All this wasted time
I've wasted a lot of time on Dramatica, and although it has good points, it's led me down some horrendous dead-ends. During that time I've no actually been doing any new writing on the story, apart from a few sketches which I will probably have to throw away now.
I've been doing my new story theory system for just a couple of posts and already it's prompted me to do some of that actual creative thinking stuff. You know, actual writing. The thing I'm supposed to be doing, and that writing model systems are supposed to be helping me with?
So for almost the first time in this blog, I'm going to have to make something up on the hoof. Be afraid.
Story Hooks
Whenever I write an initial sketch of a story such as Fiend, I try to leave little hooks in the narrative so that I can come back later and fill in the gaps. Sometimes these gaps are never filled, but most of the time it gives me a way to stitch together what I've written in the early stages with what I come up with later.
In the Fiend storyline, I have deliberately left some 'mysteries' to serve as hooks for me to use later when I've worked out a suitable plot. Now is that time. Let's see the hooks.
Hook 1: Why was Fiend locked in the church? And How?
Hook 2: Who did Jake kill, and why?
Hook 3: What happened to his parents?
Hook 4: What is Fiend all about, what does he want, who is he?
Hook 5: Where is the police or authorities in all this?
Hook 6: How did they defeat him before?
Hook 7: How do they defeat him this time that is different?
And because we've done some work on threads and themes, we now have a couple of new hooks:
Hook 8: Why do the older ones not tell Jake the truth?
Hook 9: What terrible thing was done to defeat Fiend last time?
Let's look at the hooks one by one.
Hook 1 : Why was Fiend locked in the church? And How?
Fiend is locked in a church and can't get out. So is someone feeding him, taking out his waste, giving him medication? Sounds unlikely. And why can't an able-bodied full-grown man break out of such a prison with such a long period unsupervised? And he starts off as an old, sick man, but by the end of the story he is young, vigorous and almost invincible? And there's the timeline... he was already an adult twenty years previously, but he seems the same now.
You know what I'm saying. Fiend has to be immortal. But is he a scientific immortal, or a supernatural immortal? Even though our characters may now know his nature, we need to know. This will change the genre of the book.
Supernormal or Supernatural?
A scientific immortal could be someone who has undergone some sort of transformation, eaten something or exposed to something which has stopped cell degeneration. Or he could be a different species of human from an earlier time who has survived through the ages, all his contemporaries having been wiped out by humans. Or perhaps even an alien, a shape-shifter. But he is a normal part of the universe and must obey the normal rules of physics. In other words, an immortal based on science fiction.
A supernatural immortal is something akin to my original idea of a vampire. A beast which doesn't obey the rules of our world because he is not of this world, he is one of the demons from the various pantheons of world religion. He can utilise magic and arcane powers to achieve what he wants. But he operates in a world of rules, and can be defeated by certain things, hexes, potions, magic which can be used against him. In other words, an immortal based on the supernatural.
But which one? You know, I quite liked the idea that we weren't sure. Although I need to know, I don't think the reader needs to know until quite close to the end. There is something to be gained from the characters fearing his is supernatural rather than supernormal. And my normal aversion for cheesy horror and liking for scientific rationality veers me towards the science fiction monster.
Fiend is an immortal being, one of a dwindling few of a race of humans who have existed throughout time, creating chaos where they go. Our characters don't know this, though some may eventually find out, as will the reader. Many of them start to fear him as a supernatural being, but they are wrong.
If you're scoffing at the idea of an immortal being, consider the unusual case of turritopsis nutricula, the immortal jellyfish, which alternates between its adult and juvenile forms, apparently forever, as far as science can tell. It can happen in the natural world. In fact, I might even use this snippet in the book.
[Story Note] turritopsis nutricula, the immortal jellyfish
Locked away
So why and how was he locked away? The why is obvious. He had been out before, and he had caused chaos in much the same way as he does in the present day story, in fact if the hints from the theme threads are correct, he was even more destructive then. Someone locked him away.
Why a church? Well this related to the fact that the people defeating him may have thought him a supernatural being, a demon who needed to be put in a church to contain him.
So he can be trapped by some means, perhaps if starved of a certain type of nutrient, his strength saps, even if he does not die. He was poisoned, dragged into the ante-chamber of the church, and left. When he awoke, he was already weakened by lack of the nutrient, and never recovered. his strength enough to escape. Sounds reasonable. The person must have found out the weakness, and got close enough to use the poison. That's a story worth knowing!
[Story Note] the backstory of the who and how of Fiend's original incarceration in the Church
The Answer to Hook 1?
Why was Fiend locked in the church? And How?
Fiend, an immortal form of human, was poisoned and dragged there by someone as yet unknown. That person probably did not know that Fiend needed a certain nutrient to be strong, instead believing that the power of the church would hold a supernatural being. That person poisoned him or otherwise incapacitated him, and dragged him to the church and locked them in an ante chamber. Fiend exists in a twilight of weakness, eating insects and rodents and drinking rainwater to survive.
This raises a couple of new hooks.
Hook 10: What happened to the minister and the church to make it abandoned?
Hook 11: What nutrient is it, and what is it found it?
That'll do for this post
It actually feels good to be creating stuff again, Dramatica got me involved in the depths of its own mythology that I'd almost lost sight of what it is I'm supposed to be working on - the actual creation of a plot.
Thursday, 25 August 2016
Adding complexity
In the last post
I introduced the idea of the five story stages, and the four threads of a story which all share a theme and tell a story which proves the theme in their own way. In this post I will show you that each thread has its own little timeline, and the theme and story in each one goes though the five stages.
Look at Star Wars Again
If we take one of the threads of Star Wars, say the Personal Thread which tells the story of Luke Skywalker's journey, we can see that it goes through the five stages:
I think it's important when writing timelines from scratch, to make only some of the points concur between threads, as this spreads out the progression of the stories over the chapters.
So what about Fiend?
So if we're going to apply all this to Fiend, where do we start? Well I suppose we need to look at the threads, and choose a theme we can reflect in each thread. So what is the theme of Fiend that we want to project over all our threads?
As we've said many times, the theme of Jake's story is not to allow the past to inhibit your potential in future. His problem is that he's too afraid to allow himself free reign so has become stunted emotionally. I'm not sure this theme can be expressed in a single word (even though Dramatica tries!) but it is to do with Self-Forgiveness. Jake needs to forgive himself. The past is the past.
So now we can write the Personal thread and incorporate this.
1. Personal
Jake killed someone in the past, because of this he continually represses his emotions and has become emotionally closed. This has wreaked havoc with his life, both romantic and in general. He worked for his idiotic brother in a small criminal gang. Jake inadvertently releases a charismatic yet chaotic man who takes over the gang and leads them into a spiral of violence. Jake is unable to confront him, or convince his brother to step back. When his brother is killed, he despairs but finds out a secret from the past which allows him to open up. With new-found freedom he can defeat Fiend.
Well that's not bad. It fully expresses the theme of Self-Forgiveness in the most personal terms. Now we need to look at the other threads and try to apply the tricky idea of self-forgiveness to them.
2. Interpersonal
Now Jake and Fiend are apparently unconnected at the start of the story, so it would seem faintly ridiculous to try to apply the idea of self-forgiveness to the relationship between them. But let's look a bit further and get creative. If we expand the idea of self-forgiveness to encapsulate "setting aside the mistakes of the past in order to move on" we can see Jake releasing Fiend into the world as a mistake. Fiend begged him not to release him, but he did it anyway. This is the Original Sin of the relationship story. The remainder of the story is the consequences of that mistake, and both Jake's journey from passive to active and also Fiend's journey from weak to strong.
That's not bad either. The thematic idea of a past wrong having to be righted is reflected in the release story of Fiend and Jake and their subsequent squaring up.
3. Ensemble
There is a group of people around Jake, his brother William, his current girlfriend Elaine, his previous Katie, and the further members of the gang such as Peter and Thomas. In order for the theme to be reflected in this thread, these people must have been damaged in some way by an event in the past, an event which has coloured the way they behave towards each other now. I haven't worked it out but I believe it has something to do with the circumstances around the killing that Jake did as a youngster. They are trying to protect him from something, and there is not universal agreement between them about this.
This part needs more work, so we'll return to this.
4. Historical
This thread is about the society in general, and in the case of Fiend this would be the community and the crime society that the story opens up in. I think it's obvious that the historical 'wrong' which needs to be righted is around what happened the last time Fiend was out in the open. That was settled in such a manner to provoke a group shame amongst the community. This shame needs to be exposed and excised in the resolution of this incarnation of Fiend.
This also needs woven in better so let's return to this later.
New Stuff
Already this approach has already suggested new material that I need to create. This is what I had hoped Dramatica would do, but didn't. The plot and chronology I'd already worked out about Jake and Fiend which happens in the present tense of the story, I had worked out already in greatest detail. But by reflecting the theme upwards towards the ensemble and historical themes, I can see where I need to create a whole raft of background that I haven't even seen was missing up until now.
Summary: everybody needs a wrong of the past to be forgiven and let go, in order to move on
Jake: needs to forgive himself about the killing, to allow him to express his emotions again.
Jake & Fiend: they need to repair the damage caused by Jake's original release of Fiend
Friends: they need to decide to tell Jake what really happened to order to heal those rifts
Society: need to expose and right the wrong done when Fiend was defeated the last time
I really should work now on the factual chronology in order to beef out the Ensemble and Historical threads.
Summary
I can already see how this thread approach is working better as a development tool for me. By making themes resonate upwards, the theme of the overall story is becoming clear, and it will be proved in four ways - by the end the story will have concluded each of these threads in a satisfying way, and the reader will glimpse or intuit overall theme. I hope!
I introduced the idea of the five story stages, and the four threads of a story which all share a theme and tell a story which proves the theme in their own way. In this post I will show you that each thread has its own little timeline, and the theme and story in each one goes though the five stages.
