Story Goals and Act Order

Q: I am down to one storyform now. But how can I change the order of the acts within a throughline? My Overall Story Goal is obtaining (as put in the story engine), but in the Plot Progression now "obtaining" appears as signpost 3 - shouldn't it be at the end, signpost 4? Why does the software put in in signpost 3 when I insert "obtaining" as OS goal in the story engine?? Can I change that in some way? How?
A: The Story Goal need not be explored as an Act Concern in Act 4. The Goal is in every act because it is a static (unchanging) story point. The exploration of the Signposts explores the domain in each of the four contexts. As such, the Goal is different and independent of the Signposts, even though one of the four Signposts shares the same nature (Obtaining) as the Goal. For example, the Story Goal of The Godfather is Obtaining (get a new godfather), yet the last act explores Doing (taking care of business--killing the competitors, cleaning house, etc.). The Obtaining signpost is Act 2 which explores obtaining in terms of gains and losses:
Act 2 begins with the murder of Sollozzo and Captain McClusky which sends Michael to Sicily to hide. Objectively, all the families are fighting over who will obtain the most power and territory during this gang-land war. Sonny feels their family has lost some power and should fight to get it back. The enemies of the Corleone's strive to catch Michael and scheme to get Sonny out into the open where he can be killed. The death of Sonny brings about the truce which signals the shift from Objective Act 2 to Act 3.
The order of the signposts is tied to the structural and dynamic questions you answer. You need to change some of those choices to move Obtaining to Signpost 4. If you want to try this, I suggest you open a new Dramatica file, select Obtaining as OS Signpost 4 in the Plot Progression window, then go to the Story Engine and make the rest of your storyforming choices from there. I think you'll find some of your other choices to be limited by your decision to assign OS Signpost 4 to Obtaining. If the new storyform works better for you, then great. Otherwise, go back to your original and illustrate Signpost 3 with examples of obtaining and loss.

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