Narrative First: where story is always king

It's one thing to play God when writing a story, but wouldn't it be great if you could see what the major plot points in your story look like from the point-of-view of your characters? Well, now you can.

In this episode, not only do we present our greatest impression yet, but we also manage to cover the Four Throughlines of Manchester by the Sea, speak about the objective and subjective nature of story paradigms, and lay down a detailed approach for connecting story structure to your characters.

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

Show Notes & Links

• Narrative First Membership special goodies for friends of the show
• The Throughlines of Manchester by the Sea the Four Throughlines for this magnificent film
• The "You and I Are Both Alike" Montage the classic Dramatica introductory video. There is a structural reason why this phrase keeps popping up
• The Incredibles Dramatica analysis of this Brad Bird spectacular
• The Roman Holiday Videocast our Dramatica analysis of this classic presented in vivid color
• Episode #33: The Most Boring Storyform in the Entire World last week's episode about the Issue of Self-yawn-Interest
• Main Character Approach does the Main Character of a story prefer to take action in the external world or do they prefer to internalize when it comes to personal problems?
• Main Character Problem-Solving Style does the Main Character of a story prefer to take action in the external world or do they prefer to internalize when it comes to personal problems?
• Star Wars the Dramatica analysis of a film I saw 250+ times on my parent's first VCR
• The Matrix the Dramatica analysis of naked batteries
• Generating Dramatic Tension Within Each Act Of Your Story: Part One how to use the Story Requirements and Story Prerequisites to generate tension in your story
• Plotting Your Story With Dramatica the series of articles on how to plot your entire story out using Dramatica's insightful and powerful story points
• Subscribe to Narrative First be a friend and join the greatest living story structure site on Earth
• The Veil Between Author and Audience key insight on the difference between Dramatica and other theories or paradigms of narrative
• Screenwriting with Outliner4D and Dramatica on a Mac our experiment with reinstalling this Windows program on our beautiful Macs
• The Plot Sequence Report articles and blog posts covering this magical report from Dramatica
• Finding the Major Dramatic Question Of Your Story instead of guessing, you can actually tie it to the deep thematics of your narrative
• Dramatica: A Fractal Model of Story Structure it just keeps going...and going...and going...

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

This week we shorten things up a bit and take a look at one story point: the Main Character Approach. Does your Main Character prefer to solve problems externally or internally? The answer creates a pathway for the Audience to become a part of your story.

In addition, we take a quick analysis at the live action Jungle Book movie from Disney.

Remember, you can always Ask Us a Question we answer everything, or Leave a Voicemail click the microphone button and leave a message after the beep.

Show Notes & Links

• Separating out the Relationship Throughline from the relationship in the Overall Story
• Figuring Out the Act Order of Seasons for Your Show With Dramatica you can figure it out before you even start writing a single word
• A Skeleton of Scene Structure in Dramatica the beginning of our investigation into the structure of an individual scene
• The Dramatic Components of a Scene more insight into the creation of scenes using Dramatica
• All the Light We Cannot See One of the greatest novels of all time
• The Eight Essential Ingredients of Story Last week's article on the the first two dynamic questions: Main Character Resolve and Main Character Growth
• The Eight Essential Ingredients of Story Podcast Last week's podcast and first in a series on the eight dynamic questions from Dramatica
• Redefining Main Character and Protagonist A must read for anyone new to Dramatica

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

In order to wind up the dramatic potential for a story, an Author must answer eight essential questions. In this episode, we cover the first two ingredients of an effective narrative.

Stories are not simply about three-dimensional characters bumping up against rising tension. Rather, they model the human mind's problem-solving process in an attempt to argue the effectiveness of a particular point-of-view. The closer a story mirrors this process the clearer it's message and the less likely an Audience will sense there are any story "holes".

We also take our first look at the animated film The Little Prince and offer a suggestion for improving the narrative drive that seems to die out towards the end of the film.

Links and Show Notes

• The Audience Appreciations of Story series of articles covering story points from the Audience's point-of-view
• From Logline to Treatment E-Mail Course sign up now and start developing that great story idea!
• How to Tell If Your Main Character Faces Overwhelming or Surmountable Odds the balance of two story points helps determine the essence of dramatic tension in a story
• What the Inciting Incident of a Story Really Is the difference between Inciting Incident and the Story Driver
• Robert the Bruce is Not the Main Character of Braveheart Robert the Bruce the Main Character? Ehhh.....
• How to Build a Strong Narrative great explanation of the inequity within a story
• The Little Prince fails to soar L.A. Times critic Charles Solomon's review of The Little Prince

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

After follow-up, we dive into an analysis of Hell or High Water, the new Western from Sicario writer Taylor Sheridan. Following that we take a look at the Dramatica story point known as Audience Reach. By combining the Main Character's Problem-Solving Style with the Story Limit, writers can accurately predict who will be sitting in the audience.

Links and Show Notes

• Florence Foster Jenkins analysis - Deep thematic analysis of the film
• The Throughlines of Florence Foster Jenkins - Throughline analysis of the same film
• The Dramatica Table of Story Elements - link to a free PDF of the Table of Story Elements you can print out and keep with you wherever you go
• The Actual and Apparent Nature of Story - our article on the difference between Work stories and Dilemma stories
• Analysis of Star Wars, The Matrix, Braveheart, and Memento
• The Plot Sequence Report from Dramatica - a crazy report that actually shows writers what the structure of their story looks like from the character's point-of-view
• Main Character Problem-Solving Style - the story point that defines how the Main Character prefers to solve problems
• Story Limit - the story point that defines whether the story comes to an end because options have run out, or because time has run out
• Female Main Characters Who Think Like Female Main Characters - our article on the difference between Linear thinkers and Holistic thinkers
• Dramatica Analysis Filter - a collection of tools to help you discover the different combination of story points in over 300 films, novels, and plays

And don't forget...

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

We're very excited to announce that we hired our first two employees here at Narrative First! The explosion in requests for our services over the summer kicked our plans into high gear. We look forward to providing not only a higher quality of service, but also unique and compelling services not available elsewhere.

Story consultant Jon Gentry will be helping out with story analysis with an emphasis on real world narratives while vitality coach Summer De La Fuente will be using Dramatica to help locate and resolve their own personal issues.

More detailed info on our site within the coming days...

In addition, I cover my initial analysis of Florence Foster Jenkins.

Links and Show Notes

• The Dramatica Analysis Filter - search through hundreds of analyses to find just the right storyform
• Download the SparksGrove/Thoughtform analysis of ESPN, Pay TV, and OTT conflict - link to the original report provided by SparksGrove. Note that there are errors within the report that will be corrected at some in the future here on Narrative First
• ESPN Can't Stop Bleeding Subscribers - read how the cable sports giant lost 1.5 million subscribers during the 2nd quarter of 2016
• Traditional Pay TV Operators Surviving OTT Onslaught - read how Pay TV basically followed Thoughtform's analysis and found success by showing how insufficient and inadequate OTT services really are

And don't forget...

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