Look at Star Wars Again
If we take one of the threads of Star Wars, say the Personal Thread which tells the story of Luke Skywalker's journey, we can see that it goes through the five stages:
- The way it's been - Luke is stuck on the farm, his uncle won't release him
- The strange event - Luke meets Ben Kenobi, and his aunt and uncle are killed
- Trying and failing - Luke fails in the Cantina, fails at lightsaber, fails to rescue Leia
- The crisis point - Luke is unable to prevent Ben being killed by Darth Vader, despairs
- Final resolution - Luke uses what Ben has taught him, to strike back at the Empire
- The way it's been - None of them trust each other, they are from differing backgrounds
- The strange event - The Millennium Falcon escapes, new respect on all sides
- Trying and failing - After rescuing Leia, they fail to escape properly
- The crisis point - Ben is killed, this draws the remaining ensemble together, Han leaves
- Final resolution - Han reneges and returns to help his new friends
I think it's important when writing timelines from scratch, to make only some of the points concur between threads, as this spreads out the progression of the stories over the chapters.
So what about Fiend?
So if we're going to apply all this to Fiend, where do we start? Well I suppose we need to look at the threads, and choose a theme we can reflect in each thread. So what is the theme of Fiend that we want to project over all our threads?
As we've said many times, the theme of Jake's story is not to allow the past to inhibit your potential in future. His problem is that he's too afraid to allow himself free reign so has become stunted emotionally. I'm not sure this theme can be expressed in a single word (even though Dramatica tries!) but it is to do with Self-Forgiveness. Jake needs to forgive himself. The past is the past.
So now we can write the Personal thread and incorporate this.
1. Personal
Jake killed someone in the past, because of this he continually represses his emotions and has become emotionally closed. This has wreaked havoc with his life, both romantic and in general. He worked for his idiotic brother in a small criminal gang. Jake inadvertently releases a charismatic yet chaotic man who takes over the gang and leads them into a spiral of violence. Jake is unable to confront him, or convince his brother to step back. When his brother is killed, he despairs but finds out a secret from the past which allows him to open up. With new-found freedom he can defeat Fiend.
Well that's not bad. It fully expresses the theme of Self-Forgiveness in the most personal terms. Now we need to look at the other threads and try to apply the tricky idea of self-forgiveness to them.
2. Interpersonal
Now Jake and Fiend are apparently unconnected at the start of the story, so it would seem faintly ridiculous to try to apply the idea of self-forgiveness to the relationship between them. But let's look a bit further and get creative. If we expand the idea of self-forgiveness to encapsulate "setting aside the mistakes of the past in order to move on" we can see Jake releasing Fiend into the world as a mistake. Fiend begged him not to release him, but he did it anyway. This is the Original Sin of the relationship story. The remainder of the story is the consequences of that mistake, and both Jake's journey from passive to active and also Fiend's journey from weak to strong.
That's not bad either. The thematic idea of a past wrong having to be righted is reflected in the release story of Fiend and Jake and their subsequent squaring up.
3. Ensemble
There is a group of people around Jake, his brother William, his current girlfriend Elaine, his previous Katie, and the further members of the gang such as Peter and Thomas. In order for the theme to be reflected in this thread, these people must have been damaged in some way by an event in the past, an event which has coloured the way they behave towards each other now. I haven't worked it out but I believe it has something to do with the circumstances around the killing that Jake did as a youngster. They are trying to protect him from something, and there is not universal agreement between them about this.
This part needs more work, so we'll return to this.
4. Historical
This thread is about the society in general, and in the case of Fiend this would be the community and the crime society that the story opens up in. I think it's obvious that the historical 'wrong' which needs to be righted is around what happened the last time Fiend was out in the open. That was settled in such a manner to provoke a group shame amongst the community. This shame needs to be exposed and excised in the resolution of this incarnation of Fiend.
This also needs woven in better so let's return to this later.
New Stuff
Already this approach has already suggested new material that I need to create. This is what I had hoped Dramatica would do, but didn't. The plot and chronology I'd already worked out about Jake and Fiend which happens in the present tense of the story, I had worked out already in greatest detail. But by reflecting the theme upwards towards the ensemble and historical themes, I can see where I need to create a whole raft of background that I haven't even seen was missing up until now.
Summary: everybody needs a wrong of the past to be forgiven and let go, in order to move on
Jake: needs to forgive himself about the killing, to allow him to express his emotions again.
Jake & Fiend: they need to repair the damage caused by Jake's original release of Fiend
Friends: they need to decide to tell Jake what really happened to order to heal those rifts
Society: need to expose and right the wrong done when Fiend was defeated the last time
I really should work now on the factual chronology in order to beef out the Ensemble and Historical threads.
Summary
I can already see how this thread approach is working better as a development tool for me. By making themes resonate upwards, the theme of the overall story is becoming clear, and it will be proved in four ways - by the end the story will have concluded each of these threads in a satisfying way, and the reader will glimpse or intuit overall theme. I hope!
Tuesday, 23 August 2016
A Starting Point, Threads
A Story
A dramatic storyline is comprised of five stages.
A Single Mind
Where I agree with Dramatica is the idea of the Story Mind - which is the entire argument for the defence created by the writer as a super lawyer in a court case. Like a human mind, the Story Mind cannot believe two things to be true at once. It can see truths of differing levels. It can change its mind about people over time.
The Four Story Threads
Where I disagree is the way the Story Mind is divided. I think the Story Mind is divided up into Four levels, one above the other. Each level is a thread in itself, a story thread. The story being told at the level should also prove the Premise of the story, but in a different way, according to its scope. Each story thread could be a story on its own, if you took the other three away, it would still be a coherent story.
1. The Personal Thread
This is the intimate story of the main character of the story. This is mainly about the internal growth of the person over time, the particular skills and abilities that person has. The Star Wars example is Luke Skywalker starts as a whiny farm-boy on a boring planet, dreaming of becoming a pilot, then unexpectedly loss his family, discovers a Jedi, leaves on an adventure which leads him to fighting for the rebels in a spectacular space battle.
2. The Interpersonal Thread
This is the story of how the main character's relationship with the most important supporting character changes over time. This could be the enemy, the best friend, lover, parent. It's the closest to what Dramatica calls the Impact character. In Star Wars, Luke sees Ben as an old fool, then a link to the unknown past, then a teacher, then a mentor and constant presence. For Ben, he sees Luke as an opportunity, student, and then hope for the future.
3. The Ensemble Thread
This is the story of the groups of characters which form over the course of the story, and all the interpersonal and inter-group relationships. In Star Wars, this is the eventual core group of Luke and Leia, Han and Chewbacca, and the Droids. After the course of the events of the story you know these people are bonded forever. The group of Darth Vader, Grand Moff Tarkin, and the admirals is another. The rebellion is a grouping. So is the Empire. Each take part in the Ensemble Story.
4. The Historical Thread
This is the story of the events as if they were being recorded in a history book. Names and dates may not be known, but the general chronology of events are recorded from the point of view of a dispassionate distant observer. In Star Wars, the Historical Thread is the story of the rise of the Empire, the Rebellion staring, and the attempts to crush it. It is the destruction of the death star as a major milestone in the campaign to defeat the Empire. The Historical Thread is this story.
Echoes and Resonance
Now when we choose a top level theme for our story, then that theme should be reflected in all of the threads underneath. Each thread will offer a perspective on that theme with a particular story involving it. In this way the theme will resonate throughout the story. Let's see if it's true for the movie Star Wars.
1. Personal
Luke Skywalker starts off as a farm-boy, but what he doesn't know is he is the son of a brilliant Jedi pilot. He discovers this Potential as the story progresses, and finishes the story using the Force and destroying the Death Star.
2. Interpersonal
Ben Kenobi can see the potential in Luke and tries to tempt him away. When the accident of the Empire destroying his family happens, he is quick to exploit the potential of this for turning Luke into a Jedi student. Luke and Ben realize the Potential of their master-student relationship.
3. Ensemble
The rag-tag group in the Millennium Falcon start off as a couple of smugglers they meet in the Space Port. Luke thinks they are trouble, but Ben sees the Potential. Han is a skeptic about the world, but over the course of the story comes to believes in the rebellion. Leia is a single-minded rebel leader with no time for personal niceties, but by the end comes to love them all. Nobody knew this rag-tag band could have the Potential to defeat the empire.
4. Historical
The Empire has almost succeeded in crushing the Rebellion, and is building a massive space station to patrol the galaxy to enforce this. The rebels have been pushed back to a single planet. The end looks near. Nobody could tell that the rebellion has the Potential within its ranks to defeat the Empire.
In Star Wars, the Theme is Potentiality. The idea behind Potentiality is surprise. Everybody thinks things are going one way, but there is something special and surprising about one of the elements which means that the tables are turned. This happens at all levels in all threads of the story.
So can we do the same thing for other classic dramatic fiction?
Jaws
Personal: Brody has given up his career as a New York cop for a second chance at a career in a sleepy island community, but it doesn't work out that way and he's faced with danger
Interpersonal: Brody sees scientist Hooper as his second chance at proving the shark risk is real. Hooper sees Brody as his second chance at scientific glory..
Ensemble: Quint, Brody and Hooper are on the brink of failure after the first shark attack, but a second chance allows them to pull together and defeat the shark.
Historical: The seaside resort of Amity has already had a couple of shark attacks, but the Fourth of July weekend is a second chance for the community to come through.
The theme which resonates on all four levels is the idea of a second chance, or Redemption, if you want a one word description. The idea that the first go was a failure, and this is the second chance to put things right.
So I think I'm onto something
So I think that my suspicion that themes need to resonate is real. But how do you choose a theme? Potentiality and Redemption are two examples of themes but can we list them all? I'm not sure I have to. Part of where Dramatica went wrong was to try to limit and box in the entirety of human thought - I would say there are a million themes, and we understand them implicitly without definition, so why try to categorise them?
The advantage of the four levels is that you can think of one theme, and then move it over to the other levels of thread and you come up with a whole load of new material for free!
Next time
I will look at how these Themes adapt over the timeline of the story.
A dramatic storyline is comprised of five stages.
- The way it's been
- The strange event
- Trying and failing
- The crisis point
- Final resolution
A Single Mind
Where I agree with Dramatica is the idea of the Story Mind - which is the entire argument for the defence created by the writer as a super lawyer in a court case. Like a human mind, the Story Mind cannot believe two things to be true at once. It can see truths of differing levels. It can change its mind about people over time.
