Story "Driver"


The 12 Essential QuestionsEvery Writer Should Answer

5. Story Driver: Action or Decision?

Some stories are driven by actions. Others are forced along by decisions. All stories have some degree of both. This question determines which one "triggers" the other, but does not determine the ratio between the two.

If actions that occur in your story determine the types of decisions that need to be made, choose Action.

If decisions or deliberations that happen in your story precipitate the actions that follow, choose Decision.

Story Driver: The mechanism by which the plot is moved forward.

Action or Decision describes how the story is driven forward. The question is: Do Actions precipitate Decisions or vice versa?

Every story revolves around a central issue, but that central issue only becomes a problem when an action or a decision sets events into motion. If an action gets things going, then many decisions may follow in response. If a decision kicks things off, then many actions may follow until that decision has been accommodated.

The Action/Decision relationship will repeat throughout the story. In an Action story, decisions will seem to resolve the problem until another action gets things going again. Decision stories work the same way. Actions will get everything in line until another decision breaks it all up again. Similarly, at the end of a story there will be an essential need for an action to be taken or a decision to be made. Both will occur, but one of them will be the roadblock that must be removed in order to enable the other.

Whether Actions or Decisions move your story forward, the Story Driver will be seen in the instigating and concluding events, forming bookends around the dramatics.

Examples of Action and Decision:



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Tannin Sensitivity (Sensitivity to Tannins)

Here's the ungarnished truth about tannins and tannin sensitivity. As you probably know, tannins are astringent polymers that naturally occur in coffee, tea, red wine and chocolate (among the most popular dietary sources). Effects of Tannins: Tannins may cause migraines, joint pain that mimics artheritis, tiredness, depression, bowel problems, problems with vision when focussing, digestion problems, thin brittle skin, perhaps hair loss and slow hair growth, and myriad other symptoms, both subtle and severe. For years I suffered a series of symptoms that I had pinned on coffee, uncertain about tea, and pretty sure were tied to red wine - no problem with chocolate. These symptoms were such diverse elements as - lethargy, tiredness, depression, joint pain in hips, shoulders and fingers, thin brittle skin, hair loss, slowed hair growth, slowed metabolism and even acid reflux and heartburn and diminished ability to focus closely, requiring reading glasses. I tried experim...
Read more

What is Mental Relativity?

Mental Relativity is a new model of psychology that grew out of the development of the Dramatica Theory of Story. Dramatica's central concept is called the Story Mind. According to the theory, every story has a mind of its own - the structure represents the mind's psychology and the storytelling develops its personality. The Dramatica theory was used to create a computer model of the Story Mind, which was patented and became the core "Story Engine" of a software product, also called Dramatica, which is the best selling story development tool in the world. The Story Engine is actually able to predict a psychological structure for a story based on an author's answers to questions about his or her dramatic intent. It wasn't long before it was discovered that this same Story Mind model was also able to predict the psychologies of real people in addition to characters. In further exploring this unexpected outgrowth of the theory, we discovered that the model was...
Read more

Origins of Mental Relativity

Many people have asked how we came up with the Mental Relativity Theory. Well, it didn't happen all at once. In fact, it all began with our attempt to understand the structure of fictional stories. That was a three year full-time effort, 8 hours a day. And the theory we now grew out of quite different concepts those we have now refined. In going through my archives, I just discovered four hours of recordings we made in 1991 to document our very first attempt at a "complete" theory - kind of a unified field theory of story. Here are all four hours of audio in mp3 formt, divided into 8 parts. Enjoy! Origins of the Dramatica Theory - Part 1 of 8 Origins of the Dramatica Theory - Part 2 of 8 Origins of the Dramatica Theory - Part 3 of 8 Origins of the Dramatica Theory - Part 4 of 8 Origins of the Dramatica Theory - Part 5 of 8 Origins of the Dramatica Theory - Part 6 of 8 Origins of the Dramatica Theory - Part 7 of 8 Origins of the Dramatica Theory - Part 8 of 8
Read more