An open forum question from Eve Montana:
What are your thoughts on Dramatica?
Most writers will have bumped up against “Dramatica” in the form of a story development software program. As far as I can tell, it is based upon the work of Melanie Ann Phillips and Chris Huntley who wrote a book called “Dramatica: A New Theory of Story”. That book is available to read online free here.
To give you a taste of the ideas at work in the book, here is an excerpt from the Wikipedia entry:
The Dramatica Theory of Story Structure is built around an idea called “The Story Mind.” According to this notion, every story has a mind of its own – its psychology is built by the story’s structure and its personality is determined by the storytelling.
The theory suggests that this model of the mind was developed unintentionally over centuries of storytelling as a by-product of the attempt to communicate information and emotions across a medium from an author to an audience.
In this light a story is seen as an argument in which the author, hoping to convince the audience of a point of view, suggests that a particular approach to problem solving is (or is not) better than all others that might reasonably be tried in a given situation.
To successfully make this argument, all other pertinent problem solving approaches much be examined in the story as well and shown to fall short of the one promoted by the author.
In the process of including all the reasonable ways one might go about solving a particular problem, all universal human points of view, attitudes, and approaches must appear for any story’s argument to be complete.
Over centuries of trial and error storytelling, these human qualities became fixed as the conventions of story structure from characters, to theme, to plot.
Therefore, the Dramatic theory sees characters as representing our various drives and motivations, theme is seen as our conflicting value standards, plot represents our problem solving methods, and genre describes the overall attitude (personality type) of the Story Mind itself.
Products based on these ideas are available here at the Storymind.com website.
I tried a version of the Dramatica software in 1998. What I recall is this:
* You are provided a lengthy series of questions which you answer
* Many of the questions are multiple choice, requiring the writer to choose between this or that option
* The options relate primarily to plot, character, and theme
* If none of the options seems to fit your story, you must still make a choice between the given options
* At the end, you print out a lengthy document – in the case of one of my stories, a total of 57 pages (single-spaced) – that is supposed to serve as a “story engine”
My reactions? From what I remember at the time, as an exercise to force me to think about my story and characters, it was a reasonable success. But the language system and ideas were pretty dense, at times even obtuse. Plus it was frustrating to be forced to choose between options that didn’t feel like they were relevant to my story.
This does raise a larger question. On the whole, while I do believe there are some fundamental principles related to story structure and characters, I would suggest caution regarding any book, software, class, or screenwriting guru who claims to know a unique, comprehensive approach to screenplay narrative. Every story is different. Every writer is different. Besides if there was one comprehensive approach to screenplay narrative, don’t you think Hollywood movie studios would adopt it, hire lackeys, and churn out one hit movie after another on the cheap?
I suggest taking a more, shall we say, organic approach. It’s fine, even advisable to do prep-writing work on structure and characters, but once a writer types FADE IN, they should leave room for the magic to happen, for characters to come alive and say, “To hell with your outline, I want to go over here!”
For example, here is a set of questions I think are important for a writer to grapple with and eventually answer during the prep-writing phase:
CHARACTERS
Who is the Protagonist?
What do they want (conscious goal / external world)?
What do they need (unconscious goal / internal world)?
Who is keeping them from that goal (Nemesis)?
Who is connected to their emotional development (Attractor)?
Who is connected to their intellectual development (Mentor)?
Who tests the Protagonist by switching allegiance back and forth between ally and enemy (Trickster)?
PLOT
What is the story’s beginning (Opening)?
What is the end of Act One (Lock)?
What is the end of Act Two (All Is Lost)?
What is the story’s ending (Final Struggle)?
CHARACTER-PLOT
What is the nature of your Protagonist’s metamorphosis from Disunity to Unity?
I believe those 12 questions are relevant to most movie stories. If you spend time brainstorming these ideas in relation to character and plot, and dig deep into your characters to uncover their core essence and respective narrative functions, and you can answer these 12 questions, you’re probably equipped well enough to type FADE IN and write your script, hopefully having found a balance between knowing enough to carry you through the writing process, yet leaving room for the story to grow into what it wants to become.
Scott,
Thanks for answering my question. I posted this question after paying $80 to have my synopsis Dramatica-ized. It did help in some ways (i.e. helping me find out flesh out ideas, figure out what really was my character flaw, etc.) and confuse in others. All in all, it's up to the writer to figure stuff out.
Hey Scott — followup question.
How do you know when and if the answers you give to your 12 questions are "right"?