The Four Story Threads
Where I disagree is the way the Story Mind is divided. I think the Story Mind is divided up into Four levels, one above the other. Each level is a thread in itself, a story thread. The story being told at the level should also prove the Premise of the story, but in a different way, according to its scope. Each story thread could be a story on its own, if you took the other three away, it would still be a coherent story.
1. The Personal Thread
This is the intimate story of the main character of the story. This is mainly about the internal growth of the person over time, the particular skills and abilities that person has. The Star Wars example is Luke Skywalker starts as a whiny farm-boy on a boring planet, dreaming of becoming a pilot, then unexpectedly loss his family, discovers a Jedi, leaves on an adventure which leads him to fighting for the rebels in a spectacular space battle.
2. The Interpersonal Thread
This is the story of how the main character's relationship with the most important supporting character changes over time. This could be the enemy, the best friend, lover, parent. It's the closest to what Dramatica calls the Impact character. In Star Wars, Luke sees Ben as an old fool, then a link to the unknown past, then a teacher, then a mentor and constant presence. For Ben, he sees Luke as an opportunity, student, and then hope for the future.
3. The Ensemble Thread
This is the story of the groups of characters which form over the course of the story, and all the interpersonal and inter-group relationships. In Star Wars, this is the eventual core group of Luke and Leia, Han and Chewbacca, and the Droids. After the course of the events of the story you know these people are bonded forever. The group of Darth Vader, Grand Moff Tarkin, and the admirals is another. The rebellion is a grouping. So is the Empire. Each take part in the Ensemble Story.
4. The Historical Thread
This is the story of the events as if they were being recorded in a history book. Names and dates may not be known, but the general chronology of events are recorded from the point of view of a dispassionate distant observer. In Star Wars, the Historical Thread is the story of the rise of the Empire, the Rebellion staring, and the attempts to crush it. It is the destruction of the death star as a major milestone in the campaign to defeat the Empire. The Historical Thread is this story.
Echoes and Resonance
Now when we choose a top level theme for our story, then that theme should be reflected in all of the threads underneath. Each thread will offer a perspective on that theme with a particular story involving it. In this way the theme will resonate throughout the story. Let's see if it's true for the movie Star Wars.
1. Personal
Luke Skywalker starts off as a farm-boy, but what he doesn't know is he is the son of a brilliant Jedi pilot. He discovers this Potential as the story progresses, and finishes the story using the Force and destroying the Death Star.
2. Interpersonal
Ben Kenobi can see the potential in Luke and tries to tempt him away. When the accident of the Empire destroying his family happens, he is quick to exploit the potential of this for turning Luke into a Jedi student. Luke and Ben realize the Potential of their master-student relationship.
3. Ensemble
The rag-tag group in the Millennium Falcon start off as a couple of smugglers they meet in the Space Port. Luke thinks they are trouble, but Ben sees the Potential. Han is a skeptic about the world, but over the course of the story comes to believes in the rebellion. Leia is a single-minded rebel leader with no time for personal niceties, but by the end comes to love them all. Nobody knew this rag-tag band could have the Potential to defeat the empire.
4. Historical
The Empire has almost succeeded in crushing the Rebellion, and is building a massive space station to patrol the galaxy to enforce this. The rebels have been pushed back to a single planet. The end looks near. Nobody could tell that the rebellion has the Potential within its ranks to defeat the Empire.
In Star Wars, the Theme is Potentiality. The idea behind Potentiality is surprise. Everybody thinks things are going one way, but there is something special and surprising about one of the elements which means that the tables are turned. This happens at all levels in all threads of the story.
So can we do the same thing for other classic dramatic fiction?
Jaws
Personal: Brody has given up his career as a New York cop for a second chance at a career in a sleepy island community, but it doesn't work out that way and he's faced with danger
Interpersonal: Brody sees scientist Hooper as his second chance at proving the shark risk is real. Hooper sees Brody as his second chance at scientific glory..
Ensemble: Quint, Brody and Hooper are on the brink of failure after the first shark attack, but a second chance allows them to pull together and defeat the shark.
Historical: The seaside resort of Amity has already had a couple of shark attacks, but the Fourth of July weekend is a second chance for the community to come through.
The theme which resonates on all four levels is the idea of a second chance, or Redemption, if you want a one word description. The idea that the first go was a failure, and this is the second chance to put things right.
So I think I'm onto something
So I think that my suspicion that themes need to resonate is real. But how do you choose a theme? Potentiality and Redemption are two examples of themes but can we list them all? I'm not sure I have to. Part of where Dramatica went wrong was to try to limit and box in the entirety of human thought - I would say there are a million themes, and we understand them implicitly without definition, so why try to categorise them?
The advantage of the four levels is that you can think of one theme, and then move it over to the other levels of thread and you come up with a whole load of new material for free!
Next time
I will look at how these Themes adapt over the timeline of the story.
Monday, 22 August 2016
A New Hope
What are we trying to do here?
Having failed to get Dramatica to work properly, wouldn't it just be a good idea to abandon it and go back to the traditional methods? Well, I think there is something in the ideas of Dramatica, I think when they were doing it, they went too far with all the grids and layers and when it didn't work out, they padded it with concepts which don't work. But as I went though I could sense it was adding value, but the nasty and nonsensical bits were detracting from that.
What worked
What works in Dramatica is the idea that there are Player Roles in your story, and for a good story, every perspective needs to be told. It's like a debate, and you need to hear from every viewpoint, so you can take a perspective. The idea of the archetypal roles was excellent, and to further break those eight archetypes into a number of Player Roles which you distribute across your actual characters was great. I'll keep that.
I liked the opposing of Player Roles, as in the diagonal grid. That can stay. Not so keen on the left-right and up-down dependencies, they didn't work so well for me, but they can stay in I suppose.
The throughlines were excellent, the telling of the story on four different levels. As I was doing the analysis, I did find it difficult to disentangle the Main and Impact throughlines when discussing the Subjective Throughline. The overall and main throughlines are excellent and obvious. I'm less interested in the Impact throughline, usually I'm, only interested in the impact character in as much as he affects the main character, the personal journey of the impact character is of less importance, but it's still good enough to keep in there. I'm not so sure that the Subjective storyline exists, it's where the Main and the Impact storylines clash, but it's not a perspective on its own. So maybe the number can be worked on.
I liked the idea of choosing your theme on the grid, but again it went way too deep, and many of the squares made no sense at all. The four levels of drill-down were overkill. The part where you choose one major thematic split and tell that story in one of the four throughlines just seemed like so much hogwash. As I said before, themes resonate. You pick a theme and then split that theme into variants, one for each throughline. The variants of the theme resonate across the story.
The part of Dramatica we didn't get to is the scene generation part, where you take all the Story Points (which are the basically the conflicts between Player Roles) and run them out to give 8x8, sixty four possible scenes and conflicts within your story. I like this, because it gives you a reason for every scene.
What I'd like to add
One of the things which irritated me about Dramatica from the start was characterising characters in terms of two or three characteristics. So one of your characters might be Logic and Chaos and Result. And then you were supposed to write a character who embodied these three, sometimes opposing, characteristics.
I think Dramatica missed a trick here. A person may be involved with these multiple characteristics, but the exact relationship they have with them is left oddly unknown within the story system. I'd like to add some verbs. My character uses logic, fears chaos and obsesses about results. There are differences between what a character would like to feel, and what they really do. A character may want to be loyal, respect loyalty, but fails to live up to it. The character may use logic, but in such a way to subvert personal feelings and justify them. There is more detail here than Dramatica says.
The theming needs work. I think an overall theme needs to be typed, and then throughlines need to parallel. I'll go into that in a bit.
Off we go then...
This may be slow, because I'll be making it up as I go.
Having failed to get Dramatica to work properly, wouldn't it just be a good idea to abandon it and go back to the traditional methods? Well, I think there is something in the ideas of Dramatica, I think when they were doing it, they went too far with all the grids and layers and when it didn't work out, they padded it with concepts which don't work. But as I went though I could sense it was adding value, but the nasty and nonsensical bits were detracting from that.
What worked
What works in Dramatica is the idea that there are Player Roles in your story, and for a good story, every perspective needs to be told. It's like a debate, and you need to hear from every viewpoint, so you can take a perspective. The idea of the archetypal roles was excellent, and to further break those eight archetypes into a number of Player Roles which you distribute across your actual characters was great. I'll keep that.
I liked the opposing of Player Roles, as in the diagonal grid. That can stay. Not so keen on the left-right and up-down dependencies, they didn't work so well for me, but they can stay in I suppose.
The throughlines were excellent, the telling of the story on four different levels. As I was doing the analysis, I did find it difficult to disentangle the Main and Impact throughlines when discussing the Subjective Throughline. The overall and main throughlines are excellent and obvious. I'm less interested in the Impact throughline, usually I'm, only interested in the impact character in as much as he affects the main character, the personal journey of the impact character is of less importance, but it's still good enough to keep in there. I'm not so sure that the Subjective storyline exists, it's where the Main and the Impact storylines clash, but it's not a perspective on its own. So maybe the number can be worked on.
I liked the idea of choosing your theme on the grid, but again it went way too deep, and many of the squares made no sense at all. The four levels of drill-down were overkill. The part where you choose one major thematic split and tell that story in one of the four throughlines just seemed like so much hogwash. As I said before, themes resonate. You pick a theme and then split that theme into variants, one for each throughline. The variants of the theme resonate across the story.
The part of Dramatica we didn't get to is the scene generation part, where you take all the Story Points (which are the basically the conflicts between Player Roles) and run them out to give 8x8, sixty four possible scenes and conflicts within your story. I like this, because it gives you a reason for every scene.
What I'd like to add
One of the things which irritated me about Dramatica from the start was characterising characters in terms of two or three characteristics. So one of your characters might be Logic and Chaos and Result. And then you were supposed to write a character who embodied these three, sometimes opposing, characteristics.
I think Dramatica missed a trick here. A person may be involved with these multiple characteristics, but the exact relationship they have with them is left oddly unknown within the story system. I'd like to add some verbs. My character uses logic, fears chaos and obsesses about results. There are differences between what a character would like to feel, and what they really do. A character may want to be loyal, respect loyalty, but fails to live up to it. The character may use logic, but in such a way to subvert personal feelings and justify them. There is more detail here than Dramatica says.
