The Search For Perfect Story Structure

The quest for perfection often leads one further away from telling a great story.

Melanie Anne Phillips, co-creator of the Dramatica theory of story, on the elusive search for perfect story structure:

No one reads a book or goes to a movie to experience a perfect structure. They come to stories to ignite their passions. BUT – if that passionate storytelling is TOO flawed, the readers or audience pop right out of the experience and the passion is lost!

On the other hand, if you try to achieve a perfect story structure, you are going to undercut some of the subject matter and storytelling expressions that give your story life. Then, you compromise the intensity of the experience and, though your story is on solid ground, it just lays there and nobody cares.

As a giant fan of Dramatica and well-structured meaningful stories, I can personally attest to being too caught up in making things fit Dramatica--instead of using the theory's concepts to help refine the story's edges. Most of the time I see what needs to be there, instead of seeing what is there.

If 2017 is about anything, it should be about finding a greater balance between structure and heart, meaning and art.

The solution is to know what the perfect structure would be for your particular story, but to use it only as a guide to tweak your story wherever you can to make the structure stronger without ever making a change that will drain passion from your story.