Dramatica: Making Writing More Difficult. Since 1994

Software that makes an already arduous process even more of a challenge.

Chief software architect Stephen Greenfield receives a New York Time's Editor's Choice for his comment on an article entitled The Tyranny of Convenience:

One day a video crew from the BBC came to interview us...As the crew set up, the show’s host engaged in chit chat: “So, is this Dramatica going to make writing easier?”, he lobs to one of the software authors. She responds, “No — it’s going to make writing HARDER.”

It's funny, because I spend a lot of time promoting how much time Dramatica saves you when it comes to developing a story, but Melanie is right--Dramatica makes everything more complicated.

The software, we explained, asked questions a writer might not be prepared to answer, and arriving at those answers was real work — including mastering using the tool itself. However, the goal was not to save time writing, but to produce a better story.

Writing better stories. That's all that matters.

The rest of the interview no longer bordered on tabloid journalism. The host saw in our answers his own central thesis: **when it came to creativity, there’s no substitute for hard work. **

Read the original article The Tyranny of Convenience, with choice quotes like this:

Such activities take time, but they also give us time back. They expose us to the risk of frustration and failure, but they also can teach us something about the world and our place in it. So let’s reflect on the tyranny of convenience, try more often to resist its stupefying power, and see what happens. We must never forget the joy of doing something slow and something difficult, the satisfaction of not doing what is easiest.

Slow and difficult. The new standards by which to measure effective story development.