The theming needs work. I think an overall theme needs to be typed, and then throughlines need to parallel. I'll go into that in a bit.
Off we go then...
This may be slow, because I'll be making it up as I go.
Friday, 19 August 2016
A Small Rebellion
What The... ?
Having broken the back of the analysis of character and theme, and followed through on the various relationships, I have to admit I'm not altogether happy with the way things have turned out. In my mind I already had a few great Themes worked out, and these have not been replicated after working through Dramatica.
Perhaps I have misunderstood or misapplied the process, but some things seem to have worked, and some things definitely haven't worked. I love the idea of the four Story Throughlines, that makes a lot of sense to me, but I don't feel any resonance between any of the throughlines even though I went out of my way to do what the system says.
I also have a problem with some of the minutiae. I am an intelligent person, I have university degrees. I have been writing fiction for as long as I could write, and reading it just as long. I even having a passing interest in the worlds of Philosophy and Psychology. I understand what the words mean, but I think some of them are being misused.
For Example....
Do you really understand the difference between Deduction, Reduction, Induction and Production? I mean, you can look up the definitions, and they all relate to the way a person comes up with theories to explain the facts and project into the future.
Deduction - Eliminates possibilities until the one remaining must be true
Reduction - Ranks competing possibilities by merit or likelihood
Induction - Works out causal chains of effect by linking unrelated facts
Production - Arrives at a future truth by ruling out what cannot happen
But, doesn't everybody do all of those things? Can you really categorise a person by assigning them to one of these, to make it their overriding method? What would an Inductive person do any differently in our story than a Deductive person? How would they ever get to be so one-sided, and what does being that way actually give you which helps you as a writer work out how they will react in a situation?
Internal methods of arriving at models of the world may be interesting in some psychological thriller or something, or if you're trying to show how someone came to a conclusion, but they mean not a lot in your usual dramatic fiction. Who cares if the hero decides to go after the girl because he eliminated all the other possibilities, or that he ranked them by likelihood? Who really cares about that level of detail?
To put these four up as an equal alongside a quartet such as Faith, Conscience, Temptation, Disbelief is a travesty. These things are fundamental concepts, massive thematic foundations which resonate throughout the story. Sorry, it just doesn't hang together for me. Some of these sixty-four elements seem phony, and out of place.
Faith, Conscience, Temptation and Disbelief are themes, massive weighty concepts which touch every aspect of the story from plot through to character, but they are not characteristics of people. You cannot categorise a person in the story by any one of them.
I'm sorry, Dramatica, you're plain wrong.
Hierarchies upon hierarchies
Themes repeat, they do not fracture into littler and littler themes. To get resonance between your throughlines, you have to allow them to cover the same thematic elements, but from the different viewpoint that the throughline offers. In Star Wars, Luke goes from ignorant farm boy to hero, the rebellion goes from beaten to winning, Han Solo goes from lazy and criminal to good, The Droids go from lost to found. Themes repeat, and in doing so resonate.
By forcing me to box in my major themes into mutually exclusive categories, none of my eventual themes resonated. It's hardly surprising, this positional thing caused more problems than it solved (i.e. it solved none). The promise of a deeply resonating set of Throughline themes simply came out - unsurprisingly - with four separate themes which were unrelated.
It's not even as if the hierarchy of themes were related, some of the sub categories bore no relation to the category above.
Another example
Take any of the Thematic Classes, say Psychology. When you look at the definition Dramatica gives, it fudges it. It says that Psychology is not what you thought it was (how the mind works) but is about the change of the mind over the course of the story, whether it is changing and if this is good or not.
Fair enough, you might think, so it should contain variations such as doubt, suspicion, persuasion, challenge, argument, cogitation, decision, searching, consideration, debate.... you would be wrong.
Psychology breaks down into : Conceptualizing, Being, Becoming, Conceiving.
So according to Dramatica, the section which is supposed to be about the change of mind over the course of the story can only have types of Conceptualizing (thinking up ways to do something), Being (playing a role), Becoming (truly changing your nature) and Conceiving (making a plan an actuality). Three of those have nothing to do with change. They don't even relate well to one another.
This is nonsense. There are many examples of this, too many to print.
Four on Four
Another place I found it very disappointing was the layering of Themes on top of Throughlines. I already mentioned it smelled fishy while I was doing it, and my suspicions turned out to be correct.
You've drilled down to the Type of Theme you want for each of your throughlines, and then you are expected to lay that on top of the character grid you created before? This seems like a very lame attempt to claim some sort of connection between Theme and Character. The idea being that your themes somehow blend seamlessly into the character traits you've designed.
Only it doesn't work. Just look at the previous posts.
Where it does work, it only works because the original Character grid is chock full of themes. It was supposed to be full of character traits. Most of the time, it doesn't work at all.
So is there anything to salvage from this?
It's a tough one. I did wonder why Dramatica wasn't more popular, it seemed to offer a foolproof way of getting complexity and depth into your characters and themes, but after going through it, it all seems very arbitrary to me, so I can understand why people stay away from it.
It seems the writers got carried away with this idea of grids, squares and multi-dimensional relationships. Unfortunately I don't think the entirety of human thought actually breaks down that way. I think they found that out too, and they had to fill a lot of empty space with spurious concepts which looked good on paper.
But there have been things I thought were amazing, I think they just approached it from the wrong direction. Perhaps the remainder of this blog will be about me trying to synthesize something from the debris which actually works.
Any ideas?
I think you need to get your themes sorted out first, and from the themes, the characters will fall out. There's no point designing a complex grid of interrelated characters with conflicts and confederacies, and then try to shoehorn deep thematic quality on top of that. The hope that you can set up characters and that coincidentally deep amazing themes on multiple levels will just emerge from that is ludicrous.
Worse than that, the way Dramatica seems to be set up, is you design all your character conflicts from a palette which contains some concepts which are borderline shady to say the least. Then you independently try to design a thematic structure with multiple levels. Then hope that when you crunch both of them together, all the pieces fit. This is nonsense. It doesn't work.
What I think I need to do is take a hatchet to some of these spurious concepts, and whittle the thing down to manageable proportions. I would guess that as many as half the elements can go.
I'll perhaps try starting on this in the next post.
Having broken the back of the analysis of character and theme, and followed through on the various relationships, I have to admit I'm not altogether happy with the way things have turned out. In my mind I already had a few great Themes worked out, and these have not been replicated after working through Dramatica.
Perhaps I have misunderstood or misapplied the process, but some things seem to have worked, and some things definitely haven't worked. I love the idea of the four Story Throughlines, that makes a lot of sense to me, but I don't feel any resonance between any of the throughlines even though I went out of my way to do what the system says.
I also have a problem with some of the minutiae. I am an intelligent person, I have university degrees. I have been writing fiction for as long as I could write, and reading it just as long. I even having a passing interest in the worlds of Philosophy and Psychology. I understand what the words mean, but I think some of them are being misused.
For Example....
Do you really understand the difference between Deduction, Reduction, Induction and Production? I mean, you can look up the definitions, and they all relate to the way a person comes up with theories to explain the facts and project into the future.
Deduction - Eliminates possibilities until the one remaining must be true
Reduction - Ranks competing possibilities by merit or likelihood
Induction - Works out causal chains of effect by linking unrelated facts
Production - Arrives at a future truth by ruling out what cannot happen
But, doesn't everybody do all of those things? Can you really categorise a person by assigning them to one of these, to make it their overriding method? What would an Inductive person do any differently in our story than a Deductive person? How would they ever get to be so one-sided, and what does being that way actually give you which helps you as a writer work out how they will react in a situation?
Internal methods of arriving at models of the world may be interesting in some psychological thriller or something, or if you're trying to show how someone came to a conclusion, but they mean not a lot in your usual dramatic fiction. Who cares if the hero decides to go after the girl because he eliminated all the other possibilities, or that he ranked them by likelihood? Who really cares about that level of detail?
To put these four up as an equal alongside a quartet such as Faith, Conscience, Temptation, Disbelief is a travesty. These things are fundamental concepts, massive thematic foundations which resonate throughout the story. Sorry, it just doesn't hang together for me. Some of these sixty-four elements seem phony, and out of place.
Faith, Conscience, Temptation and Disbelief are themes, massive weighty concepts which touch every aspect of the story from plot through to character, but they are not characteristics of people. You cannot categorise a person in the story by any one of them.
I'm sorry, Dramatica, you're plain wrong.
Hierarchies upon hierarchies
Themes repeat, they do not fracture into littler and littler themes. To get resonance between your throughlines, you have to allow them to cover the same thematic elements, but from the different viewpoint that the throughline offers. In Star Wars, Luke goes from ignorant farm boy to hero, the rebellion goes from beaten to winning, Han Solo goes from lazy and criminal to good, The Droids go from lost to found. Themes repeat, and in doing so resonate.
By forcing me to box in my major themes into mutually exclusive categories, none of my eventual themes resonated. It's hardly surprising, this positional thing caused more problems than it solved (i.e. it solved none). The promise of a deeply resonating set of Throughline themes simply came out - unsurprisingly - with four separate themes which were unrelated.
It's not even as if the hierarchy of themes were related, some of the sub categories bore no relation to the category above.
Another example
Take any of the Thematic Classes, say Psychology. When you look at the definition Dramatica gives, it fudges it. It says that Psychology is not what you thought it was (how the mind works) but is about the change of the mind over the course of the story, whether it is changing and if this is good or not.
Fair enough, you might think, so it should contain variations such as doubt, suspicion, persuasion, challenge, argument, cogitation, decision, searching, consideration, debate.... you would be wrong.
Psychology breaks down into : Conceptualizing, Being, Becoming, Conceiving.
So according to Dramatica, the section which is supposed to be about the change of mind over the course of the story can only have types of Conceptualizing (thinking up ways to do something), Being (playing a role), Becoming (truly changing your nature) and Conceiving (making a plan an actuality). Three of those have nothing to do with change. They don't even relate well to one another.
This is nonsense. There are many examples of this, too many to print.
Four on Four
Another place I found it very disappointing was the layering of Themes on top of Throughlines. I already mentioned it smelled fishy while I was doing it, and my suspicions turned out to be correct.