I tried the Dramatica software some years ago. I always have a number of story ideas I'm working on, and for some odd reason, NONE of my story ideas seemed to "fit" into the questions the software was asking. I went through every question for 3 of my ideas and found it to mostly be a waste of time. Of course, I haven't sold any of the ideas as I have them currently developed, so maybe I should have shoehorned my stories into the Dramatica system. (Not really.)
A different perspective from someone who has explored the Dramatica theory for close to fifteen years now. My apologies for splitting it into two separate comments, there was a lot to say!
Dramatica is a comprehensive holistic model of story that covers the structures beneath meaningful narrative fiction regardless of the medium. The concepts within accurately explain the timelessness of great plays like Hamlet and deeply moving novels like To Kill A Mockingbird as well as it does The Godfather or Star Wars. Great story is great story no matter how it is transported to an audience.
There have been many films made that are missing components Dramatica states are necessary for a meaningful story. Taken and Inglorious Basterds from 2009 are just two examples of films that found an audience without meaning. These popular movies relied on the charisma of their actors and the thrills of their set pieces to engage the public. But taken as a whole, both these films leave one feeling strangely empty as the credits roll.
Writers, at least those who wish to be great, aspire for something more with their writing — a connection that the mundane cannot provide. This is the kind of story Dramatica is trying to help writers write, the kind of story that lives on within the hearts and minds of those who have experienced it. These are the kinds of stories people want to see over and over again. When given an option on a Friday night between Brad Pitt's Nazi scalper or Michael Corleone, most lovers of story would choose the latter. Dramatica explains why.
The only reason anyone has had trouble answering the questions posed by the theory is because there were significant inconsistencies with the story they were trying to tell. If you spend enough time with the theory and make the effort to really understand what it is trying to say, you start to realize that the reason great stories work out so well (Hamlet, Godfather, Chinatown, Shawshank Redemption, Casablanca), is because they had these inconsistencies worked out.
Every writer has his or her own personal blind spots. It is what drives them to write, compelling them with the need to say something worthwhile. Many writers don't like Dramatica because it points out their blind spots. That is the main purpose of the theory. It says to writers, "Look, you're not perfect, you're actually missing an entire side to the argument you are trying to make, and if you leave it out the audience is going to call you out on it (by not going to see your movie). Dramatica won't let you write an incomplete story. It is unbiased and non-formulaic in its presentation of the model of story.
Your 12 questions are valid and covered by the theory. As far as the difference between what the Protagonist wants and what he needs, the theory goes into great depths to explain exactly why this dynamic exists and why a character would be so focused on their wants when focusing on their needs would really satisfy the problems in their lives. In addition, it forces you to decide what kind of ending you want, what you really want to say with your story. These are good things.
The reason so many of the terms seem obtuse is because the English language was created predominantly by males. As much as we'd like to pretend that we are the only ones that matter, there is another half of the population that sees the world in a completely different light. Dramatica tries to compensate for this male bias by using words or terms that are the closest approximation to what they really should be in accurately describing what goes on within a story. Again, it is a complete model of the human mind, both male and female. There will be some wonkiness to it as the systems for communication in our culture tend to favor one side over the other.
Dramatica really is the best model of story we have available to us today. It does not dictate style, pacing, or narrative (linear or non-linear). These highly subjective elements of writing are left up to the artist – the way it should be. It is always surprising how so many consider Dramatica formulaic or by-the-book storytelling when it makes great efforts to free writers from the creative shackles imposed by Field, McKee and Snyder. Unlike Snyder who dictates you have to have a Dark Night of the Soul moment or that the Final Image must be directly related to the Opening Image, Dramatica leaves the particulars of how a story should be presented up to the creativity of the author.
Even so, Dramatica accounts for all these previous paradigms and moves on to tell you, "You know what? You want to write something unique, something different, something the world has never seen before, well then here you go. Here's how to make it work, now you go do the actual writing. Just know that if you try and write something meaningless or broken, I'm going to call you out on it."
If anyone is interested, I've written hundreds of articles covering the theory on my site StoryFanatic.com. In addition (and strangely timely), I recently wrote an article about why I think Dramatica is so important in my article, Dramatica: Story Theory for the 21st Century.
Thanks Scott for giving me a chance to elaborate on this fascinating and exciting area of storytelling.
I've always enjoyed Dramatica, even though it makes me want to bang my head against the wall. I think James is right about Dramatica–and I highly recommend his blog for more info on how Dramatica works–I've found his explanations to be highly helpful in figuring out my own work.