By Melanie Anne Phillips
Creator of StoryWeaver

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Write Your Novel or Screenplay Step By Step

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Copyright Melanie Anne Phillips - Owner, Storymind.com, Creator Storyweaver, Co-creator Dramatica

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Thousands of writers use StoryWeaver to build their story’s world, characters, plot, theme,
and genre.

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Thousands of writers use Dramatica to find and refine their story’s structure and to find and fix holes and missteps.

• 200 Interactive Story Cards guide you from concept to completion, step by step.

• Help Buttons with Writing Tips, Example Stories, Hints, and Tricks.

• Work on multiple stories at once.

• Jot down creative notes from anywhere in StoryWeaver.

• Placeholder: Pick up writing where you left off.

• Develop multiple levels of detail for your plot and characters.

• Intuitive navigation path helps you follow your Muse.

• Works on any device: desktop, laptop, tablet, phone, Windows, Macintosh, iOs, Android & Chrome

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• Patented Story Engine cross- references your dramatic choices to create a structure map.

• AI style narrative model finds holes, missteps and suggests how to fix & fill them.

• Automatically generates a timeline from your story’s structural map.

• Offers three levels of detail depending on the complexity of your story.

• Includes hundreds of examples, tips, tricks, and techniques.

• Comes with more than sixty structural maps for classic and popular novels, movies and stage plays.

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~ Step 123 ~

Establishing Main Character Dilemma – Act One

The Main Character’s Dilemma is another tool for illustrating the thematic argument.  Because your readers identify with the Main Character, when he or she wavers between the relative values of the message issue and the counterpoint, the thematic argument becomes personal.  This helps make your message an emotional one for the reader, rather than an intellectual debate.

From the illustrations of your Main Character’s dilemma you have already developed in the Exposition Stage, select those that will best ease the reader into that personal view of the issues as experienced by your Main Character in act one.

Describe how your readers will be introduced over the course of the first act to your Main Character's Dilemma, which is the heart of the thematic conflict in your story.

Then, devise any additional illustrations that you feel will solidly establish the central importance of that dilemma to your Main Character in act one.