You've drilled down to the Type of Theme you want for each of your throughlines, and then you are expected to lay that on top of the character grid you created before? This seems like a very lame attempt to claim some sort of connection between Theme and Character. The idea being that your themes somehow blend seamlessly into the character traits you've designed.
Only it doesn't work. Just look at the previous posts.
Where it does work, it only works because the original Character grid is chock full of themes. It was supposed to be full of character traits. Most of the time, it doesn't work at all.
So is there anything to salvage from this?
It's a tough one. I did wonder why Dramatica wasn't more popular, it seemed to offer a foolproof way of getting complexity and depth into your characters and themes, but after going through it, it all seems very arbitrary to me, so I can understand why people stay away from it.
It seems the writers got carried away with this idea of grids, squares and multi-dimensional relationships. Unfortunately I don't think the entirety of human thought actually breaks down that way. I think they found that out too, and they had to fill a lot of empty space with spurious concepts which looked good on paper.
But there have been things I thought were amazing, I think they just approached it from the wrong direction. Perhaps the remainder of this blog will be about me trying to synthesize something from the debris which actually works.
Any ideas?
I think you need to get your themes sorted out first, and from the themes, the characters will fall out. There's no point designing a complex grid of interrelated characters with conflicts and confederacies, and then try to shoehorn deep thematic quality on top of that. The hope that you can set up characters and that coincidentally deep amazing themes on multiple levels will just emerge from that is ludicrous.
Worse than that, the way Dramatica seems to be set up, is you design all your character conflicts from a palette which contains some concepts which are borderline shady to say the least. Then you independently try to design a thematic structure with multiple levels. Then hope that when you crunch both of them together, all the pieces fit. This is nonsense. It doesn't work.
What I think I need to do is take a hatchet to some of these spurious concepts, and whittle the thing down to manageable proportions. I would guess that as many as half the elements can go.
I'll perhaps try starting on this in the next post.
Let's take a moment to recap
Recap
In the last few posts I've had a bit of a circuitous route to sorting out the Thematic elements of Fiend. near the end of the process I discovered I'd made an enormous gaffe, and had to backtrack a bit to sort it out. By doing so I've touched on nearly everything we've done since the start, so it would be good to recap where we're at.
So where are we with the chessboard
After all the to-ing and fro-ing we made a couple of relatively minor changes to the character chessboard. To get the theme mapping to work we swapped Fiend and Elaine in the bottom right Dimension. I also noticed we had Peter twice in the same top right quad, so I had to swap him out with Elaine from another one - hopefully this won't break anything else.
This gives the 'final' character chessboard at the moment.
And where are we with the Theme grid?
Since we only need to use four squares of the Theme Variation and Theme Character grids, we'll just present these as a table:
And has the Crucial Element changed?
Yes it has. It should be an element in the main character, and it should be an element where the impact character is opposite in the grid. But it would be a good idea if it appeared on the Main Throughline as well. if it's Crucial to the plot then it has to happen to the Main character. This means the Crucial Element can now only be Proaction v Reaction.
What is the Driving Problem of each Throughline?
Overall Throughline : Not everyone can become more skilled, some are gong to be successful and some are going to fall by the wayside. While it can be seductive to look for shortcuts, or to appear more skilled than you are, in the end only the good should be successful.
Main Throughline: Jake reacts badly to situations, he wishes he could be different. As the story progresses he realises by that only by indulging his desire to remove the block, can he become more pro-active and less reactive, in order to defeat Fiend.
Impact Throughline: Fiend is supremely confident, but he is ignorant of the damage he is doing to others with his schemes and projects. Outcomes only give the illusion of success, if the foundational support crumbles below, and he is unable to see Jake's change.
Subjective Throughline: Jake and Fiend offer serious threats to one another. Fiend sees Jake as an equal and wants him to join him. His subconscious desire for this is his downfall. Jake goes from Admiration to Fear and then Hate throughout the story.
So what has that done to the story?
The story opens in a world where skill is paramount, everybody is trying to better themselves, and sometimes the perception of skill is used instead of the actuality of it. It's a competitive world. Jake comes into the story a damaged man, having killed someone as a youngster. He is ill-suited to the competitive environment, so shelters under the wing of his elder brother, who takes part in the world positively. Unfortunately for him, William is a bit of a faker, he runs on the perception of skill rather than actually having it. Fiend comes into the story, and is fearless and successful. His confidence leaks out into those around him, and Jake and brother William are taken in at first and swept away. But eventually, Jake sees through the glamour at the ill-effects his activities are having on those around. Fiend tries to convince Jake to usurp his brother and unleash his inner self. Jake avoid this, and unable to convince William to step back a bit, and completely unable to actually confront Fiend on his own, he retreats from the life, watching the spiralling chaos until William is killed. Jake then tries to defeat fiend using normal mean, failing. Fiend is taunting Jake, wanting him to replace his brother at the head of the gang. At the climax of the story, Jake uncovers the solution to a mystery which sets him free of his mental block, and he can unleash himself safely, free to pursue Fiend and finally defeat him.
That's not bad at all.
Next time
We'll continue where we left off.
In the last few posts I've had a bit of a circuitous route to sorting out the Thematic elements of Fiend. near the end of the process I discovered I'd made an enormous gaffe, and had to backtrack a bit to sort it out. By doing so I've touched on nearly everything we've done since the start, so it would be good to recap where we're at.
So where are we with the chessboard
After all the to-ing and fro-ing we made a couple of relatively minor changes to the character chessboard. To get the theme mapping to work we swapped Fiend and Elaine in the bottom right Dimension. I also noticed we had Peter twice in the same top right quad, so I had to swap him out with Elaine from another one - hopefully this won't break anything else.
This gives the 'final' character chessboard at the moment.
Motivation Dimension
| Purpose Dimension
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
And where are we with the Theme grid?
Since we only need to use four squares of the Theme Variation and Theme Character grids, we'll just present these as a table:
| Throughline | Class | Type | Variation | Character |
| Overall Throughline | Physics | Doing | Skill | Perception v Actuality |
| Main Throughline | Psychology | Being | Desire | Proaction v Reaction |
| Impact Throughline | Mind | Preconscious | Confidence | Effects v Causes |
| Subjective Throughline | Universe | Progress | Threat | Pursuit v Avoid |
And has the Crucial Element changed?
Yes it has. It should be an element in the main character, and it should be an element where the impact character is opposite in the grid. But it would be a good idea if it appeared on the Main Throughline as well. if it's Crucial to the plot then it has to happen to the Main character. This means the Crucial Element can now only be Proaction v Reaction.
What is the Driving Problem of each Throughline?
Overall Throughline : Not everyone can become more skilled, some are gong to be successful and some are going to fall by the wayside. While it can be seductive to look for shortcuts, or to appear more skilled than you are, in the end only the good should be successful.
Main Throughline: Jake reacts badly to situations, he wishes he could be different. As the story progresses he realises by that only by indulging his desire to remove the block, can he become more pro-active and less reactive, in order to defeat Fiend.
Impact Throughline: Fiend is supremely confident, but he is ignorant of the damage he is doing to others with his schemes and projects. Outcomes only give the illusion of success, if the foundational support crumbles below, and he is unable to see Jake's change.
Subjective Throughline: Jake and Fiend offer serious threats to one another. Fiend sees Jake as an equal and wants him to join him. His subconscious desire for this is his downfall. Jake goes from Admiration to Fear and then Hate throughout the story.
So what has that done to the story?
The story opens in a world where skill is paramount, everybody is trying to better themselves, and sometimes the perception of skill is used instead of the actuality of it. It's a competitive world. Jake comes into the story a damaged man, having killed someone as a youngster. He is ill-suited to the competitive environment, so shelters under the wing of his elder brother, who takes part in the world positively. Unfortunately for him, William is a bit of a faker, he runs on the perception of skill rather than actually having it. Fiend comes into the story, and is fearless and successful. His confidence leaks out into those around him, and Jake and brother William are taken in at first and swept away. But eventually, Jake sees through the glamour at the ill-effects his activities are having on those around. Fiend tries to convince Jake to usurp his brother and unleash his inner self. Jake avoid this, and unable to convince William to step back a bit, and completely unable to actually confront Fiend on his own, he retreats from the life, watching the spiralling chaos until William is killed. Jake then tries to defeat fiend using normal mean, failing. Fiend is taunting Jake, wanting him to replace his brother at the head of the gang. At the climax of the story, Jake uncovers the solution to a mystery which sets him free of his mental block, and he can unleash himself safely, free to pursue Fiend and finally defeat him.
That's not bad at all.
Next time
We'll continue where we left off.
A bit of rework
Disaster
We left the last post with a sense of drama, the theme Type allocated to the Subjective throughline mapped onto the character chessboard in a place where the two main characters didn't have an interest! Unfortunately the characters who are there really need to be there, so we have to go back to the drawing board a little.
Rewind in Time
Let's go back to the point in time where I think I made the fatal decision.
At this point we had chosen where we think Fiend throughlines were in the Theme Type, but when we plotted it on the graph, we saw that they weren't in the same relative positions within their quads. Dramatica says that to give a sense of deep resonance between your story threads, it's advisable to have them in the same position.
Since two of them were already in the same position, I jumped to the conclusion that it would be easier to move the two which disagreed. Unfortunately, it turned out that the 'Future' type did not even contain Jake and Fiend so would be impossible for the Subjective throughline to sit there. Further, trying to fiddle with the character set behind the scenes didn't work, because the characters who lived in the Future set really needed to be there.
So we need to choose a different position, and start again. But this time, lets peek ahead and see if there are any problems. The Main has to be on one where Jake exists. The Impact has to be one where Fiend exists. The Subjective has to be one where both Jake and Fiend exist, preferably opposing each other. The Overall one can go wherever it likes.
So let's just go through each of the three options one by one.
