Seeing Flaws in Your Own Work

April 2, 2007

This is why I think Dramatica is so important to the world of story:

Each of us can make pictures in clouds, see faces in wallpaper, and images in ink blots. We create meaning whether any was intended or not. So, the audience is to some degree the author of their own reception. A finished creative work will contain all four stages [of communication] blended together. That’s what makes it hard for an author to see flaws in their work.

from AOL Dramatica Chat Log Archives

That’s why it seems like such a mess. You know things aren’t working right, but you don’t even know what those things are. It’s because you’re an audience member now. You’re jumbling it all together.

The author is the first audience of their own work. As we write, we don’t see the message as separate from the symbols we use or the way we relate it, nor how it effects us personally. So when things are going well, we can feel it, but when they are not working, we don’t know where its broken.

For reference, the four stages of communication in a story are:

• Storyforming: Where the building blocks of your story are put into place
• Story Encoding: Where you assign these building blocks their dramatic identity
• Story Weaving: Where you place and shift these building blocks in order to create a certain experience in your audience
• Story Reception: Where the audience absorbs your story…on their terms

With these four stages jumbled together, and with your own reception re-working your original author’s intent, it’s impossible to identify the problems. You need some device to hold the context of story creation consistent for you.

Humans are by nature context-shifters. That’s how we’ve survived for so long. But it’s also how we end up seeing things not for what they really are.

It’s like the classic story of the man on the subway with the out-of-control child. You watch him and wonder how anyone could be such an awful parent. The kid, whining at the top of his lungs, jumps from one seat to the next. If this man didn’t want to dish out any discipline, why did he have kids in the first place? Unable to take the screaming child any longer, you approach the man and ask him curtly to “keep his child quiet.” The man snaps out of his trance and apologizes. “So sorry, ” he answers. “The boy’s mother died this morning and I don’t think he knows how to deal with it.”

The context shifts and a new meaning is realized.

That’s why you need some device to keep the context of your story consistent. In the past authors had only their talent and intuition to guide them. While you still need that talent to be able to engage your audience, don’t you think it would be nice to have an impartial assistant make sure that your storytelling stays consistent throughout?

You need some device to hold the context of story creation consistent for you

That’s all Dramatica is. Just a quiet, unassuming assistant who unfortunately, because she is able to keep the context steady, has a great knack for pointing out the flaws in your treasured work of art.

There’s an idea that the less psychic RAM you have devoted to remembering the non-essentials in life, the more you can devote to that which is most important to you.

Leave the context-holding chores to the software.

The talent is up to you.

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