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