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Screenwriting Software: Closeup Review #4 |
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The eternal problem writers face is: What story should I tell and what's the best way to tell it? The medium you select -- film, television, novel, play -- influences your approach, but the same story can be told in any medium. No one can decide for you what story to tell, but are there tools that can help you write better stories? Is there a best way to tell a story?
Dramatica and Collaborator purport to do just that - help you write better stories. Creating effective story development tools is more difficult than developing script formatting programs (reviewed elsewhere in this website). First, there is no agreed-upon approach to writing; everyone has their own habits and idiosyncracies. And more importantly, there isn't just one single theory of drama. The most widely accepted theory is Aristotle's, written over 2,300 years ago. Many theories have been proposed in the intervening years, but few have found lasting favor. That's why many story development tools take entirely different approaches.
Collaborator and Dramatica are at opposite ends of the story development spectrum. The only similarities these two programs have in common is that both are available in relatively new versions, and that both are available in Mac and PC versions. They were reviewed on a Pentium computer running Windows 95 and on a 486 running Windows 3.11.
Collaborator V3.38
Collaborator (retail price $99) is a DOS program that runs without trouble under Windows 3.11 and Windows 95. At startup, Collaborator asks you to choose whether you want to use a novel or a screenplay story type. Then, you're presented with a series of questions, starting with the working title of your story. Next, Collaborator asks you to describe your intended audience and why that audience will respond to your story.
As you move through the program, the questions progress through theme, genre, tone, time period, plot and characters. You can follow Collaborator's presentation or skip around and answer the questions in any order. Collaborator generates follow-up questions using an artificial intelligence engine that can, on occasion, lead to awkwardly phrased questions. Context-sensitive help -- with clear explanations and examples -- is readily available. The program is menu-driven and most functions and features are accessible via mouse or keystroke commands. All of Collaborator's features worked as expected.
Reports Collaborator produces over a dozen reports including synopsis, summaries, character profile reports for each character, plot note reports, audience detail reports, and lists of settings and characters. The program's three-act outliner can print your outline on standard paper or create index cards. Collaborator's reports can be viewed on screen or saved as ASCII text files for import into a word processing program.
Collaborator groups its questions into four key areas: Character, Plot, Setting, and Audience. These are universal concerns for nearly every writer. Many of the questions are based on Aristotle's six elements of drama: plot, character, thought, diction, music and spectacle. Others were extracted from Lajos Egri's "The Art of Dramatic Writing." Whether you decide to buy Collaborator or not, Egri's book should be on your shelf; it is one of the few cogent books about dramatic writing published in the last 100 years.
To help you use Collaborator, the program includes "story reveals" of Forrest Gump, The Shawshank Redemption, Quiz Show and Pulp Fiction. These "reveals" are the complete answers to Collaborator's questions for these four films, prepared after the fact. Reviewing these examples is useful for beginning writers, although it's doubtful that these reveals will give you any insights into your own writing. Rather they help to illuminate Collaborator's approach to story development.
Outlines Collaborator's strengths are that it asks all the questions an able producer or editor would ask a writer, and that the outline feature does help to make it easier to craft your plot. The outliner works on a four act structure. The second act is broken into two parts for the purpose of outlining the plot. The reasoning for this seems to be that many stories fall apart during the second act, and that the second act is twice as long as the other acts. Breaking the second act into two parts may help introduce the plot complications to the audience but the explanation of the division seems rather arbitrary. This is a rare instance when Collaborator deviates from accepted dramatic theory.
Dramatica Pro V2.0
Dramatica, on the other hand, relies entirely on a new theory of drama created by the authors of this story development tool, Melanie Anne Phillips and Chris Huntley. Dramatica's value as a development tool depends to a large degree on your acceptance of this new theory.
There are two versions of Dramatica -- the Writer's Dreamkit ($149.00 retail) and Dramatica Pro V2.0 ($399 retail). The Dreamkit version is for beginning to intermediate writers. The Pro version offers more reports and features: twenty-one question paths rather than eight; more than 30 reports versus 18; four levels of character development instead of one; 38 story examples compared to 10; more control over program settings; access to the Dramatica BBS; an audiotape guide to Dramatica Theory; and the Dramatica Theory Book. Dramatica Pro V2.0 is the subject of this review though the look and feel of the program is the same in both versions.
