How can I identify who my Influence Character is when he/she is also involved in the rest of the story as an Objective Character?

First of all, try thinking about your story only in terms of what is REALLY going on -- not what SEEMS to be going on. This is the viewpoint that most clearly identifies the storyform. After you know what your story is truly about, then you can hide it, hint at it, and otherwise obfuscate it from your audience. The events as they TRULY transpire make up the story's Plot. The events as they are presented to the audience is what we call Storyweaving. In works that rely on mystery and suspense, the storyweaving will present things much differently than the linear progression of the Plot.

The questions you should then ask yourself is this: What is my Main Character's PERSONAL concern? This issue is something that the MC would take with him or her even if the other characters went away. That will help define the MC's point of view. Then ask the question: Who in the story has a fundamentally different and alternative Point of View on the same type of issues. Identifying that individual will help you identify WHO your Influence Character is.

The alternative approach is to PICK a character as the Influence Character and GIVE him/her an alternative world view to that of the MC. Sometimes that works -- especially if you do not have a clear idea who the Influence Character is.

On your point about what the Main Character's personal issue is, if his or her problem is "Disbelief" AND he or she is a character that ultimately changes to resolve his/her personal issues, this would indicate that FOR THIS CHARACTER looking at things in a skeptical manner leads to conflict or errors (or other such problematic behavior). This would imply that the personal solution for this character would be to open his or herself up to belief in order to resolve his/her personal issues. If the character ultimately Remains Steadfast to his/her skeptical approach in an effort to resolve his/her personal issues, then disbelief would be better understood to be the source of his/her drive and not so much as a "problem."

Concerning the teacher as an Influence Character, the teacher need not be aware of the MC or his/her impact on the MC for them to act as the IC. Of course, this is more difficult to storytell, but it is very doable. However, the IC must represent an alternative attitude or approach (paradigm) to that of the MC when considering the issue that is key to the MC. Having a different pov is not enough. It must be a different POV on a single issue -- the issue that is pivotal to the story in general and the MC specifically.

Let me reiterate about being "objective" about your own story. For the moment, dismiss the storyweaving from your considerations. Determine what is really going on in your story. Then, and only then, re-look at the Dramatica questions and answer them based on this purely Author's point of view. You should find this process a little easier, and hopefully determine the answers to the questions that are nagging at you.

I have a story in which the characters are concerned with the past. While I want the story to start with the Main Character many centuries after the past events, much of the history of the Overall Story situation lies in the past.

So, do I encode that history onto the storyform, or do I only encode events surrounding Main Character's activities? I originally envisioned her story being parallel to the story of one of the other characters, but now I'm thinking they're both part of the same story.

Or as someone once said, "Where do I start?"

I think the distinction you're looking for is that of Storyforming and Storyweaving. If the order of events is tied to the order in which things REALLY HAPPEN in the story, that's part of the storyform. If the order of events is tied to the order in which the audience experiences the events, that's storyweaving.

The biggest clue is to determine if the CHARACTERS are aware of the time changes. If they are (Somewhere In Time; Back to the Future), it's part of the storyform. If they're not (Memento; Pulp Fiction), then it's storyweaving. A good example of seeing storyweaving at work in a story that spans many decades is The Remains of the Day. The film begins in the present and intercuts events that happened in the past all the way to the end. The characters are not aware of the moving back and forth between time periods. Effectively, the film's point of attack is the beginning of the fourth (last) act. It then inserts Acts 1-3 in proper chronological order within the exploration of Act 4. The end of the movie is the last part of Act 4. Alternative ways to have a story in different time periods include:

• Bookend the story with storytelling, such as in the movie, Stand By Me, and the play, The Glass Menagerie.
• Interweave two or more stories from different time periods, e.g. The Godfather II.

I know the beginning, middle and also the ending of the screenplay I'm working on. I'm just not quite sure how to begin to tie them all together, or rather to "fill in" the gaps. I know exactly what it is I want visually (I can see it almost completely), I just don't really know how to map out those visuals in writing completely. What do you think my problem is...and how do I solve it?

Here are several suggestions you can try. Perhaps one of them will be the right fit for your writing style:

1. Assuming you have Dramatica Pro, print out the Story Points report or the All Storytelling report. Also, print out your story treatment. Go through the scenes you have created and check off the story points you have already used. By the time you reach the last scene, the story points left unchecked will give you an idea of the remaining material you can use to fill in any gaps in the story.
2. Use the Signposts and Journeys as a way to outline the progression of events. If nothing else, outline one scene for each of Signpost and Journey and place them in somewhat of a chronological order. By the end of it you should have an idea of what is going on in your story and it may inspire you to come up with a less linear way of storyweaving the material.
3. Open the screenplay template file that comes with Dramatica Pro 4.0 and print out the story treatment report. This template suggests exactly one way to construct your screenplay and is a fine place to use as a jumping off point for your own work.
4. Try weaving your story "backwards." In other words, start at the end and slowly move towards the beginning. Or pick some other non-traditional, non-linear place to start the story. This unusual storyweaving approach might give you some insights in how to fill out your story.
5. Try telling the story from a narrator's point of view, such as a deity's commentary on the story, or a Greek chorus, or some completely sidelined, uninvolved character. Don't make them the Main Character, just use them as a device to mix things up and move your audience's attention around. Using a non-involved, narrator's (author's) voice might give you just enough objectivity about your own screenplay that you'll be better equipped to recognize what might be missing.

