Dramatica: A Theory of Story [pdf] (opens in new tab)

The Foreward and intro make me think this is a promotoonal tool for consulting services or something... sure enough, they sell "Dramatica software".

The Jurassic Park improvements (p.268) seems contrived.

I like the idea of a theory of narrative (like the Hero's Journey, Save the Cat), so I've kept on reading, to see if it really does have merit or not. It's just a lot of stuff, new names for old concepts, so far...

While I have found some useful ideas in here, such as the character archetype quads and the idea of a "contagonist", other elements didn't make as much sense to me; felt like they were trying to force certain ideas into the quad structure that don't work nearly as nicely. Definitely meant as a companion to some pricey (at the time the book came out) software which I also didn't find very useful.

The theory behind Dramatica is solid, and will help you write better fiction. Adopting it in total is a major undertaking, and of course there is software (proprietary, sold by the creators of the Theory and others). It can be adopted at different levels though, and that helps.

A bit of trivia is that this has been used in psychology and interrogation to understand a person's mind and what they want.

I really love those kind of no-BS straight to the point theoretical analysis of "soft" subjects like story-telling.

Everything makes more sense when they are part of a story and elements of the story are more well understood when they have meaningful connections.

Personally I try to explain concepts and write documentation like a well structured story.

Interesting, story telling is a powerful thing.

Is there context around why this showing up here?