When you open the program, twelve colorful tiles fill the screen to give you instant access to all the tools and features. Most writers will choose to start by using the StoryGuide tool, an interactive step-by-step guided approach to creating a new story. Dramatica takes you through a series of questions, then asks you to select from among the "quads" (see below) for each character and structural element. Your responses limit your choices as you progress toward a presumably ideal storyform. Dramatica divides the writing process into "storyforming" -- developing the dramatic structure -- and "storytelling" -- the way that structure is expressed. The Query system -- another tool you can select -- takes a multiple choice approach to the same process.
The program uses highly polished graphics to enhance the story development process. This approach reaches its zenith -- or the point of absurdity -- in the Character tool. There are over four hundred thumbnail photographs and drawings of men, women, and children that you can include with your character's description. Since most screenplays must have characters that can be played by the widest possible range of stars of indeterminate age, this feature appears superfluous. The only other issue is that the screen font in Dramatica is rather thin and small. You can choose another font for reports but you can't change the screen font.
Revised Textbook A new edition of Dramatica's theory book is one of the major improvements Screenplay Systems made to Dramatica Pro in version 2.0. For the first time, in this third edition, the theory is not entirely buried under a layer of impenetrable obfuscation. Now that most of their ideas can be understood, Phillips and Huntley will have to defend a theory that is a complete departure from accepted ideas about storytelling.
Dramatica's central assertion is that every "complete story" is a model of the mind's problem-solving process, which the authors call the "Story Mind." Dramatica bases everything on pairs of opposites, and divides all its elements into "quads". For example, there are four "throughlines" or structural perspectives that can be expressed in every story. Story structure is divided into four classes. Each class is broken down into four subclasses, which are in turn subdivided again and again. Dramatica redefines or invents new vocabulary for writers to use to discuss everything from plot to character to setting. Analyzing all the ideas presented in this 400 page book would require more space than is available here.
Back to School What is clear is that Dramatica is spawning a cottage industry. Little imagination is required to foresee that Dramatica could become a permanent fixture on college and university campuses, and on the writing workshop and seminar circuit. The theory begs for interpretation. Dramatica's unique vocabulary, mysticism, and obscurity guarantee the need for people to come forth to explicate and interpret this grand theory of story. Screenplay Systems sponsors a certification program for consultants. Two consulting companies have already formed to specialize in offering advice to film studios and production companies based on this theory. Dramatica's authors have conducted classes on their theory at UCLA's film school. A critical analysis of Dramatica theory seems in order before this theory achieves academic acceptance.
Dramatica's validity has yet to be tested. The authors' writing credentials rest on their development of Dramatica theory. They've written no critically acclaimed plays, novels, or films to add weight to their words. It may be irrelevant if critical investigation substantiates their ideas. Yet, the authors make very broad claims: "that behind Dramatica is a whole new understanding of the mind's problem solving and justification processes . . . (which) form the basis of a theory of psychology called Mental Relativity. Mental Relativity describes the mind's pattern making capability and explains in detail how and why we see such things as spirals in a sea shell, a galaxy, or strands of DNA." Such claims call into question the soundness of their ideas about writing.
Despite this reviewer's reservations about the theory behind Dramatica, the program is well-designed. The process of using of the program can give a writer another perspective to help develop a story. Dramatica's interface is clear and consistent; its help files are extensive and include explanations of the theory. Screenplay Systems provides excellent support for its products through its BBS, web site, and via telephone.
Summary
In an age when the average fee for a screenplay is $300,000, gaining even one insight that makes your work more saleable may be worth the learning curve Dramatica demands of its users. Collaborator makes no claims about offering deep insight into the structure of drama and has no steep learning curve. It's a more modest tool based on established principles. Serious writers should evaluate both programs.
One final note: Collaborator files can be imported into ScriptThing and Scriptware. ScriptThing successfully imported Collaborator's character lists and settings. Dramatica also appears on ScriptThing's menu but it didn't work. Collaborator is listed on Scriptware's import file menu but we were unable to import the file. A maintenance update from Cinovation is supposed to correct this problem but it was unavailable for this review. There are no details about what Scriptware imports from Collaborator; the information was not in the manual or the help files.
Dramatica
Screenplay Systems
150 E. Olive Avenue, Ste
203
Burbank, CA 91502
Sales: 800-847-8679
Office: 818-843-6557
Fax: 818-843-8364
Collaborator
Collaborator Systems, Inc.
23501 Park
Sorrento, Ste 102
Calabasas, CA 91302
Sales: 800-405-8344
Fax:
818-222-1495
Robert M. Goodman is a professional writer and director with extensive production credits in film, television, and non-broadcast video. He is the owner and principal of Goodman Associates, Inc., a full-service production firm in Philadelphia.