Top left
Main Throughline: Conceptualizing. Mapping to Character? No Jake BAD
Impact Throughline: Memory. Mapping to Character? Fiend exists. OK
Subjective Throughline: Past. Mapping to Characters? Jake and Fiend exist and oppose. OK
Bottom right
Main Throughline: Conceiving. Mapping to Character? No Jake BAD
Impact Throughline: Conscious. Mapping to Character? No Fiend. BAD
Subjective Throughline: Present. Mapping to Characters? No Jake and Fiend exist or oppose. BAD
Top Right
Main Throughline: Being. Mapping to Character? Jake exists OK
Impact Throughline: Preconscious. Mapping to Character? No Fiend. BAD
Subjective Throughline: Progress. Mapping to Characters? Jake and Fiend exist and oppose. OK
So we can see from this quick scan that no combination if position will actually give us what we want. Unfortunately this means we will also have to still go back and change the character sets, no matter which of the four we choose. We can see that Bottom Right is the worst of all, satisfying none of the conditions to be a good match.
Decide, decide
If we go with Top Left, the problem is that there's no Jake in the Conceptualizing area, so we'd have to move him in. If we go with Top Right, the problem is there's no Fiend in Conscious area. Let's look at quadrants where the Main Throughline and the Impact Through line could live (the Subjective one is already handled, because in both top left and top right scenarios, it is fine)
If we go with the Top Left scenario, we need to move Jake into the top left Quadrant of the left grid, since he must exist in the Main Throughline area, and it would make sense to make him oppose Fiend, so in the Certainty position. Unfortunately, certainty is not really one of Jake's features. Peter sits there because he is certain of Jake's destiny, and represents faith and certainty. Not great.
If we go with a Top Right scenario, we need to move Fiend into the top right Quadrant of the right grid, since Fiend must exist in the Impact Throughline area. Elaine, William, Thomas and Peter sit there at the moment, but it seems less of a jolt to move one of them. Which of the four characteristics from Effect, Trust, Test and Cause sits best with Fiend?
Fiend only cares about the results, not the damage which is caused getting there. He doesn't care about anything but the Effect of what he does. So if we swap Effect-Elaine for... Hunch-Fiend, then we get part of the way to where we want- Fiend moved into the correct position.
Fiend now opposes Peter, who cares about people being hurt. This makes sense. We've also moved Elaine into Hunch, which is directly opposite her rival Katie, which seems to make sense also, even though I haven't thought out what that means for Elaine's character yet.
OK, so having fixed up the underlying character chessboard, we can return to the Theme types grid, but this time we can put them all in the top right position:
Variations on a theme
So now having established new positions for the Throughlines, we can delve down as before and see what Variations are appropriate for each one.
Overall Throughline - Physics - Doing The overall story deals with the rise of a charismatic yet chaotic character from the criminal underworld who rises to temporary power then is taken down. Everyone in the story is involved with Doing something, but why? What are they doing it for? Out of the four available, it seems everyone is trying to improve their Skill at something.
Main Throughline - Psychology - Being
Jake's story revolves around him trying to get past a mental block caused by an experience from his youth. He knows his mindset is holding him back, and he really wants to change. So it seems that the Main Throughline Variation is one of Desire.
Impact Throughline - Mind - Preconscious
The preconscious area maps onto Value, Confidence, Worry, Worth. I think out of those four, Fiend relies on Confidence that he is correct about everything he is doing. This counters the Crucial Concern of Jake having a Non-accurate measure of himself.
Subjective Throughline - Universe - Progress
The relationship story with Jake and Fiend revolves around competing visions for the future. I think both of them present a clear and present danger to the survival of the other. Their relationship is characterized by Threat.
And now, back to where we were
Now that we've sorted out the Variations again, we can at last get back to the step we were at when we discovered the horrible mistake, mapping the Types into the original character chessboard again.
Overall Throughline - Physics - Doing - Skill
Everyone in this world is trying to get better at something, and they're all busy doing just that. The Doing area maps onto the area of the character chessboard concerned with perception and awareness. I think the driving theme at the overall level is one of Perception v Actuality of people's skills.
Main Throughline - Psychology - Being - Desire
Jakes wishes he could react properly to situations, but because of his past he cannot. The Being area maps onto ides of Proaction and Reaction, and I feel this conflict within Jake flavours the entire Main Throughline, so I think Proaction v Reaction
Impact Throughline - Mind - Preconscious - Confidence
Fiend is very secure in what he wants to do and what he thinks will happen. As we have already mentioned he is only interested in the Effects of what he does, and cares nothing for the causes. His Throughline is concerned with Effects v Causes
Subjective Throughline - Universe - Progress - Threat
The relationship story with Jake and Fiend revolves around competing visions for the future, and two methods for getting there. The main conflict in this area of the chessboard between these two characters is between Pursuit vs Avoid.
Phew
Well, that was a serious backtrack, but I think we're there. I'll start the next post with a summary of everything we've changed and where we're at with everything, so we have a clean sheet to work from. Now you see why I was hesitant to go into depth on those character sketches!
We left the last post with a sense of drama, the theme Type allocated to the Subjective throughline mapped onto the character chessboard in a place where the two main characters didn't have an interest! Unfortunately the characters who are there really need to be there, so we have to go back to the drawing board a little.
Rewind in Time
Let's go back to the point in time where I think I made the fatal decision.
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At this point we had chosen where we think Fiend throughlines were in the Theme Type, but when we plotted it on the graph, we saw that they weren't in the same relative positions within their quads. Dramatica says that to give a sense of deep resonance between your story threads, it's advisable to have them in the same position.
Since two of them were already in the same position, I jumped to the conclusion that it would be easier to move the two which disagreed. Unfortunately, it turned out that the 'Future' type did not even contain Jake and Fiend so would be impossible for the Subjective throughline to sit there. Further, trying to fiddle with the character set behind the scenes didn't work, because the characters who lived in the Future set really needed to be there.
So we need to choose a different position, and start again. But this time, lets peek ahead and see if there are any problems. The Main has to be on one where Jake exists. The Impact has to be one where Fiend exists. The Subjective has to be one where both Jake and Fiend exist, preferably opposing each other. The Overall one can go wherever it likes.
So let's just go through each of the three options one by one.
Top left
Main Throughline: Conceptualizing. Mapping to Character? No Jake BAD
Impact Throughline: Memory. Mapping to Character? Fiend exists. OK
Subjective Throughline: Past. Mapping to Characters? Jake and Fiend exist and oppose. OK
Bottom right
Main Throughline: Conceiving. Mapping to Character? No Jake BAD
Impact Throughline: Conscious. Mapping to Character? No Fiend. BAD
Subjective Throughline: Present. Mapping to Characters? No Jake and Fiend exist or oppose. BAD
Top Right
Main Throughline: Being. Mapping to Character? Jake exists OK
Impact Throughline: Preconscious. Mapping to Character? No Fiend. BAD
Subjective Throughline: Progress. Mapping to Characters? Jake and Fiend exist and oppose. OK
So we can see from this quick scan that no combination if position will actually give us what we want. Unfortunately this means we will also have to still go back and change the character sets, no matter which of the four we choose. We can see that Bottom Right is the worst of all, satisfying none of the conditions to be a good match.
Decide, decide
If we go with Top Left, the problem is that there's no Jake in the Conceptualizing area, so we'd have to move him in. If we go with Top Right, the problem is there's no Fiend in Conscious area. Let's look at quadrants where the Main Throughline and the Impact Through line could live (the Subjective one is already handled, because in both top left and top right scenarios, it is fine)
Main Throughline Area
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Impact Throughline Area
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If we go with the Top Left scenario, we need to move Jake into the top left Quadrant of the left grid, since he must exist in the Main Throughline area, and it would make sense to make him oppose Fiend, so in the Certainty position. Unfortunately, certainty is not really one of Jake's features. Peter sits there because he is certain of Jake's destiny, and represents faith and certainty. Not great.
If we go with a Top Right scenario, we need to move Fiend into the top right Quadrant of the right grid, since Fiend must exist in the Impact Throughline area. Elaine, William, Thomas and Peter sit there at the moment, but it seems less of a jolt to move one of them. Which of the four characteristics from Effect, Trust, Test and Cause sits best with Fiend?
Fiend only cares about the results, not the damage which is caused getting there. He doesn't care about anything but the Effect of what he does. So if we swap Effect-Elaine for... Hunch-Fiend, then we get part of the way to where we want- Fiend moved into the correct position.
| Proven Thomas | Theory Katie | Effect Fiend | Trust William |
Hunch Elaine | Unproven Bobby | Test Thomas | Cause Peter |
| Accurate Fiend | Expectation Elaine | Result Bobby | Ending Jake |
| Determination Katie | Non-accurate Jake | Unending William | Process Peter |
Fiend now opposes Peter, who cares about people being hurt. This makes sense. We've also moved Elaine into Hunch, which is directly opposite her rival Katie, which seems to make sense also, even though I haven't thought out what that means for Elaine's character yet.
OK, so having fixed up the underlying character chessboard, we can return to the Theme types grid, but this time we can put them all in the top right position:
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Variations on a theme
So now having established new positions for the Throughlines, we can delve down as before and see what Variations are appropriate for each one.
Overall Throughline - Physics - Doing The overall story deals with the rise of a charismatic yet chaotic character from the criminal underworld who rises to temporary power then is taken down. Everyone in the story is involved with Doing something, but why? What are they doing it for? Out of the four available, it seems everyone is trying to improve their Skill at something.
Main Throughline - Psychology - Being
Jake's story revolves around him trying to get past a mental block caused by an experience from his youth. He knows his mindset is holding him back, and he really wants to change. So it seems that the Main Throughline Variation is one of Desire.
Impact Throughline - Mind - Preconscious
The preconscious area maps onto Value, Confidence, Worry, Worth. I think out of those four, Fiend relies on Confidence that he is correct about everything he is doing. This counters the Crucial Concern of Jake having a Non-accurate measure of himself.
Subjective Throughline - Universe - Progress
The relationship story with Jake and Fiend revolves around competing visions for the future. I think both of them present a clear and present danger to the survival of the other. Their relationship is characterized by Threat.
And now, back to where we were
Now that we've sorted out the Variations again, we can at last get back to the step we were at when we discovered the horrible mistake, mapping the Types into the original character chessboard again.
Overall Throughline - Physics - Doing - Skill
Everyone in this world is trying to get better at something, and they're all busy doing just that. The Doing area maps onto the area of the character chessboard concerned with perception and awareness. I think the driving theme at the overall level is one of Perception v Actuality of people's skills.
