Working Your Way Backwards Through a Story
April 20, 2007
In Dramatica, the major drivers of plot are said to be either decisions or actions. Although you will have both in a story, one will be seen as the catalyst that causes the other to happen. If you’re having trouble deciding which one is the driver of your story, you might want to start at the end.
While there already is a perfect Dramatica tip for figuring out the Story Driver, I think I stumbled upon another approach. I was reading through the testimonials on Jeff Kitchen’s script development site Development Heaven when I found this:
Jeff’s workshop gave me a working model to develop a script from, sharpening and focusing the original idea into a taut dramatic dilemma, to structuring the cause and effect events in reverse (beginning with the end in mind), and resulting in a unified drama with clarity and power.
I thought to myself - what a perfect way for figuring out the Objective Story Driver. Start at the very end and work your way backwards towards the beginning.
And you wouldn’t start with the concluding event (Luke destroying the Death Star, Michael Corleone’s decision to become the new godfather), you’d start with the cause of that event. The Rebellion is saved - why? - because Luke destroyed the Death Star. That’s an action. In The Godfather, the heads of the New York crime families are murdered - why? - because Michael decided to become the new godfather. That’s a decision.
From there you can just work your way backwards, in much the same way that Kitchen suggests connecting the causes and effects of events. This way you can make sure that your plot drivers really are driving your story forward - that the events that happen after them exist only because of previous events.