Tuesday, February 24, 2015

Dramatica - Ok - Fine - Use It.

In the past, I've been emotionally disturbed by story writing programs such as Dramatica.

I've cooled down a bit.  So sure, go ahead and use Dramatica to create a story.  But with one caveat.

At some point you're going to have to read your story and develop it's humanity.  You're going to need to open yourself up and be sincere.

The fact is that characters are not pieces of construction material that you piece together to build a structure.  True, stories are about structure - behavioral and social structure - human desires and human relationships.  Using the word structure can be misleading - you may start to think of stories as Lego sets.  People draw diagrams of how the structure of a story can look.

Sure, it's fine to use the diagrams to outline a story but at some point you have to get rid of the cookie cutter and make sure you're being sincere.  Make sure your characters are being sincere.  Make sure you are simplifying and clarifying each scene to express a clear idea.

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