the purpose of a story

November 3, 2005

How does one describe the purpose behind a story?

If Characters are the Motivations of a story, and Plot the Methodologies of a story, and Theme the Means of Evaluating a story, then how is Genre the Purpose of a story?

I asked this question of Chris Huntley, one of the co-creators of the theory of Dramatica, yesterday. How can Action/Adventure or Romantic Comedy be the purpose of a story? This was his answer:

With Dramatica you have to remember that you are talking about Problem Solving. So with that in mind, realize that you have:

a drive to solve the problem (motivation)
how you are going to solve the problem (methodology)
a way to evaluate how you are solving the problem (evaluation)

That leaves only one thing - to what end?

What are you trying to achieve by solving this problem? This is the big picture overall mindset of solving a problem and is what Dramatica refers to as Genre. So with your story you may be trying to create a sense of happiness, or a way for people to relax. Or you may be trying to mess with the audience’s heads and take them to a really dark place.

So it’s not the same thing as having a Purpose looking from within the story (as in a Goal) but it’s more of an outside view - what is the purpose of the work itself. If there is a StoryMind (Dramatica sees stories as a single mind trying to solve a problem) then what kind of a StoryMind is it?

Melanie has a great CD called “Writing with the StoryMind.” In it, she suggests you think of your story as an actual person. In one example she suggests you think of your story as “Joe” - a real person. So when you’re looking at Joe’s Genre, you’re really looking at what Joe is trying to achieve - what is he after?

That’s why video stores are organized by Genre. A customer can quickly and easily find what it is they are looking for - they can find the stories that are trying to achieve the same mindset that they are looking for.