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Sections in Lesson Eleven |
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Sections in Lesson Eleven |
Continuing with our brief exploration of all the features available through the Dramatica Desktop, in this lesson we'll take a look at Story Engine tool - a direct interface to the "black box" that powers Dramatica's ability to predict flawless story structures.
Play Video on the Story Engine Feature
Of all the features in Dramatica, the Story Engine is the most crucial. In fact, it is the reason Dramatica was created in the first place. Even more, the Story Engine was originally intended to be the ONLY feature in Dramatica!
Essentially, a theory was developed that described the interrelationship among dramatic elements. In plain language, the theory says that there are certain kinds of story points that have to be in every complete structure. And, these story points don't exist in a vacuum but actually affect one another.
For example, every story needs a goal. But, there are all kinds of goals. If you have a particular kind of goal, and your Main Character is driven by a particular kind of personal issue, that has some effect on the kinds of obstacles the Main Character will need to face and overcome if the Goal is to be achieved. If you keep the goal the same but change the personal issue, that will have an impact on the kinds of obstacles that need to be encountered.
Some story points have a direct relationship, such as a personal problem of Disbelief would be resolved by achieving a degree of Faith. But other story points only influence each other, and sometimes it takes the combined effect of several story points to determine the nature of another one that is only indirectly connected.
The Dramatica Theory made a list of many of the story points that must be in any complete story. Then, it described these direct and indirect relationships. Although there are fewer than 100 story points described in the theory, there are so many possible inter-relationships that keeping track of them all is a huge undertaking. To make it easier, the Story Engine was created. Simply put, the Story Engine does nothing more than keep track of the Dramatica story points and their effects on one another.
Now there is a second side to the Story Engine, and that is the user interface. Obviously, a collection of relationships programmed into software is pretty inaccessible to a writer. So, we created a very simple, straight-forward feature in the software that allows a user to control many aspects of the Story Engine and to see the results that it generates. That feature is also called the Story Engine.
It is important to note that the Story Engine interface does not show ALL of the story points that the programmed Story Engine tracks. In fact, the screen would be far too complicated if it did. So, we selected the top 30 or so of the story points - the ones writers tended to work with most - and arranged them on the screen. All the other are still tracked but by other features.
Speaking of other features, once we had created the original Story Engine, we realized it was a rather mechanical presentation of story points. So, we began to devise other methods of accessing the programmed Story Engine through features like question lists, graphic tables, and click and drag techniques.
What's nice, actually almost essential, is that no matter what feature you use to make your dramatic choices, the results of your selections are all funneled into the Story Engine in the program. That way, you can jump around from one feature to another and always have the results of what you've already done impacting what you are working on right now.
Of course, this is just an overview of the Story Engine feature, and in future lessons we'll go into much greater detail. Still, there are a few key points that ought to be made right up front.
When you make choices in the Story Engine, you are effectively ruling out other paths your story might take. For example, if you choose to have a happy ending, your are limiting out any story points that would require a tragic ending. Naturally, there are some story points that temper others, so you might end up with a happy ending with a few tragic elements, or with the reverse. But choosing that the story ends on a positive note in general, excludes the possibility that it ends generally negative.
Because of this aspect of making choices, some critics of Dramatica have complained that it limits your story. In reality, Dramatica simply helps you clarify your story. It says that you can't have everything or you end up with nothing. To make a point as an author, you have to take sides, you have to have an opinion. In the end, if you show all sides equally, you'll have a fine documentary, but you won't have a message.
A good analogy is the way Michelangelo said he approached sculpting. He would start with a block of granite, then chip away anything that didn't look like what he had in mind. If he tried to avoid limiting himself, he'd end up with the same block of rock he started with, having chipped away nothing and created nothing. So, let me respectfully say that these critics of Dramatica, though they may be well-meaning, are stuffed full of blueberry muffins.
Now, as for the user interface Story Engine feature, there are also some important things to note. First of all, you can see how the inner Story Engine works just by making a few choices. Basically, you just click on any story point such as Goal or Main Character Problem, and a list of options will pop up. For goal, the list might contain such items as Obtaining, and Becoming. A goal of Obtaining would be about trying to gain possession of something tangible. But a goal of Becoming would be about trying to change one's basic nature. So, you simply pick the option that best describes what you would like to do with your story in regard to that story point.
In the Story Engine you can only pick one item per story point. In other areas of the software, such as the Query System, you can select several potential choices. Then, as you answer other questions, any of your open options that no longer fit with the combined impact of your later choices are removed, leaving just the ones that still work. Since you don't have that luxury in the Story Engine, it is not for indecisive people. What that really means is that it is not for those who are new to Dramatica. You have to be a bit familiar with all these new kinds of story points and the options available to make solid choices in the Story Engine.
As you make your selections in the Story Engine, you can actually see their impact on other story points in real time. Before you make any choices at all, each of the story points in the Story Engine shows a value of "Any" or "Either," meaning that all options are still available. But after your first choice, you may see some of the "Any"s turn into "Any of 32" or "Any of 8," for example. This indicates that some of the originally available options have been ruled out by your choice.
The more items you choose, the more the remaining choices are limited until finally, you have made so many choices that you've ruled out all but one option on all the still unselected story points. When this happens, you and the Story Engine will have determined the choices for all the rest of your story structure without having to make those selections directly.
Now suppose you look at some of those story points that you didn't directly choose and you don't like the items that were selected. Then, you use the "lock box" feature on the Story Engine. Next to each story point is a stylistic icon representing a padlock. You can click on the icon by any story point to "lock" it to that choice. Then, you can click on another button to clear all the other story points to as many options as they can have, limited only by the story point choices you have locked in place. Then, you choose among those options to create a new story structure.
In this way you can try "what if" scenarios, trying different combinations of story point selections until you arrive at just the overall structure you want for your story - the one that represents what you have in mind to write.
The real value of the Story Engine is that it ensures a sound structure. Here's how it does that...
Most authors come to a story by getting interested in subject matter, characters, a bit of action, a particular genre, and so on. But all the interesting ideas they come up with may belong in the same subject matter but can't really work together in the same story. They are about the same thing, but send contradictory messages.
So, when you make choices in the Story Engine, you begin with the story points that are most important to you, based on your interest in the subject matter. The first few choice you make will all work together, because their combined impact isn't enough to rule each other out. But at some point, as you work with personally less and less important story points, you may find that the none of the remaining options match what you want to do with your story.
At first blush, you might think this means that Dramatica is not working properly because it doesn't agree with you. On the contrary, that is when Dramatica is doing just the job it was created to do. Based on the choices you have already made, Dramatica is telling you that your intent for the next story points is not dramatically consistent with your earlier selections. Simply, if you do what you had in mind, you will undermining your own structure.
Of course, you can always ignore that advice and do what you like. And, if it is a minor story point, the structural inconsistency might be very minor. If you tried to make it perfect, it might go in a direction for which you have no inspiration. So, it can be better to have a slightly flawed but passionate story, than a well structured story that you can't write in a passionate manner. Dramatica merely makes sure that you won't unintentionally make a structural error. How you use that information is up to you!
Copyright 2003 Melanie Anne Phillips
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