Time distribution in a story is completely arbitrary. Some stories happen within hours or minutes. Others happen over days, months, years, or millennia. The "evenness" of the time flow is purely dependent upon the flow the problem solving takes in the story. Time elapsed within the story (Plot) is different than the progression of events as presented to your audience (Storyweaving). Audiences tend to expect things to flow relatively evenly -- at least in the way it is presented to them (Storyweaving). With that said, an author may choose to play to the audience's expectations or against them without changing the overall meaning embedded within the story.

Plot is the order in which events truly transpire within the internal logic of the story (e.g. causes and effects). Storyweaving, on the other hand, is the order in which the story (i.e. plot, character, theme, and genre) is presented to an audience. Sometimes the storyweaving order is very similar to the plot order (e.g. Antz and The Ten Commandments). Other times the storyweaving order is significantly different from the plot order (e.g. Pulp Fiction and Remains of the Day). You can present (storyweave) plot events to your audience in any order you want as long as the audience is able to reconstruct the REAL plot order after reaching the end of your story.

After the Storyweaving 28 worksheets B (Sheet 10) are completed, are the 28+ scenes supposed to fill up a two-hour movie? I know I must be missing something here. Is it that the 28 scenes are the core scenes, and from them additional scenes are created to fill out each act?

It was a judgment error to refer to the 28 storyweaving worksheets as "scenes". They are not scenes in the filmic/television sense, but are the basis from which you develop the scenes and sequences in your script. Don't forget that, in addition to the 28 storyweaving sheets, you also have all of the character and theme storyweaving worksheet information to drop into your story, as well as all your static plot appreciations like the story Goal, Consequence, etc.

I've done all up to the storyweaving and I can't seem to go any further. My problem is trying to blend all of the misc'l into the story. Another problem I'm not clear on is this: Once you've woven the story and numbered the scenes, do you write the story in that order? Ex: if the first scene has an Objective Signpost or Journey, do you write that scene from the "objective" POV? And if the next is Main Character is that the POV from the Main Character? I know you referred to them in the text as individual cameras. Am I to understand then that you cut the story in that manner: Objective, Main, Relationship, etc.

The order in which events REALLY happen in your story (1-2-3-4, etc.) is the Plot of your story. How you choose to illustrate each of the plot points is the storyencoding of the plot. This is different than REAL storyweaving. Since there are multiple things happening simultaneously in your story, and since you cannot tell them ALL AT ONCE, you must weave the pieces together. You can do a simple weave that attempts to present the information in chronological order by presenting all of the "1"s and then the "2"s, etc. (simple but less interesting to a sophisticated audience). OR, you can choose to mix things up a bit by withholding information, misleading the audience, or presenting information out of sequence. This forces the audience to reconstruct the linearity of the story and frequently makes the audience "experience" more interesting.

My suggestion at this point would be to put your Dramatica work away (or at least to the side) and write a "sketchy" version of the story in the fashion YOU would like to tell it. Consider what you want to emphasize, or de-emphasize, what is most important for the audience to know up front, and what you want to withhold for a while in order to tantalize or surprise them.

After you have done this little bit of freefall, go back over your Dramatica notes and determining what "pieces" you neglected to put in your story and pick where you want them to be introduced and/or explored. That should get you well into the writing process. From there, it's principally a matter of TELLING your story. Remember, you have LOTS of stuff with which to work -- Characters (Subjective AND Objective), Plot (4 throughlines PLUS Static Plot Appreciations like Goal, etc.), Theme (four thematic conflicts, one for each throughline), and genre issues to flavor the entire mix (Entertainment, Comedy, Drama, and Information as different modes of expression).

Any suggestions for taking the four-act story and changing it into seven acts, e.g. TV movie?

The simple answer is to break the piece up into its Signposts (4) and Journeys (3) so that it goes Signpost-Journey-Signpost-Journey-Signpost-Journey-Signpost. That's seven segments or "acts". TV acts, like chapters in a book or acts/scenes in a play, are arbitrary units of measure imposed on the "story". The one rule you can follow is to break for commercial at a natural break in the story. This can be a break in the Objective Story throughline, the Relationship Story throughline, the Main Character throughline, or even the Influence Character throughline. With 24 transitions between signposts and journeys (12 if you look just at signposts or 8 if you look at only journeys), that gives you plenty of opportunities to find a natural break for commercials.