Story

by Melanie Anne Phillips

Notes on this Document

Before there was software and before there was even a theory, Chris and Melanie intended to write a book about story structure, ten years after they first toyed with those problems back in the early 1980s.. The year was 1991 and they started to write a book called Wordsmith--about a reporter interviewing a mad scientist named Dr. Wordsmith who had all the answers about story structure.

 Somewhere along the line, they decided it was more serious than that approach and changed the name of their book to Story, losing Dr. Wordsmith and turning into more of a revelation of new knowledge in a text-book like form. This is one of the early drafts of Story (which was never completed). You will note that some of the tomfoolery of the original Wordsmith remains in the style.

Later, they scrapped the whole thing to begin anew and write Dramatica: A New Theory of Story in more of a text book form. Some of the material in Story remains conceptually in the volume everyone knows, but from this document one can actually see a lot about how the ideas were formed (and perhaps even better understand what they really mean) in this proto-effort.

This book, like the theory book, was written by the two of them. As usual, they came up with the concepts, Melanie did virtually all the writing, and Chris did all the editing. In those days, his name may have come first, but he allowed Melanie to generously change that order later, as women in that day were not taken as seriously as men, and if her name was second, she would be presupposed to be his assistant.

Originally published November 26, 1991.

STORY

Chapter One: A New Hope

STORY is a radical new way of looking at the content and dynamics of story structure. Unlike previous systems, STORY does not treat structure as a fixed skeleton or blueprint but as a network of interrelationships between elements. As long as these interrelationships are not violated, any specific content can be assigned to the elements. In this manner, the dynamics of a story written with the aid of STORY will always function to the greatest potential without limiting the shape of the piece to a fixed format or formula.

Twelve years ago, we had written a screenplay. It had problems. Our initial approach was to look at other movies that were similar to ours to see if we could discover some truisms of structure that we might employ. As our effort progressed, we began to discern a number or recurring patterns, not just in character, but in their actions and decisions as well. As we examined these patterns, we quickly found that they were not independent, but interrelated. We expanded our research to include screenplays that significantly differed from our own. Surprisingly, the same patterns were at work in these as well.

We speculated that if there were structures that transcended genre, perhaps they represented some arrangement that was attractive to an audience at the most basic level. But what did this structure represent? In essence, why do people enjoy stories?

To look for the answer we organized a chart of the recurrent characters types that seemed to appear in every well written story. Our list had an unexpected balance to it. For every character that expressed an approach or attitude, there seemed to be a counterpart character that expressed the opposite.

But rather than emerging as well-rounded individuals, these conflicting characters seemed “weighted” or one-sided. If indeed, the characters in a story had specific definable traits, perhaps the essence of these traits would indicate the nature of what audiences are getting out of stories. As we assigned names to the characters’ predominant characteristics we were amazed to discover that the list bore a striking resemblance to the kinds of attitudes and processes we all use in making decisions and taking action. From this view, an odd notion developed. What if stories were not just plays about people. What if stories were a map of the mind: a single mind with a problem. What if stories provided an external view of the inner workings of the mind, so that we might have a more objective perspective of our own thoughts that could aid us in our own everyday decisions. Every element of a story, every character, action, decision and interaction would be analogous to something inside ourselves.

The concept was fascinating, but, after all, we were trying to write a screenplay. So we took what we had learned, finished the script, and let the idea lay fallow for the next ten years. One morning over breakfast two years ago, having since worked on many projects and developed a lot more depth to our understanding of stories from the traditional perspectives, we decided to resurrect our story structure concept and see what we could do with it. If we had known then that we were embarking on a two year journey that would require the development of an entirely new psychology to complete the task, we surely would have dropped the idea cold. But we didn’t know, and so we diligently organized and reorganized material. We chalked up sleepless nights and frustrating days. But in the end, we had chipped away all the nonessential material and were left with a simple yet variable structure delineating the elements, interrelationships, and dynamics of stories.

