A Story Mind

What follows is an excerpt from an early unpublished draft of the book that ultimately became, Dramatica: A New Theory of Story.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

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            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.

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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.

Freedom | Salem, Oregon

Our brand new apartment complex bordered farmland in West Salem. We had a corner unit so we could look out over the wilds in two direction in this strange interface between modern city and rural life.

Often I would find photographic compositions presenting themselves through our livingroom window, such as this image of a bird, unfettered, and in flight to wherever its fancy called.

Monolith | Yosemite Valley

The Mist Trail that winds up stone stairs carved in the mother rock passes Vernal Falls to connect with other back country trails at the top of Nevada Falls. Along the narrow craggy canyon, mammoth rock walls of single giant blocks of granite stand guard.

Taken in the early 2000s during the first backpacking trip Teresa and I made into the Yosemite wilderness.

How Stories Came To Be

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.

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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.

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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.

Personal Journal | March 13, 2022

So I’ve been working hard on resolving long-term issues and angsts, as this Covid pandemic finally fades away. I want to clear the decks for action, get away from so much introspection, and get on with the business of arting. (That’s “of arting” not “o farting”).

On of the biggest mental blocks I’ve had is justifying my art without any indication it matters a damn to the world at large. There’s no acclaim, no fame, no celebrity. No appreciation of the work itself. No money, no followning, no recognition.

So the question became, after 69 years of cranking out tens of thousands of pages of text, thousands of photographs, hundreds of musical compositions and videos with no standard by which it appears to amount to anthing at all, how do I keep going without the ongoing pain of feeling that it makes not difference?

I’ve been working on this one for decades, and of late I’ve felt I was growing closer to a clear understanding of the problem, if not a solution to it. And then, a couple days ago, for some unfathomable reason, I remembered a skit I saw performed at a talent show in my high school auditorim some half century ago.

It was a one-man presentation, in mime until the very end. This teenager took on the character of a very elderly man. By following his actions, we divined that the old man was in a small apartment, taking ingredients out of the cabinet, mixing them together, and putting the result in the oven. Time passes. He takes out his creation – a small item, upon which he puts somethings small and verticle – and lights it. It is a candle on top of a cupcake. He turns to the audience, holding the plate with the cupcake on it and speaking for the first time, singing, “Happy birthday to me… Happy birthday to me…” Lights fade.

Now I’m pretty sure that sketch no longer exists anywhere in my mind. But it still exists there. And it has affected how I dealt with my step-dad before he caught Covid in the early days, later dying.

It gave me understanding and compassion. It put me in the shoes of that lonely old man (who was really just a teenager on stage). But if that actor is still alive, I wonder if he would even remember that moment himself. And I wonder if any of the other thousand or so kids in that auditorim that day also recall it, from time to time.

That gave me my answer. What we create as artists (like this very post) should not be judged based on any visible indication that the work has value or popularity. Perhaps some works never hit a single mark. Perhaps others touch many hearts, but in the dark so no one notices.

There’s no feedback, no comments, not even more than the occasional page “like” to validate or justify having created. And creating for its own merit, because that is what an artist does, never spoke to me. I don’t create for myself, and I don’t create because I can’t help it (though I can’t). I do it because I want to put good into the world – something I’ve thought of or saw or built that will make the world a tiny bit better, one heart or mind at a time.

But without the stats, I felt like I hadn’t broken through. But now, as the pandemic ebbs and having just turned 69, I want to set my sails unfettered to explore new lands in both the outer and inner frontiers. And I needed that agnst gone in order to catch the wind.

Because of that lone artist some 50 years ago, I had not only changed my behavior with the older members of my family due to heightened awareness, but I am now also changed to my core as an artist myself, by recognizing that when I create something in which I find value and then float it out across the cyber sea, it may sink, but it also might be fished out by some web surfer who is similarly affected as I was. And, good was put into the world.

And so, I’m pulling out all the stops. No more worrying about publication or sales. Sure, I’ll post links to what I’ve created here and on my FB page and elsewhere, but each and every new work, or the first releasing of an old one I’ve never shared before is one more chance that, here and there, one or the other will change things for the better, just a little bit. And it is THAT knowledge that ends my artistic ansgt and enables me to proceed full tilt with reckless creation.

