Using Story Structure to Argue Your Point-of-View

Audiences can handle the truth, if you have something important to say.

A word of warning: learning Dramatica actually makes it harder for writers to finish their stories. As someone with over twenty years of experience with the theory, I know this to be true. I often fall into the trap of writing story structure, instead of using story structure to write a story.

Following up on yesterday's idea of asking What do you want to write about?, Chris Huntley advises:

Look to what you want to say and then use the storyform to make that argument. Not the other way around. The storyform doesn't actually tell you what you want to say, it says what you want to say about what you want to say.

Don't argue the storyform, use the storyform to argue your point-of-view.

In other words, I first must discover what it is I want to say about a particular subject matter. Connect with my intuition and then look to Dramatica to help explore that argument.

The storyform won't tell you how to tell the story, the idea behind the story will show you how to tell the story.

When it comes to storyforms, all of them will work. There is no right one. You just have to choose one.

A successful approach to take when writing a story is to identify what your central issue is concerning the subject matter. List out the forces for and against, and then discover for yourself which one is better, and why.

There are multiple sides to an argument, not just one. One side is a statement.

And looking to the storyform to tell you what you want to say is taking one side.