There is a significant difference between stories and tales. A tale is merely a statement; a linear progression from one event to the next culminating in one singular outcome. It can be thrown out immediately and disregarded as a one-time occurrence primarily because it has relatively little to stand on. A story, however, offers much more to an audience member.

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One of the biggest hurdles to understanding the Dramatica theory of story is the language. Words like Prerequisities, Induction, and Expediency hardly inspire one towards better and better storytelling. Luckily we have Armando Saldana Mora who, in his own remarkable way, has come up with a clever way of understanding the quad of story elements containing Induction, Production, Reduction and Deduction.

Read on to see how that bully from elementary school can help improve your writing..

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While some parts of the Dramatica model seem to make sense, there are still portions of it that can make you wonder, “Why the heck was it set up this way?” It almost seems counter-productive towards the process of writing great fiction. In this article, Melanie Anne Phillips, one of the co-creators of the theory, goes on to explain why certain choices were made to bring this revolutionary story theory to light.

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Every author that seeks out Dramatica to help them write better stories eventually comes to a point where they resent it. “Why is this program forcing me to write my story this way?” they ask. “I never wanted my Main Character to have an issue with expediency…I don’t even know what that means!” Often this resentment leads to the long and winding rabbit hole that is the attempt to perfectly understand the theory.

There can be no greater waste of an author’s energy.

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Just the other day I had another “real world” experience dealing with Mental Sex that I wanted to share. For the new readers out there, the Mental Sex of a character describes the sort of base operating system from which that character engages the world. It’s a trait that is hardwired and, as I’ll point out, filters out the world around a character without them even knowing it.

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There is nothing worse than a movie that tries to provide some meaningful moment at the last second. Often times it feels like these heavy-handed messages are just a panicked reaction to an empty story. If you do it right, the events in your story and the order in which they appear in should provide an audience all the meaning they’ll ever need.

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One of the first things people ask when they delve into this theory is whether or not the big guys use Dramatica. Having personally worked with several of these big guys I can tell you that most, if not all of them would vehemently deny it. This doesn’t mean, however, that they’re not really using it…

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To many, the Dramatica concepts seem arbitrary and forced. At times the learning curve may seem detrimental towards the act of writing a unique story - a story from the heart. But if you think about it, our hearts can get in the way of our best intentions.

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The New York Times recently ran an article about writers and the software they use. The most shocking aspect of the piece? One writer admitted to using Dramatica. GASP!!

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Sometimes, no matter how hard you try, you just can’t crack the code of a story. Whether it’s a film you are analyzing or a spec screenplay that you’ve been working on for weeks, the storyform can remain frustratingly elusive. There is a technique I’ve found that works, and although it’s not revolutionary, it might help you get over that Dramatica-imposed writer’s block.

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