How Stories Should Work

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.

The Dramatica Book | Preface

What follows is from an early unpublished draft of the book that ultimately became, Dramatica: A New Theory of Story. This excerpt is a note from me to Chris explaining the layout of the material in the draft to be considered for inclusion in the final relase version.

CHRIS:  This material is divided into seven sections.  Each is described briefly below:

Section One:      The existing book

This is the most complete and updated version I wrote.  I have edited in additional essays to fill holes, and changed and updated terms.  Aside from the Exploratorial, this approx 200K document contains all our best shots at explaining the whole damn thing.

Section Two:      The Storyforming Exploratorial

Much of this material is culled from the book in section one.  Still, there are important updates and changes in perspective and terms in this version.  In fact, if you choose to use the book material, look to this part of the tutorial for slightly different and sometimes better versions of the same material.  There is also much new material here.  This section was designed to describe what Dramatica is.

Section Three:    The Storytelling Exploratorial

You’ve already read through this one and shared your comments.  I have not yet incorporated any changes, pending what your decisions are about what ought to be used of all this material in the book.  This section was designed to tell an author how Dramatica will affect their audience.

Section Four:      The Dramatica and the Creative Writer Exploratorial

This section describes the relationship between Dramatica and the author in a conceptual, philosphic sense.

Section Five:       The Putting it in Motion Exploratorial

This section describes what it feels like when writing from the appreciations, so that an author can tap into their emotional experience of creating.

Section Six:         The Scientific American Article

‘Nuf said on this one!  I do feel this should be in the book in the back somewhere to give the tenacious reader something to dig into and to document the extent of our work.

Section Seven:         Various appendices

I’m sure you have updated versions of these, but I just threw in the Help, DQS and Definition stuff to have my most recent versions all in one place, since these need to be at the back of the book anyway.

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.

Narrative Psychology | Justification and Neuro Science

This is an excerpt from the transcript of a class I gave on narrative psychology…

We are going to start with the neurology, and work our way through understanding justification in terms of the brains neurology about chemistry, and then we are going to work our way through mental relativity understanding, and then we are going to work our way through a psychological understanding, and then we are going to work our way into the final perspective which is external or physical justification.  So, we are going to start with the physical part of the mind, and then go to the mental relativity part of self-awareness, and then go to the psychological part of the mind, and then we are going to carry it outside, and then bring it back to the body.  So, we’ve gone full circle. 

Q:  So, justification is a style of problem solving? 

Well, problem solving and justification are two means for dealing with an inequity.  When you try to get rid of the inequity, it’s problem solving, when you try balance the inequity, that’s justification. 

O.K., so first of all, in terms of the neurology, there are a couple of models.  (ON BOARD):

We have narrow networks in the brain, and these narrow networks are little things that look like little brains.  They are called ganglia.  There’s a left-headed ganglia, and a right-headed ganglia, and within it, maybe four thousand neurons are all interconnecting.  Then they connect one to another and then you have all these little neural networks.  That’s why it’s not just in neurology, because they are little tiny networks, within a larger network, with subgroups.  And there’s a biochemistry that exists outside here, that all of these ganglia are in that effects them as a group.  And there’s also a membrane of the ganglia, a little micro-climate zone, and one side of the ganglia produces primarily the dopamine, and the other side produces the seratonin.  There is sort of a balance between the dopamine and the seratonin in the network.  This is where our real space and time sense come from in the ganglia. 

Our sense of mass and energy are kind of dealing with the external here.  There’s this larger biochemistry and the big network.  The big network has 4,000 neurons and if we look at it as a single entity, that’s like one switching point, and this is another switching point between themselves, so it has less resolution, than when start looking at what’s actually going on here.  This matter of resolution here is that they would each appear to be containing our sense of mass.  In other words, it’s there, it’s not a very binary sense, all these things work together and say yes or no.  So, you sort of get that sense.  Whereas, the biochemistry that works outside of it, is our sense of energy.  That there is either pressure upon it or  not, in a very unsophisticated way or less resolved way.  When you get down to the level of the ganglia themselves, inside, it becomes more sophisticated, because now you are dealing with relationships between things, instead of just binary states between things. 

