TCotCB has 28 chapters - many of the sections I identified are composed of two chapters, often one showing a disruptive incident and another showing all the reactions to it. This pattern also appeared in P&P - almost every ball scene was followed by a 'postmortem' scene from the Bennets and sometimes also one from Darcy and the Bigleys. Telling and not showing, hmm... well I personally believe that novels need to have both telling and showing. But I agree that a synopsis or outline is all telling, because it is not fiction, it presents information in more of a journalistic way rather than a dramatic way. The basic difference between showing and telling is that telling is clear, short, and direct, while showing is an enactment or simulation which takes longer and may be less clear but is more entertaining and persuasive. In a novel, the information which should be told is that which is not important or entertaining enough to spend extra wordcount on showing it, and also that which is so important that it should be stated clearly in addition to being shown.

I have not written anything about Dramatica - that is a commercial project and they opted to keep the inner workings of their story engine secret, so the public cannot completely understand or write authoritatively about the project. Also I disagree with parts of the theory so I would be a poor choice of person to explain it. If you have read the online theory book and Dramatica for Screenwriters and you still have questions the best thing to do is join the mailing list and ask Chris Huntley yourself, he regularly answers theory questions there.

Trope, yes it means a figure of speech in a rhetorical context and has a related but different meaning in a fictional context. A trope is an object which has a lot of cultural symbolic meaning attached to it, thus the object is used as a 'figure of speech' for the meaning. For example a vampire. Vampires symbolize seduction, greed/theft that weakens others, unnatural strength often unethically used, and secrets that must be hidden in the dark of night but die when exposed to the light of day. A vampire is a complex mythical trope, but a trope can also be a simple natural object like a rose, an inanimate technological object like a laser, a more abstract concept like pregnancy, or a famous person; any reference that the author uses because it will have meaning to the audience. Tropes usually come in sets of related objects, for example wooden stakes and holy water go with vampires while lasers often go with robots or spaceships and people wearing some kind of military uniform. I was referring to a set of tropes and their associated themes as a motif.

To Sunandshadow:

Will you be posting a plot of your story? What is the hardest thing to do right now?

Wai, actually I was just playing with plot ideas before I read your post. I don't know if I will be able to come up with a plot I like enough to post it.

What is the hardest thing to do right now... I'm not entirely sure what you're asking but what I mainly have problems with when trying to make a plot outline is that I have a lot of ideas but they won't fit together into the same story, and I usually have a lots of ideas for some things like how two characters could meet but no particular ideas for a climax. Was that what you wanted to know?

Oh and BTW, I think this friday's lesson will focus on character creation, unless anyone would like to request something different. I figured we pretty much have to do characters before proceeding to a detailed chapter outline, and I've already done about all I can do with worldbuilding theory in my developer journal.

[Edited by - sunandshadow on August 28, 2007 6:13:46 PM]

What I learned about contructing plots from this exercise:

I found this workshop quite hard especially if I didn't start with a fresh premise. It would have been ok if I did workshop #1 if I had an outline in front of me and just change the characters.

It happened that when I entered this workshop, I was having a hard time convincing someone else that it is okay to leave stuff outside the house ("wouldn't people just take it if you leave them outside?") where I live, because the neighborhood is not bad. Then I started pondering what it was that allowed this small crime-free-ness to exist. So I wanted to write about a crime-free future and what it takes to get there. I started with something like a thesis, not a story. As I started exploring different aspects about the paradise (why is it sustainable?), I could feel that I was tackling harder and harder questions about the problem of coming up with a paradise.

From the perspective of my effort of figuring how the paradise come about, I find harder and harder questions. While the concept of a paradise does not have a plot, my effort reaching it becomes a plot. Therefore, I actually didn't design the plot, instead, I am only listing the order of questions that I was able to tackle. Since the last question is always the hardest, the thesis takes the shape of a plot with rising action and (multiple) climaxes, one stronger than the other.

Because of this relation, I observe that I am able to build the plot block by block. When I look at my outline, I see that I could actually conclude the story at after any chapter. Conversely, I could add chapters to expand the story. At the end, I have a plot. But I didn't start with an overall concept of the plot. I focused on answering a question. In doing this, I thought that I had to discard every character and situation that I had imagined. But they seem to return because at one point or another, the question goes into their realms.


I was wondering whether your story has a similar property. What are the easy concepts to talk about the premise? What are the harder ones? The hardest one?

