine why someone would want to tell a tale, but why would others listen?  There are some purely practical reasons: if the storyteller faced a problem and discovered a way to succeed in it, that experience might someday be useful in the lives of the each individual in the audience.  And if the storyteller didn’t succeed, the tale can act as a warning as to which approaches to avoid.

By listening to a tale, an audience  benefits from knowledge they have not gained directly through their own experience.

So, a tale is a statement documenting an approach to problem solving that provides an audience with valuable experience.

Stories, Objective and Subjective

When relating her tale, the first storyteller had an advantage she did not have when she actually experienced the event: the benefit of hindsight.  The ability to look back and re-evaluate her decisions from a more objective perspective allowed her to share a step by step evaluation of her approach, and an appreciation of the ultimate outcome.  In this way, valid steps could be separated from poorly chosen steps and thereby provide a much more useful interpretation of the problem solving process  than simply whether she ultimately succeeded or failed.

This objective view might be interwoven with the subjective view, such as when one says, “I didn’t know it at the time, but….”  In this manner, the benefit of objective hindsight can temper the subjective immediacy each step of the way, as it happens.  This provides the audience with an ongoing commentary as to the eventual correctness of the subjective view.  It is this differential between the subjective view and the objective view that creates the dramatic potential of a story.

Through the Subjective view, the audience can empathize with the uncertainty that the storyteller felt as she grapples with the problem.  Through the Objective view, the storyteller can argue that her Subjective approach was or was not an appropriate solution.

In short then:

Stories provide two views to the audience:

•           A Subjective view that allows the audience to feel as if the story is happening to them

•           An Objective view that furnishes the benefit of hindsight.

The Objective view satisfies our reason, the subjective view satisfies our feelings.

*

Read the entire unpublished draft here.

Read the free online edition of Dramatica – A New Theory of Story in its final form.

Get a paperback of the published version for easy reference on Amazon.

What follows is from an early unpublished draft of the book that ultimately became, Dramatica: A New Theory of Story. This excerpt is the opening introduction to the book in which we arrogantly state, “To that end, Dramatica does not just describe how stories work, but how they should work.”

DRAMATICA – THE BOOK

Introduction

Everybody loves a good story.

“Good” stories seem to transcend language, culture, age, sex, and even time.  They speak to us in some universal language.  But what makes a story good?  And what exactly is that universal language?

Stories can be expressed in any number of ways.  They can be related verbally through the spoken word and song.  They can be told visually through art and dance.  For every sense there are numerous forms of expression.  There almost seems no limit to how stories can be related.

Yet for all of its variety, the question remains:  “What makes a good story, “good”?  What makes a bad story, “bad””?

This book presents a completely new way to look at stories – a way that explains the universal language of stories not just in terms of how it works, but why and how that language was developed in the first place.  By discovering what human purposes stories fulfill, we can gain a full understanding of what they need to do, and therefore what we, as authors need to do to create “good” stories.

To that end, Dramatica does not just describe how stories work, but how they should work.

Storyforming vs Storytelling

Before we proceed, it is important to separate Storyform from Storytelling.  As an example of what we mean, if we compare West Side Story to Romeo and Juliet, we can see that they are essentially the same story, told in a different way.  The concept that an underlying structure exists that is then represented in a subjective relating of that structure is not new to traditional theories of story.  In fact, Narrative Theory in general assumes such a division.

Specifically, Structuralist theory sees story as having a histoire consisting of plot, character and setting, and a discours that is the storytelling.  The Russian Formalists separated things a bit differently, though along similar lines seeing story as half fable or “fabula”, which also contained the order in which events actually happened in the fable, and the “sjuzet”, which was the order in which these events were revealed to an audience.

These concepts date back at least as far as Aristotle’s Poetics.

In Dramatica, Story is seen as containing both structure and dynamics that include Character, Theme, Plot, and Perspectvie, while classifying the specific manner in which the story points are illustrated and the order information is given to the audience into the realm of storytelling.

Storyforming: an argument that a specific approach is the best solution to a particular problem

Storytelling:  the portrayal of the argument as interpreted by the author

Picture five different artists, each painting her interpretation of the same rose.  One might be highly impressionistic, another in charcoal.  They are any number of styles an artist might choose to illustrate the rose.  Certainly the finished products are works of art.  Yet behind the art is the objective structure of the rose itself: the object that was being portrayed.

The paintings are hung side by side in a gallery, and we, as sophisticated art critics, are invited to view them.  We might have very strong feelings about the manner in which the artists approached their subject, and we may even argue that the subject itself was or was not an appropriate choice.  Yet, if asked to describe the actual rose solely on the basis of what we see in the paintings, our savvy would probably fail us.

We can clearly see that each painting is of a rose.  In fact, depending on the degree of realism, we may come to the conclusion that all the paintings are of the same rose.  In that case, each artist has succeeded in conveying the subject.  Yet, there is so much detail missing.  Each artist may have seen the rose from a slightly different position.  Each artist has chosen to accentuate certain qualities of the rose at the expense of others.  That is how the un-embellished subject is imbued with the qualities of each artist, and the subject takes on a personal quality.

This illustrates a problem that has plagued story analysts and theorists from day one:

Once the story is told, it is nearly impossible to separate the story from the telling unless you know what the author actually had in mind.

Certainly the larger patterns and dramatic broad strokes can be seen working within a story, but many times it is very difficult to tell if a particular point, event, or illustration was merely chosen by the author’s preference of subject matter or if it was an essential part of the structure and dynamics of the argument itself.

Let’s sit in once more on our first storyteller.  She was telling us about her run-in with a bear.  But what if it had been a lion instead?  Would it have made a difference to the story?  Would it have made it a different story altogether?

If the story’s problem was about her approach to escaping from any wild animal, then it wouldn’t really matter if it were a bear or a lion; the argument might be made equally well by the use of either.  But if her point was to argue her approach toward escaping from bears specifically, then certainly changing the culprit to a lion would not serve her story well.

Essentially, the difference between story and storytelling is like the difference between denotation and connotation.  Story denotatively documents all of the essential points of the argument in their appropriate relationships, and storytelling shades the point with information nonessential to the argument itself (although it often touches on the same subject).

In summary, even the best structured story does not often exist as an austere problem solving argument, devoid of personality.  Rather, the author embellishes her message with connotative frills that speak more of her interests in the subject than of the argument she is making about it.  But for the purposes of understanding the dramatic structure of the piece, it is essential to separate story from storytelling.

Traditionally, theories of story have looked at existing works and attempted to classify patterns that could be seen to be present in several stories.  In fact, even today, computer scientists working in “narrative intelligence” gather enormous data bases of existing stories that are broken down into every discernable pattern in the attempt to create a program that can actually tell stories.

Dramatica was not created by observing existing stories and looking for patterns, but by asking new questions:   Why should there be characters at all?  What is the purpose of Act divisions?  What is the reason for Scenes?  In short, Why are there stories in the first place?

Read the entire unpublished draft here.

Read the free online edition of Dramatica – A New Theory of Story in its final form.

Get a paperback of the published version for easy reference on Amazon.