Since this approach differs so dramatically from traditional attempts to organize the content of a creative work, there are few touch points with standard story structure dogma. Many of the terms will be familiar, but we may have altered denotative and connotative values in ways that require redefining one’s understanding of the elements involved in order to fully appreciate the usefulness of the tool called STORY.

Because this is a system of interrelationships between elements rather than their content, any fixed view of the elements can only be partially correct. Essentially, each view is valid as long as one works within that framework but will be invalid from many other useful perspectives that might be employed. Only the overview - the gestalt of all the interrelationships of all the variables - provides the single perspective that is absolutely correct.

But that holistic global concept cannot be accessed directly from traditional thoughts about story structure since it is in conflict with them. Therefore, we must build a foundation upon which we may build our new view of Story.

To that end, we begin with

The Exploded Mind

Simply put, stories are representations of a single human mind dealing with a dilemma. We relate to stories because we see ourselves not just in a single character but in the entire work–the mechanism of our own minds exploded or projected outward into an unfamiliar but infinitely more understandable view from the outside.

Looking at our own minds from an outside view is not at all the same thing as looking at someone else’s mind from our perspective. When we look at others, our observations are filtered by our own minds, so that we don’t seem them directly, but only as they appear in reference to our own mental overlay. Only when we take a completely external view, not just external to a mind but external to all minds, can we clearly see the functioning of a specific mind with a dilemma.

How do we arrive at a completely external view when w are trapped in our own minds? That is the beauty of what stories do for us. Through thousands of years of storytelling, authors have learned what works with their audiences. Quite unintentionally then, through centuries of trail and error, stories have empirically arrived at conventions that reveal the structure and functioning of the inner mind. Characters represent some of these mechanisms, but the dynamics of their interactions and their internal decision making processes describe even more. And yet, Story is not a transparent analogy that is easily compared directly to our own minds. How can Story both mirror the mind while keeping the mind’s structure obscure? This is due to the way we look at stories.

Perspectives

There are three people looking at a story: the Author, the Character, and the Audience. Each one is afforded a different view. Even though the workings of a story remain constant, each of the three observers will appreciate it in a different way. It requires all three views to perceive the relationship between Story structure and the structure of the human mind. So, although each observer can see a system at work, none, in and of himself, can completely see the analogy. By exploring the nature of the differences in these three perspectives, we can begin to uncover our initial glimpse of the actual structure.

The Author Perspective

In reference to Story, the Author is God. He is the only observer who knows what will happen before it does. To the Author, a story is not a mystery unfolding, but a forgone conclusion. He sees the entire work, beginning middle, and end all at once, all in the same moment of time. So although the events of a plot or a character’s transition have a specific order, the Author does not see them changing, but rather arranged. This effectively affords the Author a fixed view of the story in which he can see potentials, obstacles, the flow of the story, and the conclusion. In this view, nothing moves, but everything is related.

The Character Perspective

Unlike the Author, the Character has absolutely no idea of what lies ahead. He may expect that something will occur, but he does not know. As we go through life unsure of the proper course and the accuracy of our knowledge, and suffering from the inability to forsee the unexpected, so the character travels through the story. He knows that to his god, the Author, the die is already cast, but he himself must trudge through to determine what will be. For the character, the structure of the story is a floating set of elements that only take on a fixed quality in retrospect, and even then, new information may force the character to re-evaluate what he thought he knew.

The Audience Perspective

The Audience is afforded a favored view by the Author. Although he does not divulge his knowledge of the future, he does let the audience in on information the character does not know. We may be told where something is hidden that a character must find, or clued into a danger that awaits around a bend. In this respect, the Audience can empathize with the Character’s blind journey through time, while appreciating something of the actuality that lurks in the world beyond the Character’s grasp.

To the Audience then, their understanding of a story’s structure has an aspect of the Character’s view that is floating and and aspect of the Author’s view that is fixed. It is only at the conclusion of the story that the Audience may join with the Author in the fixed view of the entire structure.

