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Sections in Lesson Seven |
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Sections in Lesson Seven |
Continuing with our brief exploration of all the features available through the Dramatica Desktop, in this lesson we'll take a look at Dramatica's Plot Progression tool.
The Plot Progression tile leads to a timeline that follows key aspects of your story, act by act. The information it provides is very deeply grounded in the Dramatica theory, and is not at all what you likely expect to find under the label of Plot.
Nonetheless, the Plot Progression tool is one of the most useful features of the Dramatica software, once you know how to use it!
Play Video on the Plot Progression Feature
When most authors think of plot, they are considering the acts, scenes, sequences, and events that take place sequentially in their stories. To be sure, all of these are important. But Dramatica adds another dimension by exploring the sequential natures of Four Crucial Throughlines.
These four throughlines are like different camera angles covering a football game. The are really all just points of view on the same central action. But each one sees some things in greater detail, and other things as more obscure.
Also, since each one is a different point of view, they each create their own perspective on the story. For examples, one throughline takes an overview of the story, just like a camera way up in the stands that sees the players on the field scurrying around like ants. From this view, the Objective View, all the strategies and pitfalls are clearly seen. But, it isn't nearly as involving as being a player right in the midst of it.
For that personal view, we need to stand in the shoes of one of the players and get a camera angle not unlike a "helmet cam." From here, we can no longer see all the strategies clearly, but we get a much more immediate and detailed picture of what is right in front of us. This Main Character View is the most personal of the four throughlines that Dramatica tracks.
Now the Main Character is confronted on the field by his nemesis - not his physical nemesis, but his moral opposite. It is the Protagonist and Antagonist who battle each other over the goal (or the goal line in our football example). But the Main Character is both the reader or audience's position in the story and also the character who bears the burden of the story's moral dilemma.
The moral nemesis for the Main Character is the Obstacle, Impact, or Influence Character. It is this character's function to put the pressure on the Main Character to potentially change. Ultimately the Main Character will either succumb to the pressure (like Scrooge in A Christmas Carol) or stay the course and maintain the original moral view (like Dr. Richard Kimble in The Fugitive).
The Obstacle Character Throughline follows the changing kind of influence that character exerts on the Main Character that puts on the pressure to change.
The final throughline is the Subjective Story which describes the personal moral skirmish between the Main and Obstacle Characters. Act by act, they dance around each other's position like fighters circling in the ring. In so doing, they cover a lot of ground, in terms of subject matter discussed - just like a pass receiver trying to catch the ball while a defender goes one on one with him attempting to break up the play.
A good way to get a handle on these four throughlines is to see the Main Character view as "I" or First Person tense. We don't see things from the Obstacle Character's view, but rather through the eyes of the Main Character looking at the Obstacle Character. So the Obstacle Character view is equivalent to the second person, "You." The Subjective Story between them is "We," and the Objective view which stands outside the action looking in is third person, "They."
I, You, We, and They - four crucial points of view to completely explore the issues of your story. And when you see how each plays out over time, they become four Throughlines.
It is these four throughlines that are tracked by Dramatica's Plot Progression feature.
The second major part of the Plot Progression feature are the Signposts and Journeys. These are roughly equivalent to what you probably think of as an "Act." Trying to determine what should go into each act has always been a difficult aspect of story development. But Dramatica's Story Engine can really help you out with this task.
Think of a story as a trip down a road. At the very beginning of the road is a signpost, which is the point of departure. You start your trip, and take a journey to the next signpost. From there you go on to the third signpost, and finally end up at a fourth signpost at your ultimate destination.
Four Signposts, spanned by three Journeys. Each signpost represents the beginning of an act. The following journey represents what happens during the act. Each act ends at the end of each journey. And the fourth signpost at the very end represents the story's dénouement, conclusion, or wrap-up.
So, Dramatica favors a three-act structure, but rather than simply providing a beginning, middle and end, each throughline has four signposts and three journeys. Now each signpost has a different kind of subject matter to be explored. For example, in one story, the first signpost in the Objective Story throughline might be Learning. That means that as the story begins, everyone in the overall story is engaged to some degree in the process of gathering new information.
If Signpost 2 is Understanding, then as the first journey progresses in Act One, people are involved in Learning, and their learning grows until the arrive at an Understanding (Signpost 2). We won't be going into great detail here in this initial overview, but you get the idea: the Signposts and Journeys provide subject matter markers to help you focus what should be happening in each of the four throughlines, act by act.
Perhaps the most amazing thing about the Plot Progression feature is that it can actually predict what the signposts and journeys should be in your story!
The whole purpose of Dramatica is for you, the author, to make enough dramatic choices anywhere in the program that the Story Engine can fill in the blanks on all the other dramatic necessities to ensure a complete structure. The list of all these story points is called a Storyform.
When you finally complete a Storyform, Dramatica's Story Engine will also predict the kinds of subject matter that each throughline ought to explore in Plot Progression. In other words, you work out what your story is to be about, and Dramatica will predict the order in which things should happen!
It even works in reverse! You can directly choose the nature of the signposts and journeys, and then Dramatica's Story Engine will automatically develop a complete Storyform of how all your story points should be arranged.
There's a lot more to say about Dramatica's Plot Progression feature, but for now, we'll conclude this overview of the basic functions.
Copyright 2003 Melanie Anne Phillips
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