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Sections in Lesson Eight |
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Sections in Lesson Eight |
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 Theme Browser tool, so called because its focuses on the kinds of subject matter that will form the thematic foundation of your story.
The Theme Browser tile leads to an interactive chart of story elements. Simply put, it is something of a periodic table of story elements. By determining which ones you want to appear in your story and how they will be used, you concoct the chemistry of your underlying dramatic structure.
Play Video on the Theme Browser Feature
So far, you've been introduced to a number of interesting tools in Dramatica. But you might be starting to wonder how they fit into your creative process. Will they help you come up with ideas? Will they ensure your story's plot makes sense? Will they help improve your style as a writer?
Ultimately, Dramatica's features will do all of these things - and more! But there is one central job Dramatica does that is most important of all. In fact, it was the reason Dramatica was developed in the first place, and that is to create a Storyform.
"Right," you say, "what's a Storyform?" Simply put, a Storyform is a list of all the kinds of story points you'll need if you are to have a complete hole-free structure. This list includes familiar items such as Goal and Requirements and also contains some unique to Dramatica's theory, such as Catalyst and Inhibitor.
But a Storyform is more than just a list. Each story point must also have a "value." For example, every story has a Goal, but what kind of Goal? In one story, the Goal might be Obtaining something, while in another story the Goal could be Becoming a different kind of person.
Clearly there is a difference between coming to possess something and attempting to change ones very nature. That sort of difference is what makes one story's structure different from another, and it is what makes one Storyform different from another. Every story has a Goal, but the nature of that Goal is part of what determines the specifics of a given story's underlying structure.
Now there are quite a few story points that need to appear in every complete structure. Dramatica deals with about eighty of these. Some are very powerful story points that have story-wide impact, such as whether the Main Character will ultimately change its nature or will stick by its original moral outlook. This story point is called the Main Character's Resolve, and there are only two options available, Change or Steadfast.
Other story points are less far reaching, such as the Influence Character's Critical Flaw, which is the kind of character trait that threatens to undermine the strength of the Influence Character's impact on the Main Character. There are 64 different options for this story point, including Self-Interest and Rationalization.
By choosing which options you want for any given story point in your story, you begin to have a dramatic effect on the over-all structure. Some choices have a big impact, and some a minor one. But every time you make a choice, you are ruling out some things that might have been because they simply wouldn't be dramatically compatible with the choice you actually made.
The Storyform and the Story Engine
That's where Dramatica' Story Engine comes in. Every time you make a choice about any of the story points, the Story Engine calculates the impact that has on all the remaining story points. Then, it automatically removes any options that wouldn't be dramatically compatible. So, when you move to another story point to make a choice, you will only see the options that will work with the combined effect of all the previous choices you've already made. Actually, you still see the other options that might have been - they are just "grayed out" and cannot be selected.
As mentioned in an earlier lesson, the Story Engine is at work behind the scenes in every area, and with every tool that you use in Dramatica. So, options chosen anywhere in the software are "broadcast" throughout the software to all the other tools, instantly updating them to the current dramatic status.
Eventually, well before you have chosen options for more than a fourth of the eighty story points, you'll have had enough impact on your story that the Story Engine can actually make all the remaining choices for you. Why? Because enough options will have been removed by the choices you explicitly made that there is only one option each for the remaining story points.
Because your choices can be made from anywhere in the software, you might make them all in the StoryGuide question list, or make them all in the Story Engine directly. Or, you could make some in the StoryGuide, then move over and make a few more in the Story Engine, and then bop back to the StoryGuide to make the rest.
The Storyform and the Theme Browser
But one popular tool for choosing options for story points in the Theme Browser, the tool that is the subject of this lesson. The Theme Browser is kind of like an inverse Story Engine. Whereas the Story Engine presents a story point such as Goal and then asks you to choose which option you want (like Obtaining or Becoming), the Theme Browser presents the options, and then asks you to choose which story point you want it to be used as.
I know that sounds a bit confusing, so let's look at it a couple of different ways. The Story Engine shows the story points and then you choose the kind of subject matter to be explored by that story point as in, My story's Goal is about Obtaining something. Conversely, the Theme Browser shows the subject matter such as Obtaining, and then you choose which story point will explore it as in, My story is about Obtaining, which is everyone's Goal.
Now it all might sound rather silly to have two tools that do roughly the same thing, just inside out. But these two tools are designed for two very different kinds of writers. Structural writers will prefer to work directly with the story points and then "fill them in" with subject matter. In contrast, Passionate writers will prefer to work with the subject matter and then determine how to use it in the structure.
By having a powerful tool for each kind of writer, Dramatica can tailor itself to your style, rather than forcing you to conform to its. In addition, the way the Theme Browser is set up in the software, it forms a three dimensional table, not unlike a 3-D chess set, that graphically illustrate how story points are related to one another, and which ones are nested in others, forming families and umbrellas under which smaller story points reside.
This visual interface can be quite useful in seeing the overall pattern of your story's evolving structure, and getting a sense of the kinds of subject matter your Storyform will explore. In a sense, it creates a map of all the dramatic forces at work in your story, and gives you the opportunity to move into the areas and sub-areas of subject matter that interest you the most.
In future lessons we'll delve deeply into the workings and uses of the Theme Browser, but for now, we'll content ourselves with this brief overview.
Copyright 2003 Melanie Anne Phillips
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