In this way, the Audience starts at an external view very close to the uniformed Character perspective, and through the telling of the story transcends the limitations of the external view to join the Author in the God’s eye view of the story as a fixed structure. Nevertheless, the Audience’s experience in appreciating the story is not the same as that of the Author, as the Audience needed to learn the structure of the story as it unfolded, while the Author knew it as a whole. Similarly, although the Character has developed a fixed view of the story after its conclusion, he is still not privy to information outiside his grasp that is known by the Author and the Audience.

The Fourth Perspective

When you sit in the role of Author, you evaluate the relationships between your Character, your Story, and your audience. When you sit in the role of Audience, you evaluate the relationships between the Character, the Story, and the Author. When you sit in the role of Character, you evaluate the relationships between, Story, Audience (how others see you), and Author (the all seeing God).

But there is a fourth perspective, the one we spoke of earlier–the view external to all minds. You gain that perspective when you sit in the role of the Story. When you view Character, Audience, and Author all at once from the Story perspective, you can evaluate the relationships between the three observers.

The Author can control the nature of the Character, and the content and storytelling of the Story, but he cannot control the nature of the Audience. But by jumping into the Story perspective, he can look back at his own biases and adjust his own approach so as to have the precise effect he wants on his Audience.

It is this perspective that a critic will take in evaluating a work: not just that the Author created a work meaningful to himself that was structurally sound, but a work that moved the audience as well. And the sophisticated Author will take that perspective as well during the creation of his work.

The View from Inside (or Time and Space)

To the Character, the story unfolds, or more accurately: the Character perceives the story as progressing through time. The Audience sees the Character’s journey and development as progressing through time, but also sees the nature of stable inequities that exist between Characters or between Characters and their environment. This view allows the audience, for example, to empathize with the stand taken by each of two brothers that hate each other. We see the hate as a potential between them. In this respect, the Audience also has a spatial view of some of the potentials, obstacles, plot flow, and conclusions. The Author, seeing the entire structure as fixed in time, has only the spatial view of the story.

It is important to note that having a linear order to the events of a story does not constitute a temporal view of the structure. The view from time requires the dolling out of information, rather than seeing it all at once.

In truth, since all three observers are looking at the same structure, a temporal view and a spatial view are simply ways of seeing it. You can use one or the other or both. When we analyze or construct a structure in Story, we view things from both time and space.

Blind Spots

No matter which observer we are, we judge the relationships between the other three points, but we judge them from our own point of view. In other words, we do not look at our own biases until we step into that fourth perspective. But how can we truly see ourselves from the outside. We would have to cease being us to look back at ourselves with objectivity. So when we seek to examine ourselves, it is not the actual view of who we are, but rather the view of who we are, filtered by the biases we cannot see.

Since we can never see ourselves from that actuality view, we must create our best approximation of that view in order to know anything at all about what things look like from there. To this end we look at the three perspectives we can evaluate, and use them to create the one we cannot.

Synthesis

By looking at what each of the other three views looks like to us, we can triangulate on the point we are viewing from. In this way, only by first establishing each of the other three, can we establish the fourth.

Leap of Faith

Since the actual perspective of himself is forever hidden, the act of sythesizing that view is the leap of faith a character must make to review the very nature of his mind. In essence, he says to himself, “I cannot see the reality here, but everything that I can see tells me it must be this.” He then either makes that leap of faith, accepts his evaluation of himself and changes as required, or he refuses to accept the accuracy of that view and does not change.

The Fifth Perspective

When you are looking at a Story from the Author’s perspective, you are not the only observer. You share that function with the Character and Audience. And although you can synthesize a view external to all minds by taking the Story perspective and looking back at yourself, this is not the true view of your relationship to the other observers. In fact, your view even from the Author perspective is flawed by your own biases, since you are measuring the others in reference to yourself. You are limited by your own knowledge and awareness.

An actual perspective that would define the true natures of each of the four points of view would require the God’s Eye View in our world. We would have to be able to step outside ourselves and look back with tojal and complete objectivity from a fifth perspective. Most would agree that this is not possible.

