Figuring Out the Throughlines of a Complete Narrative

Continuing the series on Identifying the Key Story Points of a Narrative, I explain a method for singling out the various perspectives within a complete story. For each Throughline, conflict appears as either a Situation, an Activity, a Fixed Attitude, or a Manner of Thinking. Effective narratives balance out these four areas throughout the Four Throughlines. In addition to explaining a process for determining these areas in your story, I also explain what Dramatica means by Conceptualizing. While easier definitions might make Dramatica more approachable, an understanding of the original terminology leads to greater accuracy. And I start things off with a brief discussion of some tools I use and practices I engage in while working on this site and my own writing projects.

The Dramatica Mentorship Program - my premier service designed to give you the tools and techniques for applying Dramatica's powerful concepts to your stories.

The Dramatica Writers Group offers feedback for writers and their projects.
Ulysses Everyone's go-to text editor of the moment. My personal favorite listed below.
DeckSet App Text-based presentation editor for creating slides
@viticci and @shawnblanc inspirational writers who blog for a living
iaWriter My text editor of choice for writing articles and blog posts. Opinionated and simple.
Shawn Blanc's Ulysses Setup The inspiration for my new arrangement of article ideas and drafts
Captain America: Civil War Discussion on Discuss Dramatica and the moment when Dramatica Story Expert Mike Lucas thought Tony Stark was not the Main Character
An Analysis of The Big Sick Insights into the success of this narrative and its unique arrangement of story points
The Storyforming Series A collection of video tutorials gifting tips and tricks to accelerate your application of the Dramatica theory of story to your writing
Dunkirk: Storyforming Twenty minutes on Christopher Nolan's epic WWII film through the lens of Dramatica; what worked and what could have been improved
My Analysis of Dunkirk An in-depth look at the thematic structure of the film, pinpointing the missing pieces that trended the narrative towards propaganda
Episode 37: Discovering Dramatica and the Genesis of Narrative First: Part One By far the most popular podcast and a great introduction to this site and Dramatica theory
Plot Points and the Inciting Incident Without a doubt the most popular article on the entire site, this one explains the driving forces behind key plot points of a complete narrative
trust a hero
The Definition of Conceptualizing from a Dramatica perspective--more integrating and fitting in, rather than a plan that someone thinks is bad
Conceptualizing Conceptualizing Great discussion from the community regarding this complex and often misunderstood term
On The Waterfront Analysis Storyform and podcast covering the deep thematic structure of this classic film
Preparing to Write a Complete Story A series of articles taking the writer from initial inequity, through Goal and Consequence to Protagonist and Antagonist, and finishing with an enlightening point-of-view on the various perspectives of conflict within a story
The Dramatica Table of Story Elements A PDF version of Dramatica's Storymind at rest. Useful when listening to the podcast.

Narrative First theme by Alex Hull. Hear more on his Soundcloud, Operation Solace