Main Throughline - Psychology - Being - Desire
Jakes wishes he could react properly to situations, but because of his past he cannot. The Being area maps onto ides of Proaction and Reaction, and I feel this conflict within Jake flavours the entire Main Throughline, so I think Proaction v Reaction
Impact Throughline - Mind - Preconscious - Confidence
Fiend is very secure in what he wants to do and what he thinks will happen. As we have already mentioned he is only interested in the Effects of what he does, and cares nothing for the causes. His Throughline is concerned with Effects v Causes
Subjective Throughline - Universe - Progress - Threat
The relationship story with Jake and Fiend revolves around competing visions for the future, and two methods for getting there. The main conflict in this area of the chessboard between these two characters is between Pursuit vs Avoid.
Phew
Well, that was a serious backtrack, but I think we're there. I'll start the next post with a summary of everything we've changed and where we're at with everything, so we have a clean sheet to work from. Now you see why I was hesitant to go into depth on those character sketches!
An Old Friend
In the last post
So we've gone from the top level of Theme, down to the Classes of Theme, then the Types of Classes, and Finally the Variations of Type. This produces sixty-four types of theme onto which we can project our four Story Throughlines.
So that's it?
You might expect that either that's it, or else Dramatica verges on the ridiculous and further subdivides the Variations again. But no, it does something unexpected, and splits the Variations again to give a parallel sixty-four grid of squares to further classify the theme.
Let's have a look at it.
Look familiar? It should, this is the final grid of the Character chessboard. By a quirk of coincidence or design, when you drill down into Theme far enough, it touches the concepts of Character. This makes sense, all strong themes are about people at the root. Where your throughlines end up is as much to do with the characters in them than any plot device.
So let us finalise the Fiend
So if we take it that the sixteen Types map onto this character chessboard in the same relative pattern, we can further classify our Throughlines on this new character grid.
Overall Throughline - Physics - Obtaining - Self-Interest
If we map the type Obtaining into the appropriate square of the character chessboard, we come up with the Order-Equity-Inequity-Chaos quad. So here we have a society and a story where everyone is trying to succeed, they are only in it for themselves. Some want criminal success, some want personal success, Jake wants to break his mental block. All these competing desires lead to exactly what Fiend wants - chaos. So I think the character variation for the overall story is Chaos.
Main Throughline - Psychology - Becoming - Obligation
If we map the type Being onto the appropriate square of the character chessboard, we come up with the Deduction-Reduction-Production-Induction. This is very exciting, because Jake exists in this quad already, under Production (which is 'Choose a path of action by eliminating impossible ones'). This is the way Jake thinks of a problem, he discards potential solutions because he doesn't think they will work. So the Main Throughline should also have a category of Production.
Impact Throughline - Mind - Subconscious - Hope
If we map the type Subconscious onto the appropriate square of the character chessboard, we come up with the Accurate-Expectation-Determination-Non-accurate quad. This is also exciting, because Fiend fell into the Accurate category when we were delving into his character, so it seems appropriate that his Throughline should also fall into this category.
Subjective Throughline - Universe - Future - Choice
If we map the type Future onto the appropriate square of the character chessboard, we come up with the Faith-Conscience-Temptation-Disbelief quad. Since this is about Jake and Fiend and their relationship, we would expect them to be opposed in the corresponding character quad... but...
Uh Oh
Disappointingly, neither Jake nor Fiend are in this character quad. This is a potentially fatal blow to the storyline. Dramatica has thrown up the glaring error that in the Throughline which is supposed to be all about the differences and conflict between the two characters, neither of them actually exist in the corresponding character set.
This would mean that the major conflict in the relationship story is over a concept which neither of the players have an interest. I might not have noticed this if I was doing this all on the hoof - at least until it was well into a draft and too late. Thankfully Dramatica has highlighted this major hole.
So what caused this lapse?
Although I'm immensely grateful to Dramatica for highlighting this at an early stage, it's still annoying, and I'm interested in the reason why it happened, and thinking about it I think I can work it out.
1. Doing the characterisation first.
Almost the very first thing in the Dramatica method is to create the character chessboard of sixty-four squares. But because we haven't really gone into the thematic conflict of the story at that point, a lot of the character placement was thumb in the air, just box filling. Although I tried hard to make Jake and Fiend oppose each other as much as possible, making them universally oppose each other in every quad would be boring. This variety meant I left holes in the grid where Jake and Fiend had no interest or opposed different characters. Unfortunately we've fallen into one of these.
2. Dramatica's insistence that the four Theme Classes go evenly onto the four Throughlines
I can see the reason for this - that to fully explain a theme you have to use all four aspects of the theme, and it makes sense to explore them in different threads of the story. Unfortunately when you have a fledgling story idea, some of the classes will click nicely into some of the Throughlines, but you'll always be left with the ugly one which doesn't really fit into the last one. For us, Universe was foisted onto the Subjective throughline simply because it was the only one left.
3. The idea that you should choose the same Type position
I can also see the reason for this, if you choose the same Type position you will get a literary resonance between the four story threads - they will all be about sort of the same thing, an equivalent struggle, and this will lend a depth to the story. Unfortunately it also restricts your choice a little. When I chose the position (bottom left) I chose it because two of them - Future and Becoming - were already there. I moved the other two to match them. Now it turns out Future was probably incorrect, so my original choice of position might have been wrong.
So what do we do about it?
We have two options.
1. Go right back to the beginning and change the original character quads to provide a conflict between Jake and Fiend within the Future Type. This means rewriting the character sketches to reflect this.
2. Change the change the Subjective Throughline Type to another one where we do have conflict between the characters. This means moving all four Types, because they all have to maintain the same relative position.
I'm loathe do to the second one, because I was very happy with some of the other correlations which came up with the other three Classes. I could so some work to quickly see if I could move them and make up some equally good correlations, but as horrible as it sounds, I think the only sensible way to repair this is to go back to the original character quads and tweak.
Let's get on with it then
So lets look at the character quads which correspond to the Universe section of the Theme chessboard.
Remember, where we are at the moment is that Future maps to the bottom left quadrant in this chart. As we can see, neither Jake nor Fiend exist in this quad. We're sort of stuck with the lower left quad, because if we move it to another position, we have to move the other three Types as well to maintain position.
Let's look at what the lower left Quad is, and what damage we would do if we moved characters out of it. At the moment, Peter (trusty sidekick and people person) is in the Faith position, because he is the Sidekick archetype, he believes everything Jake does will work out. Katie (the ex) is the temptation, obviously both sexual and intellectual. Elaine (the current girlfriend) has to oppose her on this one. Can we actually move these people anywhere else and lose those characteristics?
I don't think we can. We're going to have to move all the Types.
A dissatisfying place to stop.
It's all gone pear-shaped. Some of the seeds we've sown as part of doing the work have sprouted ugly weeds. We're going to have to backtrack halfway back through the theme work and re-do it, so that can wait until the next post.
So we've gone from the top level of Theme, down to the Classes of Theme, then the Types of Classes, and Finally the Variations of Type. This produces sixty-four types of theme onto which we can project our four Story Throughlines.
So that's it?
You might expect that either that's it, or else Dramatica verges on the ridiculous and further subdivides the Variations again. But no, it does something unexpected, and splits the Variations again to give a parallel sixty-four grid of squares to further classify the theme.
Let's have a look at it.
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So let us finalise the Fiend
So if we take it that the sixteen Types map onto this character chessboard in the same relative pattern, we can further classify our Throughlines on this new character grid.
Overall Throughline - Physics - Obtaining - Self-Interest
If we map the type Obtaining into the appropriate square of the character chessboard, we come up with the Order-Equity-Inequity-Chaos quad. So here we have a society and a story where everyone is trying to succeed, they are only in it for themselves. Some want criminal success, some want personal success, Jake wants to break his mental block. All these competing desires lead to exactly what Fiend wants - chaos. So I think the character variation for the overall story is Chaos.
Main Throughline - Psychology - Becoming - Obligation
If we map the type Being onto the appropriate square of the character chessboard, we come up with the Deduction-Reduction-Production-Induction. This is very exciting, because Jake exists in this quad already, under Production (which is 'Choose a path of action by eliminating impossible ones'). This is the way Jake thinks of a problem, he discards potential solutions because he doesn't think they will work. So the Main Throughline should also have a category of Production.
Impact Throughline - Mind - Subconscious - Hope
If we map the type Subconscious onto the appropriate square of the character chessboard, we come up with the Accurate-Expectation-Determination-Non-accurate quad. This is also exciting, because Fiend fell into the Accurate category when we were delving into his character, so it seems appropriate that his Throughline should also fall into this category.
Subjective Throughline - Universe - Future - Choice
If we map the type Future onto the appropriate square of the character chessboard, we come up with the Faith-Conscience-Temptation-Disbelief quad. Since this is about Jake and Fiend and their relationship, we would expect them to be opposed in the corresponding character quad... but...
Uh Oh
Disappointingly, neither Jake nor Fiend are in this character quad. This is a potentially fatal blow to the storyline. Dramatica has thrown up the glaring error that in the Throughline which is supposed to be all about the differences and conflict between the two characters, neither of them actually exist in the corresponding character set.
This would mean that the major conflict in the relationship story is over a concept which neither of the players have an interest. I might not have noticed this if I was doing this all on the hoof - at least until it was well into a draft and too late. Thankfully Dramatica has highlighted this major hole.
So what caused this lapse?
Although I'm immensely grateful to Dramatica for highlighting this at an early stage, it's still annoying, and I'm interested in the reason why it happened, and thinking about it I think I can work it out.
1. Doing the characterisation first.
Almost the very first thing in the Dramatica method is to create the character chessboard of sixty-four squares. But because we haven't really gone into the thematic conflict of the story at that point, a lot of the character placement was thumb in the air, just box filling. Although I tried hard to make Jake and Fiend oppose each other as much as possible, making them universally oppose each other in every quad would be boring. This variety meant I left holes in the grid where Jake and Fiend had no interest or opposed different characters. Unfortunately we've fallen into one of these.
