One thing I always thought about Dramatica is it’s a sure fire way to build your story.
What I found is that Dramatica forces your stories into certain molds.
And I can’t figure out how to do avoid that.
Opening Dramatica reveals a clunky interface that really should have spelled the doom of the program. Get with a better graphics designer to have him set you up with a better interface!
There’s 12 separate icons. I just go to story guide and begin the interview process. I really think the tutorial needs to be far more in depth, because it’s probably one of those things where the designers of the program may be using words that make perfect sense to them, and it eludes many writers…
Here’s a hint – use Level 3 to do your story guide. This gives you the most information you now have to plan out in the process, and will make you write a much better book.
Dramatica places FAR MORE emphasis on relationships between characters than it does to the events.
In many ways, they almost lose me there. In Hunt For Red October, a book I’ve read many times, there’s only a little explored in Jack Ryan’s relationship with his family, and with the Admiral who’s in charge of the CIA. Does it add to the story? Yes, but in many, many novels the relationships to other characters takes a firm backseat to the plot.
I’d love a new edition of Dramatica that would REDUCE this, perhaps place it far lower down in the hierarchy. When you begin Dramatica 4.0, it begins the process of asking about the characters, then their relationships right away.
You’ll be prompted to enter eight characters into the software, and then you have to show relationships between them. Here’s where I feel a more helpful tutorial could benefit the user! Explain perhaps how all characters are inter related by the events of the book, how to show this in Dramatica, etc. So literally, your brain will trip out at first trying to say… “Uh, Bret Bryant is friends with Clifton”, and then scratch your head trying to think of something else to say there.
In many ways, this made my first book a much better book, because I had to try to now incorporate a minor part of what Dramatica wanted me to put in.
One of the criticisms about Dramatica was the fact that it almost forces you into “the hero’s Journey” template. Yes, not every novel is based upon the hero’s journey template. I still feel that this is a very pricey software package that’s very good to use for some of your novels, because you can choose who to leave out (of your prototype characters) and after completing the process, you can change what parts you didn’t like.
Once you get done with the endless part one of Characters and relationships, you now get to the meat of the story – part two story forming.
Here’s where you see the 16,000 kinds of stories you could tell getting cut drastically in number, until the final choice reads “1”.
The Story Driver, Story Limit, Story outcome and Story Judgment areas essentially determine the entire book – no kidding! Four simple radio button choices, and then the four theme choices (throughline, concern, issues, problem).
This part alone may be the determining value for many writers – you feel like you really DID something here, just by answering 8 simple choice questions!
Exposition development follows, and if you are more a pant’ser than planner, just skip past to the scenario construction.
I will say this – you can’t do Dramatica in one day. It’s a week long thing. Get your mind wrapped around that right away. You can’t do the complex characters and level 3 and finish it in less than 5 days. Try lots of coffee, and some kind of chocolate. You can’t eat a piece of chocolate until you finish a step in Dramatica!
If you’re writing a trilogy or series, parts of this will get mind numbing – just keep the first story’s Dramatica open while you do the story forming in the latest one, so the parts that don’t change you can just copy and paste over.
One of the lesser known functions in Dramatica is the Brainstorming function. If you’re stuck, you can use the brainstormer to try to shift the direction of the story, and recover momentum. Or it’s possible (when you’re out of ideas), to just brainstorm, and there’s a whole book in outline you can just refine and start writing!
Now that I just typed that, I’m going to have to do that!
Dramatica forces you to answer questions, and raise your awareness of your novel beyond “it’s a book about…” to being able to SEE it.
The key to Dramatica is knowing how to use it – your initial choices in the program determine the story form. I haven’t used Dramatica to plot my last three novels, but it’s most definitely a tool every author should have at their disposal to plot out novels.
For $129, it’s something you have to think long and hard about whether or not you want to use it! You can try a demo, and see how it works. I used it to plot my first three novels, and I can honestly say for the beginner writer, it helps you to learn story telling essentials.
