The Jigsaw Puzzle That Is A Story
March 23, 2007
Dramatica makes a distinction between the structure of a story and the way that structure is revealed. Many books on screenwriting dictate that a certain event must happen at page 15-20 or that act turns happen every 30 pages. Well then, how does this explain the recent success of films like Memento or Crash that are told out of sequence and with complete disregard to any time constraints? How come their stories still work?
In Dramatica the structure of a story is its storyform. Like a blueprint or an outline for obssessive-compulsives, a complete Dramatica storyform contains every bit of information about a story. A storyform identifies not only the Main Character and the Story Goal, but also a story’s Prerequisities, its Costs, Catalysts, Symptoms, Benchmarks, and even its Unique Abilities!
Only at the end can an audience truly appreciate the story you were really trying to communicate.
But just like how off-putting that previous paragraph was in terms of information, you wouldn’t want to spill out your entire storyform at once to an audience. In much the same way that information is revealed here one blog post at a time, you want to reveal your story’s major points a little at a time. Give the audience a chance to soak it all in.
In the end, it’ll all make sense.
You can liken the process of experiencing a story to the experience of putting together a massive jigsaw puzzle.
As an author of a completed work, you start out with the finished puzzle in your hands. It’s a beautiful image so precious to you that you hid it from sight as you put it together - keeping it hidden within the confines of the top box cover.
But now you’re confident enough with the finished product that you want to share it with someone else.
You can’t just hand it over to an audience. As easy as that would be - its a physical impossibilty given the fact that a story is something that is experienced over time. It cannot just be given away.
And you wouldn’t want to just dump the whole box top of pieces in their laps and let them try to figure it out. If you did that they might try to make their own story! As intriguing as that might be to watch, you’re still not communicating. You’re still not sharing.
What you would do is pull a piece from your puzzle - the most interesting, fascinating piece you could find, and you would hand it to them. You could hand it sideways, or upside-down, or even be bold and simply hand it to them face up - either way, they’ve got the first piece to your story.
And then, before they’ve had a chance to really appreciate that first piece, you hand them another.
They take the second and try to fit it into the first. But you’ve purposefully given them one from the other side of the puzzle. They stare at it, confused and doubtful at your abilities as a storyteller. But before they’ve had a chance to really figure out what to make of you or your story, you hand them yet another.
And this goes on and on. Take one adjacent to the first. Take three from the top row - it all doesn’t matter the order or how long you take - as long as you DON’T add any extra pieces from some other puzzle and as long as you DON’T forget to give them every last piece.
Dramatica makes sure you account for every puzzle piece. The order and the style in which you reveal each piece is completely up to you, the artist.
As the last piece falls into place, your story will finally come into focus for an audience. They will have no other choice but to appreciate the image you had constructed for them because what seemed so ambiguous and pointless in the beginning will now make sense. And the audience will thank you for giving them the full picture by revisiting your story again and again.
Isn’t that what we’re all after?