Theme relevance
Posted: Aug 12, 2010 5:21 pm
I've been superficially familiar with Dramatica until I recently stumbled across StoryFanatic and loved it. Now I'm digging deeper into Dramatica and finding it fascinating. I had numerous "a ha!" moments reading through the character section of the book.
But it lost me a bit when I got to the Theme section. Specifically, where it drills down to specifics on the "Star Wars" example. It claims that the overall story problem is "Test" because the Empire has a test run of the death star on Alderaan, and because the rebels test the validity of the death star plans by waiting until they have them in their hands, etc. I'm sorry, but I don't buy that at all. Yeah, the Empire needed to test the Death Star, and yeah, the rebels needed the plans. But was the empire's testing of the death star really the overall story problem, the be-all end-all story concern for the overall story characters? No. Nor does it have anything to do with the theme of this film. And the rebels weren't "testing" the plans. They didn't know what was in them until they got them. That has nothing to do with testing at all, and certainly nothing to do with the movie's theme.
Same goes for the other throughline examples in this section. They just feel like someone is trying to force the story to fit the paradigm, and it makes me doubt the validity of the paradigm itself. Which is sad, because the character paradigm worked so well for me.
I'd appreciate any insight on this. Am I out to lunch?
But it lost me a bit when I got to the Theme section. Specifically, where it drills down to specifics on the "Star Wars" example. It claims that the overall story problem is "Test" because the Empire has a test run of the death star on Alderaan, and because the rebels test the validity of the death star plans by waiting until they have them in their hands, etc. I'm sorry, but I don't buy that at all. Yeah, the Empire needed to test the Death Star, and yeah, the rebels needed the plans. But was the empire's testing of the death star really the overall story problem, the be-all end-all story concern for the overall story characters? No. Nor does it have anything to do with the theme of this film. And the rebels weren't "testing" the plans. They didn't know what was in them until they got them. That has nothing to do with testing at all, and certainly nothing to do with the movie's theme.
Same goes for the other throughline examples in this section. They just feel like someone is trying to force the story to fit the paradigm, and it makes me doubt the validity of the paradigm itself. Which is sad, because the character paradigm worked so well for me.
I'd appreciate any insight on this. Am I out to lunch?