
The Most Boring Storyform in the Entire World
03/17/17 • 24 min
In this episode we cover the world's most familiar--and therefore, drabbest and dreariest--story structure. A popular message out of America in the mid to late 20th century, this storyform speaks of the essence what it is to be Male and focused on achievement.
Show Notes & Links
The Dramatica Mentorship Program - our premiere service designed to give you the tools and techniques for applying Dramatica's powerful concepts to your stories.
- Why Daylights Savings is a Bad Idea Smart people agree
- Narrative First Membership Support your favorite story structure publication while receiving hidden insights into the magic of Dramatica
- "Nosedive" Black Mirror Episode Definitely check this one out--a complete story in an hour!
- Outlining a Television Series with Dramatica everything you need to know about planning four years ahead
- Tangled: Before Ever After I hear the story is good
- Episodes of Sex and the City and Ally McBeal with complete stories in them
- Dramatica analysis of Roman Holiday You can find links to the podcast and video of the meeting here
- Next month's Dramatica analysis of an episode of The Americans this replaces the Breaking Bad episode we were going to do. Sorry, but this kid hates spoilers!
- Dramatica analysis of The Sixth Sense group analysis of this scary film
- Dramatica analysis of American Beauty sad sack finds beauty in suburbia
- Dramatica analysis of The Usual Suspects the greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world that every story was a Hero's Journey
- Dramatica analysis filter Bookmark this link and use it as much as you can
- Rethinking and Revisiting the Reservoir Dogs Analysis the article where we show a more accurate way of determine the storyform for this indie favorite
- Storyforms with an Overall Story Issue of Self-Interest quick link so you can follow along as you listen to the excitement
- Dramatica analysis of Witness the "greatest" screenplay of the 1980s through the eyes of Dramatica
- Our analysis of Arrival our view of this spectacular sci-fi story
- Plotting Your Story with Dramatica our current series of articles outlining a specific methodology for developing a solid structure for your next story
Narrative First theme by Alex Hull. Hear more on his Soundcloud, Operation Solace
In this episode we cover the world's most familiar--and therefore, drabbest and dreariest--story structure. A popular message out of America in the mid to late 20th century, this storyform speaks of the essence what it is to be Male and focused on achievement.
Show Notes & Links
The Dramatica Mentorship Program - our premiere service designed to give you the tools and techniques for applying Dramatica's powerful concepts to your stories.
- Why Daylights Savings is a Bad Idea Smart people agree
- Narrative First Membership Support your favorite story structure publication while receiving hidden insights into the magic of Dramatica
- "Nosedive" Black Mirror Episode Definitely check this one out--a complete story in an hour!
- Outlining a Television Series with Dramatica everything you need to know about planning four years ahead
- Tangled: Before Ever After I hear the story is good
- Episodes of Sex and the City and Ally McBeal with complete stories in them
- Dramatica analysis of Roman Holiday You can find links to the podcast and video of the meeting here
- Next month's Dramatica analysis of an episode of The Americans this replaces the Breaking Bad episode we were going to do. Sorry, but this kid hates spoilers!
- Dramatica analysis of The Sixth Sense group analysis of this scary film
- Dramatica analysis of American Beauty sad sack finds beauty in suburbia
- Dramatica analysis of The Usual Suspects the greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world that every story was a Hero's Journey
- Dramatica analysis filter Bookmark this link and use it as much as you can
- Rethinking and Revisiting the Reservoir Dogs Analysis the article where we show a more accurate way of determine the storyform for this indie favorite
- Storyforms with an Overall Story Issue of Self-Interest quick link so you can follow along as you listen to the excitement
- Dramatica analysis of Witness the "greatest" screenplay of the 1980s through the eyes of Dramatica
- Our analysis of Arrival our view of this spectacular sci-fi story
- Plotting Your Story with Dramatica our current series of articles outlining a specific methodology for developing a solid structure for your next story
Narrative First theme by Alex Hull. Hear more on his Soundcloud, Operation Solace
Previous Episode

Arrival & The Zero-Sum Game
In this episode we make the connection between Arrival and the holistic approach to story structure offered by the Dramatica theory of story. Why speculate about how your story will end when you can make meaningful progress by developing a narrative that supports your artistic intent?
In addition we take a look into creating dramatic tension and hooking your audience into your story by looking both subjectively from within you story and objectively from outside of your story. Sound cool? Then dive in and open up your mind to a brand new way of thinking about story and story structure.
Show Notes & Links
The Dramatica Mentorship Program - our premiere service designed to give you the tools and techniques for applying Dramatica's powerful concepts to your stories.
- Narrative First Storyforms All the Dramatica storyforms from our analyses located on one convenient page
- Arrival Our analysis of the Best Picture nominee
- The Yellow Birds Our analysis of what will probably be a Best Picture nominee next year
- Discuss Dramatica our forum for anyone interested in learning more and more about the Dramatica theory of story
- Storyform discussion of Pixar's WALL-E It was worth a shot :)
- Narrative First Membership page the place to go if you want to sign up to support our site and have access to all of our cool super secret features
- Finding the Major Dramatic Question of Your Story our third article in a series on Plotting with Dramatica
- The Story Goal the concept of the Story Goal within a narrative. Great place to start when writing a film.
- Series of articles on The Story Goal A power packed page full of insight into this very important concept of narrative.
- Inner Worlds Outer Worlds Fun documentary on the fractal nature of the Universe. Dramatica works, in part, because of its fractal nature
- The Dramatica Mentorship Program learn everything we learned about Dramatica over the past two decades in less than six months!
- On the Nature of Daylight the opening and closing score for Arrival by Max Richter. Awesome and emotional. Put on repeat for best results.
- Ex Machina Mea Culpa the podcast where I admit to getting a storyform wrong and explain where the misinterpretation came from
- Ex Machina: The Narrative Code Hidden within the Machine our article explaining the Ex Machina effect--where you see the impact from the Influence Character as the source of the Main Character's issues...not so!
- Dramatica Table of Story Elements follow along by downloading a PDF of the all-important Table of Story Elements
- More insight into the storyform for Arrival an explanation of what we discovered once we created the actual Dramatica storyform based on our initial analysis
- Tying the Towers of Story Structure Together discovering the connective tissue between the individual Throughlines of a story
- Slipstream Time Hacking GREAT summary of a book exploring productivity through the eyes of general relativity
Next Episode

What Story Structure Looks Like To Your Characters
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
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