2. Dramatica's insistence that the four Theme Classes go evenly onto the four Throughlines
I can see the reason for this - that to fully explain a theme you have to use all four aspects of the theme, and it makes sense to explore them in different threads of the story. Unfortunately when you have a fledgling story idea, some of the classes will click nicely into some of the Throughlines, but you'll always be left with the ugly one which doesn't really fit into the last one. For us, Universe was foisted onto the Subjective throughline simply because it was the only one left.
3. The idea that you should choose the same Type position
I can also see the reason for this, if you choose the same Type position you will get a literary resonance between the four story threads - they will all be about sort of the same thing, an equivalent struggle, and this will lend a depth to the story. Unfortunately it also restricts your choice a little. When I chose the position (bottom left) I chose it because two of them - Future and Becoming - were already there. I moved the other two to match them. Now it turns out Future was probably incorrect, so my original choice of position might have been wrong.
So what do we do about it?
We have two options.
1. Go right back to the beginning and change the original character quads to provide a conflict between Jake and Fiend within the Future Type. This means rewriting the character sketches to reflect this.
2. Change the change the Subjective Throughline Type to another one where we do have conflict between the characters. This means moving all four Types, because they all have to maintain the same relative position.
I'm loathe do to the second one, because I was very happy with some of the other correlations which came up with the other three Classes. I could so some work to quickly see if I could move them and make up some equally good correlations, but as horrible as it sounds, I think the only sensible way to repair this is to go back to the original character quads and tweak.
Let's get on with it then
So lets look at the character quads which correspond to the Universe section of the Theme chessboard.
| Consider Jacob | Logic Bobby | Pursuit Jacob | Control Thomas |
| Feeling Thomas | Reconsider Fiend | Uncontrolled William | Avoid Fiend |
| Faith Peter | Conscience Elaine | Support Peter | Help Katie |
| Temptation Katie | Disbelief William | Hinder Elaine | Oppose Bobby |
Remember, where we are at the moment is that Future maps to the bottom left quadrant in this chart. As we can see, neither Jake nor Fiend exist in this quad. We're sort of stuck with the lower left quad, because if we move it to another position, we have to move the other three Types as well to maintain position.
Let's look at what the lower left Quad is, and what damage we would do if we moved characters out of it. At the moment, Peter (trusty sidekick and people person) is in the Faith position, because he is the Sidekick archetype, he believes everything Jake does will work out. Katie (the ex) is the temptation, obviously both sexual and intellectual. Elaine (the current girlfriend) has to oppose her on this one. Can we actually move these people anywhere else and lose those characteristics?
I don't think we can. We're going to have to move all the Types.
A dissatisfying place to stop.
It's all gone pear-shaped. Some of the seeds we've sown as part of doing the work have sprouted ugly weeds. We're going to have to backtrack halfway back through the theme work and re-do it, so that can wait until the next post.
Thursday, 18 August 2016
Grids of Grids
In the last episode
I introduced the Dramatica concept of Themes, then the four Classes, and then further into the sixteen Types. We managed to slot Fiend into these sixteen, and jiggled things around a little to make them fit into the Dramatica concept of related positions.
Variations on a Theme
Now we have the next sub-division, which it calls Variations.
As you can see, each square of the Type grid is divided into four, giving another chessboard of sixty-four definitions. Some of them don't make any sense to me - for example the Variation Quad at the top left with Fate and Destiny in it would seem to correlate with the Future Type above, not the Past Type where it sits. Some of the others seem to bear little resemblance to the ones underneath.
But let's keep going and trust Dramatica knows what it is doing. The Dramatica document doesn't go into each one in detail, but I'd like to at least write one sentence on each. This will be a large table!
So what about Fiend?
We had already scoped the Throughlines down to the Type level, so let's see if it's worth narrowing them down any more:
Overall Throughline - Physics - Obtaining
The overall story deals with the rise of a charismatic yet chaotic character from the criminal underworld who rises to temporary power then is taken down. Everyone in the story is involved with Obtaining some sort of success. So it seems obvious that the Variation is Self-Interest.
Main Throughline - Psychology - Becoming
Jake's story revolves around him trying to get past a mental block caused by an experience from his youth. He controls himself because he doesn't want to do it again. Main Throughline Variation is one of Obligation.
Impact Throughline - Mind - Subconscious
Fiend's story is one of mind, and as we already worked out, his subconscious is driving him to engage with Jake. It seems his Throughline is concerned with Hope, he knows the likelihood of things working out, but he wants it to happen.
Subjective Throughline - Universe - Future
The relationship story with Jake and Fiend revolves around competing visions for Jake's future. They both want him to let go of his bloc, but for different reasons. It seems that Jake must make a Choice to let go of the past. Fiend wants him to make a different Choice.
A lot has gone on here
This is a lot of theory to be going on with, but I hope you can see that my thematic elements have really taken a new depth with this sort of analysis. The story of Fiend is no longer just a monster movie horror flick, it's a psychological struggle, a clash of destinies in a world where everyone is looking after themselves. Good stuff.
I introduced the Dramatica concept of Themes, then the four Classes, and then further into the sixteen Types. We managed to slot Fiend into these sixteen, and jiggled things around a little to make them fit into the Dramatica concept of related positions.
Variations on a Theme
Now we have the next sub-division, which it calls Variations.
As you can see, each square of the Type grid is divided into four, giving another chessboard of sixty-four definitions. Some of them don't make any sense to me - for example the Variation Quad at the top left with Fate and Destiny in it would seem to correlate with the Future Type above, not the Past Type where it sits. Some of the others seem to bear little resemblance to the ones underneath.
But let's keep going and trust Dramatica knows what it is doing. The Dramatica document doesn't go into each one in detail, but I'd like to at least write one sentence on each. This will be a large table!
| Universe | Past | Fate | A situation in a person's future |
| Prediction | A determination of a future state | ||
| Interdiction | An effort to avoid a destiny | ||
| Destiny | The future path of an individual | ||
| Progress | Fact | Something which is truly real | |
| Security | Evaluation of a character's protections | ||
| Threat | Evaluation of a character's vulnerabilities | ||
| Fantasy | Something which is unreal | ||
| Future | Openness | Willingness to re-evaluate | |
| Delay | Putting off until later | ||
| Choice | Making a decision | ||
| Preconception | Unwillingness to re-evaluate | ||
| Present | Work | Applying of self to something | |
| Attract | Being drawn towards something | ||
| Repel | Being forced away from something | ||
| Attempt | Trying something while unsure if able | ||
| Physics | Understanding | Instinct | Intrinsic unconditioned response |
| Senses | Raw data supplied to the mind | ||
| Interpretation | Determination of possible meaning | ||
| Conditioning | Responses based on experience or training | ||
| Doing | Wisdom | Understanding how to apply knowledge | |
| Skill | A practiced ability | ||
| Experience | The gaining of familiarity | ||
| Enlightenment | Understanding which transcends knowledge | ||
| Obtaining | Approach | Character's preferred method | |
| Self-Interest | Doing the best for oneself | ||
| Morality | Doing the best for others | ||
| Attitude | A demeanour of being or doing | ||
| Learning | Prerequisites | Preliminary steps which must be met | |
| Strategy | A plan to achieve a purpose | ||
| Analysis | Evaluation of the situation | ||
| Preconditions | Limitations tacked on to an effort | ||
| Psychology | Conceptualizing | State of Being | A character's true self |
| Situation | The arrangement of the environment | ||
| Circumstances | The relation of self to the environment | ||
| Sense of Self | The perception of oneself | ||
| Being | Knowledge | That which is held to be true | |
| Ability | Suited to handle a task | ||
| Desire | The motivation to change | ||
| Thought | The process of consideration | ||
| Becoming | Rationalization | Logical explanation used to mask | |
| Commitment | Decision to stick with something | ||
| Responsibility | Belief of being the most suited | ||
| Obligation | Accepting something in exchange | ||
| Conceiving | Permission | Ability limited by restrictions | |
| Need | That which is required | ||
| Expediency | Most efficient action with good outcome | ||
| Efficiency | Most efficient action no matter the outcome | ||
| Mind | Memory | Truth | Honesty or correct information |
| Evidence | Information supporting a belief | ||
| Suspicion | Questioning a belief | ||
| Falsehood | That which is shown to be erroneous | ||
| Preconscious | Value | The objective usefulness of something | |
| Confidence | Belief in the accuracy of something | ||
| Worry | Concern for the future | ||
| Worth | The subjective desirability of something | ||
| Subconscious | Closure | Bringing something to an end | |
| Hope | Desire things to go as expected | ||
| Dream | Desired future requiring unexpected elements | ||
| Denial | Refusal to let something go | ||
| Conscious | Investigation | Gathering evidence to resolve questions | |
| Appraisal | An initial understanding | ||
| Reappraisal | A re-consideration of a conlclusion | ||
| Doubt | Question validity without investigation |
So what about Fiend?
We had already scoped the Throughlines down to the Type level, so let's see if it's worth narrowing them down any more:
Overall Throughline - Physics - Obtaining
The overall story deals with the rise of a charismatic yet chaotic character from the criminal underworld who rises to temporary power then is taken down. Everyone in the story is involved with Obtaining some sort of success. So it seems obvious that the Variation is Self-Interest.
Main Throughline - Psychology - Becoming
Jake's story revolves around him trying to get past a mental block caused by an experience from his youth. He controls himself because he doesn't want to do it again. Main Throughline Variation is one of Obligation.
Impact Throughline - Mind - Subconscious
Fiend's story is one of mind, and as we already worked out, his subconscious is driving him to engage with Jake. It seems his Throughline is concerned with Hope, he knows the likelihood of things working out, but he wants it to happen.
Subjective Throughline - Universe - Future
The relationship story with Jake and Fiend revolves around competing visions for Jake's future. They both want him to let go of his bloc, but for different reasons. It seems that Jake must make a Choice to let go of the past. Fiend wants him to make a different Choice.
A lot has gone on here
This is a lot of theory to be going on with, but I hope you can see that my thematic elements have really taken a new depth with this sort of analysis. The story of Fiend is no longer just a monster movie horror flick, it's a psychological struggle, a clash of destinies in a world where everyone is looking after themselves. Good stuff.
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