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Hi

I am in the first stages of looking at Dramatica Pro and, I have got to say, it looks pretty powerful, although there is an awful lot for me to learn. I guess that is inevitable.

The bad news is that I have let myself get distracted by a technical issue (keeping focus has always been a problem for me).

OK, so I am working through the videos (which are great, btw) and I get to Storyforming. I am asked to determine the overall story throughline and am offered 4 options. I am told that I can choose more than one, but if I do I get told "You have not yet determined this story point. Please go back and complete the storyforming question first."

What do you think that I might doing wrong? If I choose a single throughline, then everything goes smoothly, just like in the video.

You get this message when you progress to illustrating the Overall Story throughline because you have not narrowed it down to one. This ONLY happens in the StoryGuide (Levels 1 & 2). Other topic paths don't make a fuss about it.

For the StoryGuide, I recommend narrowing the selection to a single choice. The StoryGuide is just about the only fully "linear" tool in Dramatica Pro. All other topic paths and tools are non-linear. By non-linear, I mean you may choose to go to any part of the storyforming or illustrating (storyencoding) process you want, any time you want.

In order for the StoryGuide to "hand-hold" you through the process, it makes certain assumptions that you finish one step before moving on to the next.

I hope this helps.

Thanks for your response, Chris. I am not sure I quite follow the answer, but I suspect that is more because I have only just started looking at at Dramatica and haven't really grasped enough of the basic principles, yet.

I was misled by the statement in Help: "Tip: You can choose as many items as you like if you are not yet sure which will work best in your story."

Back to the plot.......

Yes, generally you can make multiple choices, but the StoryGuide works best (as you found out) if you make single choices and move on.

Later, when you begin working on your own stories, I recommend either using Level 3 of the StoryGuide, or any of the other pathways. They do not have the simplicity (and training wheels) of Levels 1 & 2.

Actually, what you might want to do is skip the storytelling question (the one that said you need to be down to a single choice) and move on to the other storyforming questions. Once you have narrowed down the four throughlines, you can then go back and "fill-in-the-blanks."