Oh good, building a plot by asking more complicated questions and exploring farther into a topic is exactly what's supposed to happen. [smile] Not that that's the only way to come up with a plot, but it is the way to get to plot if what you start with is theme. As I see it a novel is a complex problem which should be attacked from whichever directions a particular writer's inspiration and instinct are strongest in. I've mentioned this idea before as the 'circle of story elements' - a writer can start at any of: character, character dynamic, plot, theme, or worldbuilding, and work their way from one of these to the others until they have covered them all.

However. if you think you could end at any step of your plot I think you must be missing something. The climax has to be thematically special in that answering the climactic question creates a feeling of satisfaction while the earlier questions are supposed to raise the tension and emotional stakes.

My story - well, I think I mentioned that I have found the problem of making an unjust universe just to be an insoluble one. I'm trying to avoid that issue in my current story idea though. I don't want to portray a universe which is untrue to the real universe as I understand it, so I don't ever want to show magic or destiny as the solution to an important problem. Another issue I have always wrestled with is how to tell a dramatic story without hurting the characters too much - some writers like to torture their characters or feel that sacrifice is necessary and valuable, while I like the kind of story where conflicting ambitions, prejudices, and misunderstanding get untangles without any irreparable damage having been done. I struggle with the romance convention that true love has to be monogamous, yet I would really like my main character to be able to understand each of the other main characters in an intimate way, which would be easier to accomplish if I could have the main character sleep with them.

(Actually there's an important point: the questions/issues in my story are not really in order of complexity, they are in order of intimacy, because issues like trust and commitment can't be tackled until after taking several chapters to build the relationships between the characters; on the other hand issues like prejudice can be tackled immediately, and issues of how to punish a wrong-doer have to be handled at the same time as issues of how to comfort and heal a victim.)

I have problems making the plot work while each character's actions remain true to their personality, and the worldbuilding also remains consistent. And coming up with a climax that is surprising, dramatic, and satisfyingly resolves the main problem has always been the most difficult part of plotting for me.

But I guess you are asking which particular themes or sub-themes I have trouble dealing with? I can't say that I really have trouble with any of them, except in the case that I can't verbalize exactly what the theme I want to cover is. If I can't verbalize it I can't clearly grasp it in my mind, and I need to do some philosophical babbling on paper (like the brain-dump I posted earlier in this thread) or analyze an example fiction where the theme is present until I talk my way to figuring out what the essence of the issue is.

(If I've still managed to misunderstand your question maybe you could give a specific example, like asking me whether X or Y was harder to do some specific theme with.)

ok

It seems that if one arbitrarily assign difficulties to tasks and order them, one get a plot. Suppose the main character M's goal is to sleep with A, B and E as a mean to heal them, and the difficulty (arbitrarily assigned is that A < B < E).

premise: Problem X can only be solved by sharing Y.

logline: In order to heal A and B, M must make them do something that they had never thought possible.

outline:

ch 1 - M see problem X between A and B, and decides to fix them by letting them do Y.

ch 2 - M brings A and B together, but identifies that E also needs to come do Y.

ch 3 - In order to make E come, M discovers that C and D must come too.

ch 4 - After great effort and with the help of A and B, M brought C and D to do Y.

ch 5 - Then, M realizes a problem: in order to bring E into the party, E must not know that A is there. M figures out a solution.

ch 6 - M brings them all together, and the identity of A is revealed. Now all the X problems are fixed and an happy ending ensures.


After this, it follows logically to do a character design such that A, B, C, D, E have a dynamic that fits the outline. It seems that one can actually add twists to the outline without knowing what A, B, C, D, E, M, or X actually are.

I am going to break down my current outline into letters to see what it might look like. Do you think that it is a good idea ?

Arbitrarily assign difficulties to tasks and order them... Well, yeah that gives you a plot, but is it causally logical and thematically unified? Your example has no theme, although you could probably work one in as you fleshed it out. The difficulties don't seem truly arbitrary; the sequence is: initial problem, complication, prerequisite, additional help needed, prerequisite resolved but now deception needed, complication and original problem finally resolved. You could rearrange those somewhat but not with total randomness. There are plot generation systems that work like this such as Storybase and Eric Stanley Gardner's Plot Wheel. But they generally require human editing to turn the random plot into something good. Although in the case of your outline this is all irrelevant since it was not created arbitrarily and has a theme.

