The hardest part of the Dramatica learning curve is the language. The overall concepts of the Main and Impact Character and their relationship together (Subjective Story) are easy to comprehend. It’s those terms found at the bottom of the chart - Non-Accurate, Un-Proven, Reduction and yes, Induction and Deduction - that can give one reason to pause. Here’s a short explanation of Induction and Deduction that may be useful.

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By far, this was the funniest Google search term someone used to find this site. In an effort to provide more of what people are looking for when they come here, I installed a statistics program called Mint a couple of weeks ago. Alongside the countless searches for “children of men analysis” (people seem to really like that film!), this quote - “the cult of Dramatica” really stood out. How can a theory of story be so easily equated with the kind of fervor that sometimes accompanies religion?

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Although seemingly incompatible, current personal productivity paradigms have a lot in common with modern screenwriting. Today there seems to be two major camps when it comes to planning out your day: those that advocate “getting things done” and those that advocate doing “first things first.” Diving into more detail on where these paradigms come from provides a screenwriter with some interesting tools.

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You’ve finished your first draft. You’ve waited the six weeks you’re supposed to wait before reading it. And now you can’t wait to dive back into it and see how it all works. The pages turn, yet you can’t believe your eyes. “What a mess! How am I going to fix it?!”

This [...]

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Suppose you had taken a bite of the most delicious birthday cake ever. This cake was so good that you would do anything to have more of it. But what if I told you that this cake was unique - one of a kind. Would you want to try to make one of [...]

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It should come as no surprise that super-egos run rampant in Hollywood. “Why bother having a story based on familiar structures? I don’t care about character development or plot progression. I’ve got a better way of telling a story. Audiences are tired of the same old thing.”

Are they?

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I can.
Or at least I did this afternoon as I trolled through the Dramatica website. A smile crossed my face as I stumbled across the same extensive Dramatica AOL log transcripts that I had read over 10 years ago. Of course, back then there was only America On-Line and Netscape and Windows 3.1. [...]

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For the longest time, I have always been the type of writer who likes everything spelled out in advance - mostly with the help of Dramatica. But lately I’ve been reconsidering this approach.

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Part of the reason we keep coming back to stories is because they offer us something we can’t get in our own lives.

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Plain and simple: Dramatica can help you write something you’ve never written before. It can help you find a story you never knew was inside you.

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