Dramatica: A New Theory Of Story
By Melanie Anne Phillips and Chris Huntley

How This Book Is Arranged

Part of what makes a story great is its underlying dramatic structure and part is the manner in which that structure is related to an audience, often called "storytelling". Therefore, this book is divided into two principal sections: The Elements of Structure and The Art of Storytelling.
In The Elements of Structure you will explore the essential components that occur in all complete stories as they appear in Character, Theme, Plot, and Genre. In the Art of Storytelling you will examine the Four Stages of Communication that occur between an author and an audience: Storyforming, Storyencoding, Storyweaving, and Reception.


By the time you have finished, you will have gained a whole new understanding of what stories are and a whole new set of tools for creating them. For a glimpse of how some of Dramatica's basic concepts can be employed to improve a story, you might want to take a look at a constructive criticism of the motion picture Jurassic Park appearing in the Epilogue section.


You will note that the majority of examples provided in this book are drawn from motion pictures. This stems from the authors' personal backgrounds in the motion picture industry. Dramatica, however, is a theory of story -- not a theory of screenplay. All of the dramatic concepts presented here are equally applicable to any medium of story expression.


Note about Pronoun Usage: Some characters are best looked at by their dramatic functions. To help keep this perspective, we use the impersonal pronoun "it" when referring to such characters. Other characters are best explored in terms of their growth. To help draw the reader into a closer relationship with such a character, we use the personal pronoun, "he". Earlier editions of this book used "she" as the personal pronoun. Because of this uncommon usage, readers were jarred out of a relationship with personal characters, rather than being drawn in, defeating our purpose. As a result, this edition employs masculine pronouns.

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Dramatica: A New Theory of Story



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Copyright©1996, Screenplay Systems, Inc.

The Dramatica theory was developed by Melanie Anne Phillips and Chris Huntley
Chief Architect of the Dramatica software is Stephen Greenfield
Dramatica is a registered trademark of Screenplay Systems Incorporated

 

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	Throughline - Index Cards (Mac) - $19.95 Interactive index cards - add notes, titles, colors, click and drag to re-arrange.  An essential tool for every writer.
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	12 Hour Writing Course - $19.95 Everything you need to know about story structure - twelve hours of video on a single DVD - presented by Dramatica Theory co-creator, Melanie Anne Phillips.
	Dramatica Software Companion - $19.95 More than four hours of video demonstrations of every key feature in Dramatica, narrated by the co-creator of Dramatica.
	StoryWeaving Tips Book - $19.95 170 pages of eye-opening essays on story structure, storytelling, finding inspiration and a wide variety of writing techniques.
	StoryWeaving Seminar 8 DVD Set - $99.95 14 hours of video from a live two day course taught by theory co-creator Melanie Anne Phillips covering Dramatica story structure and StoryWeaver storytelling.
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	Dramatica Theory 2 Hour Audio Program - $19.95 Every key concept in the Dramatica Theory of Story is fully explained in this double-CD set.
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	Master Storyteller Improves Your Writing - $29.95 Become a better writing with this series of interactive exercises.
	How to Create Great Characters DVD - $19.95 A 90 minute video program recorded during Dramatica co-creator Melanie Anne Phillips' live in-person seminar on story structure and storytelling.
	Structure vs. Passion - Audio CD $19.95 The Story Mind approach to writing uses your own passions to create your story's structure.  It focuses your efforts, clarifies the direction of your story, and triggers your imagination.
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