I think converting stories into simple algebra-like formulae can often be useful. Given that the last version of your outline I saw didn't have character names or the characters doing much in the way of actions, I don't think you'll actually get something like your example, but sure you might as well try and see what you get.

The outline is not arbitrary, only the difficulty is arbitrarily assigned. I designed the outline to make is superficially interesting. If I didn't add my favor of twists, the initial outline would be this:

0.000) M finds that A and B need to do Y because A and B have problem X.
1.000) M makes A and B do Y. Problem X is solved.
~fin~

I would say that it is not a good plot because it doesn't seem to have any challenge or discovery. I could give this criticism on the plot without knowing what A, B, X, Y are. However, the ones reading it cannot tell what plots are best to add, because they don't know what the themes are.


Analysis of the episodic plot structure:

This seems to be the story structure of a typical MMORPG:

Let i start as zero.

i.000) M goes to area A_i and discovers enemy E_i.
i.333) M tries to kill E_i but fails.
i.667) M trains.
i.999) M comes back and kills E_i. now M is ready to move onto area A_(i+1).
~repeat~

As long as E_i is easier to kill than E_(i+1), this loop creates a story (albeit a boring one). The task of creating a plot becomes a task of adding variations to the modula story. An improvement:

i.000) M goes to area A_i and discovers enemy E_i.
i.333) M tries to kill E_i but fails.
i.500) M discovers a new game rule R_i in the game world.
i.667) M trains to understand rule R_i.
i.999) M comes back and kills E_i. now M is ready to move onto area A_(i+1).
~repeat~

Suddenly, the plot becomes more interesting (at least to me). The observation here is that the designer does not need to know what M, A, E, R are at this stage, yet the designer can improve the plot. One might validly criticise that this plot is repetitive and meaningless. In order to add a meaning I insert this relation:

The rules R_1 to R_n that the character M learns form a sequence that explains mystery Y, where R_i leads to a question about R_(i+1).

Now the plot has the potential of being meaningful. In order to make the plot terminatable at any chapter, I add this relation:

If M does not discover R_i, the story ends with M being content that someone in the future would continue this quest and figure it out. A happy ending ensures as M reflects on how far he was able to go in the journey.

The plot of The Road to Paradise follows this algorithm at the high level. A process of achievement forms a loop that can be broken at discovery stage and still forms a coherent plot line with climaxes of increasing intensity. The Road to Paradise has this property that allows it to be episodically designed. Because the problem of getting to a paradise could pose an infinite number of discoveries. Here, when the narrator achieves the state of being content at a future point of failure, the story becomes capable of ending at any stage i with satisfaction.

After the letters are instantiated with what they actually are, one can add variations to the plot (i.e. foreshadowing).

Re: Sunandshadow

Only after thinking about the above, I feel more equiped to response about a plot. This is what I interpret from your story.



Premise: The concept X is true. (or equivalently, Y is false.)

Logline: The mediator M verifies that X is true by helping characters A and B to eliminate problem Z through conquering obstacle P.

Constraints:
1) P can be conquered by abilities L1 L2 L3 L4 L5.
2) To obtain ability L_i, A or B must R with a corresponding shapeshifter S_i that possesses the ability.
3) M discovers the need to conquer P through testing on humans T1, T2, T3, and T4

Outline:
0.000) M wants to prove that X is true.
0.010) M finds A and B where Z is happening.
0.020) M analyzes the cause of Z, and determines that P must be couquered.
0.030) M wants to test X first before working on A and B.
0.040) M finds humans T1 and T2 where Z is also happening.
0.050) M makes T1 do R with S1. T1 attains ability L1.
0.060) M makes T2 do R with S2. T2 attains ability L2. Z is solved for T1 and T2.
0.070) M finds human T3 and T4 for a second test.
0.080) M lets T3 R with S3 to get L3.
0.090) M lets T4 R with S4 to get L4. Z is also solved for T3 and T4.
0.100) M is convinced that X is true. However, M doesn't know what ability B needs.
0.110) M figures that there is a fifth ability L5 possessed by S5.
0.120) M lets A get L1 from S1.
0.130) M lets B get L5 from S5.
1.000) The problem Z is gone. Story ends happily.

This is my understanding of your plot so far. I have arbitrary assumed that the test humans and the shifters would match up. I don't know what actually goes on, this is just my first guess from your post.