However, when you look one level down and view Story, Character, or Audience singly, not in relationship to the others, you occupy that fifth perspective of looking inside without being inside. This fifth viewpoint give one an actuality view of the workings inside the Story and Character. It is here we can make completely objective judgements as to whether a Story is properly constructed or a Character is true to form.

Audience and Author sit across the table from each other and view Character and Story. The Author anticipates his effect upon the Audience in terms of Character and Story, and the Audience evaluates the biases of the Author in terms of Character and Story. But neither Audience nor Author may apply the fifth perspective to each other, for they only see each other through the content of the Story and progression of the Character.

Where You Sit and Where You Look

So far, we have looked at each observer being able to see three other observers and sythesize the fourth. But one can also place oneself in the shoes of each of the other observers by synthesizing each point of view. For example, as Author, you will look at the Character, Audience and Story, and synthesize a view of yourself as Author. But you can imagine yourself in the shoes of the Character and, for the purposes of empathizing with your Character, can limit your own knowledge of things he could not know. Positioning yourself in this new point of view would change the way in which you see the Author, Audience, and Story.

The effect is that when analyzing a Story, you can take any of four positions as a point of view, which will offer four unique views of the other observers. Four different views from each of four different perspectives gives you sixteen possible ways to look at yourself and the other observers.

Quads

It is convenient to organize these different perspectives in quads. A Quad would be the four observers seen from a single point of view. As long as you don’t jump from one Quad (or point of view) to another during the middle of an evaluation, your determination of the relationship between the points in that Quad will be as accurate as possible.

For example, if you were to take the Character’s point of view, then any relationships between Author, Audience, Story and Yourself will be as accurate as that point of view can be. But if you were to evaluate Author and Audience from the Character point of view and then evaluate Story and yourself from the Author point of view, you will have an incompatible Quad, and your appreciation of the relationships between the points of view will be flawed.

In truth, when any of us look at stories, we are constantly shifting perspectives to gain the broadest perspective of all the meaning a work contains. But as an Author, it is important to limit yourself to one point of view at a time, finish all your evaluations from that perspective, then move to the next and start fresh. In this manner, YOUR point of view as the Author is clear and organized as it can be, and therefore your Characters and Story will be perceived by the Audience with as much understanding as possible. It is the key to successful communication from Author to Audience.

The Sixty Four Element Question

There is another level of consideration. As we mentioned, it is our belief that Story is a projection of a single human mind. If this is so, than that mind will have represented within it all sixteen of the possible points of view and objects of view. But this set of sixteen can be seen by the Author, the Audience, the Character, or by the Story itself. That means that although Story contains only sixteen elements, there are four sets of sixteen elements, when one considers the nuances of who is looking at the Story.

As an Author, you will want to explore the full view of the Story for your Character, your Audience, and Yourself. And the Story looking at the Story will appear to be self- defining, or in essence, the structure of the work. Since an audience will move through each of these perspectives in viewing the Story, an element left out of any set of the four sets of sixteen will leave the Audience feeling as if something has been left out. When you find a hole in a Story’s logic, it is created by ommission of one of at least one of these elements.

Twice Sixty Four

As mentioned earlier, the Author can only see the Audience in terms of the Character and Story. Likewise, the Character and Story are the only information the Audience has to evaluate the Author. Since both Character and Story are under the Author’s complete control, he will look into Story, thereby creating a set of sixty four, and will look into the Character, thereby creating a second set of sixty four.

Problems and Dilemmas

There is the mind and there is the universe. They interact. The universe affects the mind through observation, the mind affects the universe through action. The mind can evaluate: it can look at the universe and determine its arrangement; it can look at itself and determine its arrangement. It can compare the two and determine if they are compatible. If they are, no action need be taken. If they are not, a problem exists and action must be taken to change the state of the universe or the state of the mind and bring them back into balance. Until this occurs, a problem exists.

The mind can anticipate. It can determine the expected state of the universe at a future time. It can determine the expected state of itself at a future time. When the mind anticipates that solving a current problem will create a future problem, it lowers the motivation to act. If the size of the new problem is greater than the current problem, the mind will not act. If the size of the new problem is equal to the current problem, the mind will delay acting until one problem is determined to be greater. This is a dilemma.

