In upgrading StoryFanatic to the latest build of WordPress (v. 2.3), a conscientious effort was made to apply quad theory to the organization of the site. Read on as I analyze my own website!

Well that took longer than I thought it would.

Although it may seem as if I’ve given up around here, truth is I’ve been working hard at upgrading this site to make it easier and quicker to find exactly what it is you’re looking for.

The impetus for this upgrade came with the release of WordPress 2.3 (the program with which StoryFanatic is released to you) and its self-integration of a “tags” function (More on that later). Previously there were 20-30 categories that you had to sift through to try and find some information to help you write your story. That has been lowered to only four!

Explanation of New Categories

1. Story Structure - This bin contains the bulk of the posts on this site. As I find a well-structured story to be the most important thing when it comes to a great story, almost all of the posts lie in here.
2. Story Theory - This bin contains material surrounding different story theories and their application to screenwriting and writing in general. A majority of these articles concern themselves with diving into the Dramatica theory of story as I consider it to be the most revolutionary paradigm for understanding exactly what happens within a story.
3. Analysis - This bin contains all the analysis I have undertaken in my examination of film and television. Both the well-written and the not-so-well written are scrutinized by the posts found within this category.
4. Writing - While this bin is certainly the lightest of the four, it does contain some useful material on actually writing a story¹. Again, this site focuses on story structure and its application within stories so you won’t find much in here. Besides, there are countless other books that have already been written that can help you out with this.

Why only four?

Anyone familiar with the Dramatica theory of story will know the concept of quad theory and therefore my desire to keep it within these boundaries. Besides, when I thought about it, I only really needed four bins to categorize all my posts. ²

Reductively speaking, quad theory breaks down everything externally or internally into fours. Externally you have the commonly understood terms Mass, Energy, Space and Time. Internally, and respectively, you have Knowledge, Thought, Ability, and Desire. Knowledge is the Mind’s Mass, Desire and its ever flowing emotions most closely resembles Time in the external world.

So how would my quad of categories fit into this paradigm?

The Story Structure bin would be the Knowledge and Mass of this site. It is the baseline by which all the other bins would be evaluated; it also represents the Purpose for this site in the first place - to transmit the bulk of gathered knowledge in reference to effective storytelling.

The Story Theory bin and its musings and reflections on the theories as to why stories operate the way they do most closely resembles the Thought and therefore, Energy behind this site. It creates a wonderful Dynamic Pair with Story Structure as it shares much in common, yet spins off basic structures into esoteric and mind-warping concepts.

The Analysis bin is the physical representation of the first two concepts in action and therefore resembles the Abilities that can be put into place once you blend the first two. With an analysis of a film you can see how different concepts and terms work next to each other and easily identify their place (or Space!) within a story.

Writing, the last bin, is definitely the most like Desire as that is where the impetus to write begins - with the author’s desire to create! Writing, as most who have tried it can testify, takes Time and therefore takes its rightful place in the lower left corner of the quad of StoryFanatic.

In the next post I’ll discuss how you can use the new tags feature to instantly find what you’re looking for.

Footnotes for this article

1. Who really has time for writing anymore, right? It’s much more enjoyable to analyze and explore stories that have already been written…↩
2. There is a fifth category, News and Updates that contains all the relatively unimportant posts about upgrading and technical improvements to the site (like this post!). I barely mention it because I think the majority of people out there will not waste their time going through these posts. But in case you’ve got nothing better to do, by all means, indulge.↩

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