And you have the enclosed micro-climate in our biochemistry is such that you have a neuron, and there’s something over here called the threshold.   The threshold here is an  electrical difference between the outside of the neuron, and the inside of the neuron, when you are looking at the axon.  The axon is this  body of the neuron, and it has its receptors, and it’s dendrites.  And they all come up here and go to various neurons.  So, all of these connections to various different neurons.

One of the first places we notice space and time is in the synapse, where the two come together.  There’s some neuron over here that’s firing  and  when it fires, the way it works is down at the bottom, there are little spherical containers holding the neurotransmitters, that are created inside one of these little areas and shooting it out.  And these things migrate and are attracted to the edge of the membrane, depending upon the degree of calcium that’s contained in this liquid inside.  And the amount of calcium has to do with how frequently this is fired.  So, the more familiar you become, the more calcium builds up.  And the more calcium that builds up, the more of these things are ionized, and attracted to the bottom .  And when enough of them are attracted to the bottom, what they do is they sit there long enough, which is where you get time – spatially you get a bunch of them down there.  Temporally, they have to be there long enough.  And when they are there long enough, then if you made one of these larger, with just the edge of this, with one of these things sitting down there, you go through a series of steps, where it begins to open up to the outside, until you end up with something like that.

Eventually, it just goes straight, but in the meantime what’s happened is that it has dumped it’s neurotransmitter in here outside into the open environment.  And then your neurotransmitter is totally out, and the membrane is closed, so there’s a real interesting way that it opens up like that.  And, if it’s there long enough, it will do this.  As they are created, it’s are they getting close to the edge, and they are sort of like, do you have one here, and they are all lined up on the edge, or are they pointing out in the center like this.  So, that’s going to determine how many are close to the edge, and we have how many are close to the edge.  And we have how many are close to the edge, tendency because they are pulled there to stay there longer, and in greater quantities.  And so it adjusts how much of this stuff flows out.  It’s not just that you are going to end up with having it all flow a certain level.  We can modulate it’s affect.  So, even though it fires or doesn’t fire, if it fires, it could just be a little tiny fire, and there could be a lot of neurotransmitter dumped out. 

So, that controls the amount of biochemical that’s going into the synapse.  Remember, the synapse is the one that comes down here, and then it’s captured by the one that comes in.  The neurotransmitters don’t just go directly from here to here, like flaming torpedoes or something, some of them go directly there, but they also spread out, and get into the general mix.  Various atoms of the neurotransmitters.  And as they do, they get over here, they get to work throughout the ganglia, inside it.  So that whenever anything fires, that has thought that occurs.  But, maybe they could be firing seratonin, or they could be firing dopamine.  Or a lot of other neurotransmitters, but they all have the same kind of effect, to cause excitement or slow them down.  Well, the dopamine has a tendency to reduce the calcium inside, while the seratonin has a tendency to increase it.  So, it doesn’t just affect the receiver, it also reflects what’s happening here.  So, that while you have something that is firing, and gives it a tendency to fire more and more frequently, at the same time, what’s out here, could be causing it to fire less and less frequently. 

So, that means that there could be inhibitors  from the outside that inhibit a specific signal coming from the outside.  In other words, even if something is very familiar, coming from this particular neuron, from a sensory neuron, of which there are millions throughout your body, — well, if one of these pathways says “fire” and the rest of the ones have something going on that say “don’t fire” its not going to fire, because this threshold is the difference between an inner and outer electrical energy, in terms of the ionization , and as such, that can be controlled by putting more ions of one kind or another inside or outside.  And because of that you can adjust the action potential.  All of a sudden the potential gets to this point, and if it hits that threshold, it will fire.  When it fires, it overloads, spikes, and it goes down back like this and then comes just under it, and it forms real interesting wave patterns, a typical wave pattern. So, it’s going along underneath it., and it’s always ready to fire.  Something drives it over the edge, then it takes up it’s own inertia, goes through the whole thing, and then after it fires it dips down, so that it will prevent it from firing, which is what gives us our binary sense.  If it just came back down, being ready to fire, we would think analog, instead of thinking binary.  

But, the very fact that it dips down, prevents it  from doing that.  

Read the entire transcript here.