So a problem exists when mind and universe are unbalanced. But a dilemma exists when it is anticipated that solving the imbalance will create a new and equal imbalance. To break the deadlock, something must change. Either the universe must alter from influences outside our anticipation, or the mind must alter from observations not anticipated. Either way, time can, but not necessarily will resolve the imbalance and make the decision to act or not act a clear choice.

As long as the dilemma remains, the mind will continually reconsider the imbalance, even though no change is anticipated in the near future. This is a poor survival trait, as valuable mind space that is needed for more pressing decisions is tied up in reconsidering the nature of the dilemma. When we worry, we are neither solving the dilemma nor attending to other solvable problems. To counter this inefficient functioning of the mind, we create a filter that blinds us to the existence of the imbalance, thereby allowing us to address other issues. This filter is created by Justification.

Justification and Balanced Inequity

Justification is the process whereby we create an internal imbalance that mirrors or compliments the nature of the dilemma, thereby “filling it in” by creating a “balanced inequity” internally. Justification allows the mind to stop considering the dilemma in the hope that the dilemma will resolve itself over time. The drawback is that once the dilemma has become invisible to the mind, the mind is unbalanced internally. Should the original dilemma resolve, we will not be aware. Rather, the new balance will look unbalanced to the mind, since the mind now contains the balanced inequity. The result is that this mind will not be observing the universe that is, but the universe filtered by the balanced inequity. Perception does not match reality, and this mind’s reaction to the universe will not be accurate.

This is where a story begins: with a mind containing an internal balanced inequity. This mind contains a potential waiting to be released. Storytelling functions to relate the nature of the specific balanced inequity and follow the course of its dismantling.

This is why stories intrigue us: they give us a method for seeing the balanced inequities in our own minds and learning how to eliminate them. We cannot learn from one kind of inequity how to deal with any other. The variety of stories is due to the variety of possible inequities and the trouble we have with seeing them in ourselves.

Premise

Stories do not deal with multiple dilemmas. Rather, a single dilemma is chosen as the point of discussion. The justification of that specific dilemma determines the premise. Premise is simply a descripiton of the attitude the mind has adopted in dealing with a specific dilemma and whether this is a good or bad thing.

How can an unbalanced mindset be a good thing? Every motivation we have is essentially an imbalance in the mind. It is a refusal to accept things the way they are. Essentially, it is the refusal to change one’s attitude. These motivations come from the sub-conscious, the home of balanced inequities. Without an unbalanced mindset we would have no drive to change our environment or ourselves. So for any progress to be made, for any action to be taken, one must have a balanced inequity.

If one is to pursue a goal or achieve a state of being, it can only be driven by the internal sense of inequity. In this respect, an author may want to indicate that adamance of a particular attitude may be morally correct.

So the second half of premise indicates whether this mindset is a good or bad thing, according to the author. This creates a premise of the form, “Specific Mindest leads to Success/Failure”.

Of course a mind may have many imbalances. Although only one will generate the premise, many others may exist. These other imbalances determine the thematics of the story. So how can we tell which of these imbalances is the premise? The premise is indicated by its essential connection to the problem or goal of the plot.

When there is an imbalance between the mind and the universe, it is seen as a mind problem from the universe and a universe problem from the mind. In the telling of story, we select a problem that must be solved in the mind AND a problem that must be solved in the universe. Story unfolds as the exploration of what must be done to solve each problem. By the conclusion of the story, we have learned that what solves one problem will also solve the other. This solution is the intersection point between mind and universe: the point of imbalance that they both share. It is that point that is described by the premise.

About the Author

Melanie Anne Phillips is the co-creator of the Dramatica theory of story. Later, as Director of Research and Development for Write Brothers, she collaborated in the design and development of the Dramatica line of software and accessories. Today, Ms. Phillips develops writing tools for her own company, Storymind and provides writing tips on Twitter @WritingTip and on her story structure blog, Dramaticapedia.

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