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Message: <blockquote data-quote="jhull" data-source="post: 6539604" data-attributes="member: 6791105">Would it surprise anyone that when I was growing up I always wanted to be the Dungeon Master? (and now I do it for my kids). To me, it was always about creating the experience of living in an actual story that I enjoyed while playing D&D, and was the thing that eventually led me to my career in story and screenwriting.First off, I apologize for the "one-true" approach to my blog and the articles within. I feel very strongly when it comes to the Dramatica theory of story and its application to narratives in film, novel and plays and sometimes I can get a little carried away with my passion for it.As far as creating a story ... here's a really easy way to think of your plot as a whole. Take these 4 words "Understanding", "Learning", "Obtaining" and "Doing" and put them in any order you want. Then use that order as the general "signposts" or major acts of your story. In other words, you could have your characters enter into a land where they learn that the world has changed around them and former friends are now foes (Learning), this could lead them to misunderstanding the motives of each other or violent action intended to make your heroes understand the seriousness of their situation (Understanding). This would lead your characters then to engage and track down the bad guys, perhaps entering their evil lair (Doing), and finally they would put forth all their efforts into apprehending the dragon's treasure or destroying the bad guy's master weapon (Obtaining).If you want an example of this Act Order, watch Star Wars again <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />Or you could have your characters start out engaging with each other, doing their job the way they always have but something isn't quite right (Doing). This conflict could then lead to greater difficulty following through and completing what they originally set out to do to the point where they feel like giving up (Obtaining). This defeatist attitude would then require a complete 180 where the characters learn some Earth-shattering news (Learning) which then leads them to come to a new understanding of what is really going on (Understanding).Watch The Sixth Sense to see this Act Order in action.There a bunch of different combinations you can do with just these 4 terms that will gives you all kinds of different stories. Depending on whether or not you want your story to end in a Tragedy or a Triumph will actually determine the exact order these signposts occur, but for a general just getting started approach you can do them in any order you want.If this sounds interesting to you or you want to try different plot combinations (like plots about the Past, the Present, the Future and How Things are Changing or perhaps you want to try Psychological Thriller all about Developing Plans, Conceiving Ideas, Playing Roles and Changing One's Nature!) I encourage you to visit the analysis page on the main Dramatica site (<a href="http://dramatica.com/analysis" target="_blank">http://dramatica.com/analysis</a>). There you'll find hundreds of different movies, plays and novels that have been analyzed by Dramatica Story Experts. Each narrative will have its own "storyform" that illustrates these Signposts and the order in which they occurred. So maybe you could find your favorite film and simply copy the order of those Signposts!If you have any other questions feel free to ask me on my site (and yes, when I set up the adventures for my kids I do use this approach. They LOVE it and it makes them feel like they're really part of the story).</blockquote>

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