Defensible Positions and Presuppositions

I would like to talk about two particular articles on narrativefirst.com:

The Purpose Behind Every Great Story

 My standard for evaluation of effective narrative is the Dramatica theory of story—a theory of story based on the concept that every complete story is an analogy to a single human trying to solve a problem.

[...]

 When it comes to using narrative to argue that a particular point-of-view—or approach—to life is more appropriate than another, constructing them to reflect the mind’s problem-solving process ensures the greatest amount of effectiveness. We all know how to argue, can sense when the argument is baseless or incomplete, and through experience know when an argument works successfully enough to change our point-of-view.
This is the purpose of a great story: to reflect that process while arguing for the effectiveness of one approach over another.

 And A Method For Generating Conflict:

 Great narrative positions one truth against another. Set up an argument that cannot be resolved without one giving way to the other and you have the foundation from which to write a compelling story.

 (Emphasis all his)

... "Great narratives put two truths against another." You would not make one side obviously wrong and easily defeated. By putting these two "truths" together, you are, in a way, suggesting that there are contexts in which each one of them would be true.

If your story is about Racism, and your argument is "Racism is Bad vs Racism is Good" then are you not suggesting that "Racism is Good" is true in certain contexts? And for the story to not be Dramatica-Propaganda, you would likely have to give both positions somewhat equal weight as well. Are you not, intentionally or not, suggesting that "Racism is Good" is a defensible position?

What if, instead, your Racism-story presupposes that "Racism is Bad?" Maybe it is about how to deal with Racism? Or maybe, you can make an argument about whether Racism is a systematic or individual issue.

Replace Racism with anything you like. Sexism, Homophobia, Transphobia... the same holds true.

Additionally, if you simply put an "obvious" truth against an "obvious" falsehood, why are you writing this? Isn't it a lot more challenging to write about an actual dilemma? You have to go deeply inside your self to find an answer... This is why you are writing this and why we want to hear your story.

One shoe drops

After looking at this dramatica.discuss post by LunarDynasty, I realized that the right types (especially the lower right ones) just feel inherently unsatisfying.

They're like the Dominant/Subdominant in Music (instead of the Tonic).

They're like the question.

They're a ball in the air.

It is weird and unsatisfying to end on them.

"Have you written your book yet?" Nah, I'm just writing, you know, practicing.

"Do you understand this?" Nah, I'm still learning the basics.

"Did you change for the better?" Nah, I'm still trying things out, dipping my toes in this and that.

"Do you know how we can do this?" Nah, we're still at the idea stage of things.

You could possibly find some sort of argument about the Ability/Thought elements, variants and types being more... "suspended" than Knowledge/Desire ones.


Right Type Endings (TM) feel like Dramatica Sequel Bait (TM). It seems like making them satisfying and not anti-climactic requires strong story telling more than anything story encoding can provide.

Narrative Structure in a Single Sentence

Mr. Lucas wrote a blog post about finding his Story Form in The Sentence created with the method by Holly Lisle.

A few things I noticed when reading this:

The small satisfaction of printed tables

Dramatica Forum Frequenter and Princess Bride Aficionado Mike Lucas recently posted his "Essential Tools for the Running Writer," one of which is a story form table printed on paper. That table was generated by my Table of Scenes Generator.

Now, this "Generator" does not really do anything on its own. It merely takes the results of the Storyform report und Plot Sequence Report of the official Dramatica software, and turns them into one HTML-table. And the design was taken mostly from someone else as well.

Still, I feel a certain satisfaction over seeing something I had a part in being not only used, but printed on paper and taken along.

Obscuring the Story Form

In some threads of the disccuss.dramatica.com forum, it has been mentioned that it seems like a good idea to obscure your actual story form in the final product. The reasoning behind this seems to be that we all know instinctively how any particular story mind would proceed (since it is "an analogy for a human mind trying to solve a problem) and (1) we don't want to read/watch predictable stories, and (2) get annoyed when we notice that someone is trying to make an argument even though we expected entertainment.

I thought about it for a while, and collected a few ways to hide the author's intent.

Ruining some magic...

So after listening to Narrativefirst's 12th Podcast Episode (starting at 6.5 minutes in) I did exactly what was advised not to do. I tried to figure out what lead to this specific situation described.
What kind of choices would lead to all story points (down to the progression) being determined, except for the Judgment? And after some testing, I figured it out.

Before I get into that, I want to explain why I even tried to figure this out. I like Interactive Fiction. And I've been trying to figure out how to use Dramatica to tell stories interactively. There's been a discussion on discuss.dramatica,com about it, but I wasn't satisfied with the idea of starting new storyforms with every outlying choice and such. But what if we could use one story form that makes one argument, and only leaves the personal judgment open? The thing about the current Theory is that it doesn't tell you how the relationship ends. Whether it's happy, sad, angry... Whether the relationship is already in place at the beginning or not... whether the relationship is over at the end or not... This means that it leaves all of that open to the author. In addition it doesn't tell you how the other characters feel about each other either. Using this and a story form with an open-to-interpretation judgment... what can you do with that?

A simple example: Imagine a romantic IF where you play a student (our MC). The objective story goal is to have a great school festival. While that is going on, our MC may or may not form relationships with other students. Using our prepared story form, the different paths to however-many endings could all make the same argument for how to succeed/fail in making that great school festival, while leaving the happiness of our MC and the relationships they make dependent on the player's choices.

With that out of the way, I will now tell you what choices will determine everything but the Judgment. If you don't want the magic ruined, do not read any further.

Separating Main Character and Objective Story

It can be rather difficult sometimes to separate the Main Character Throughline from the Objective Story Throughline, especially when:

• the issues the Main Character deal with start with the rest of the story
• the issues the Main Character deal with are intrinsically linked with he rest of the story
• part of the Main Character should be personal, but isn't
• the Main Character doesn't have 'obvious' personal issues

For example, in "The Fugitive," the Dramatica Analysis makes Kimble's Throughline about him tracking down his wife's murderer(s) and the Objective Throughline "A murder in Chicago has taken place.  An innocent man has been accused, tried, and convicted for the crime."

In "Tangled," Rapunzel has that long magical hair, but is that what she's about? Not according to the consensus of the User Group meeting. "Our princess is not in the castle."

In "The Last Unicorn" is her being the last her objective function or her personal problem? It wouldn't exist if it wasn't for the story, and you could argue that the objective story goal is to get the other unicorns 'unstuck,' but is that really the case here? I don't think that this story is a Grand Argument Story, but if it was I would probably argue for an Objective Story Domain of Physics and Concern of Obtaining, because problems exist because of people trying to capture one thing or another. The last unicorn's status as the last has an objective function, but it also brings her personal pain, especially when she is transformed into a woman, and later into a unicorn again, now being the only unicorn who knows regret. (The closest thing to a working story form I found was: Change, Stop, Do-er, Holistic, Action, Optionlock, Success, Good, Physics, Obtaining, Self Interest, Control; but again, I don't think this film is a GAS; I haven't read the book).

When writing your own story, maybe try to make sure that your Main Character is dealing with personal stuff outside of the story, that would be troublesome even in another story or even without anything going on.