The DUG started late due to the extended length of this week's film, Aliens. The meeting was led by Chris Huntley who briefly covered the following topics:

• UCLA Extension class taught by Melanie Anne Phillips nearing it's completion.
• Free nine week Dramatica class beginning April 6 to be taught by Katy Monahan Huntley.
• Dramatica message board hosted by Melanie Anne Phillips.
• Cool, new Dramatic Mail Server hosted by Dramatica users.
• Dramatica Writers' Group meetings.

Chris introduced several people attending the meeting: Katy Monahan Huntley, Dramatica Pro 3 story examples editor and future instructor of free Dramatica class; JD Cochran, Screenplay Systems marketing rep and leader of the Dramatica Writers' Group; Sandy Stone, certified Dramatica consultant and on-line Dramatica course instructor; Mark Haslett, former Screenplay Systems employee and Dramatica maven who is now Vice President of development for Cunnigham Productions (and looking for a good horror script to produce).

The bulk of the meeting was spent discussing and analyzing the feature film, Aliens (1986), written and directed by James (Titanic) Cameron. [See related article Aliens for a detailed story analysis] Instead of analyzing the released version, the Special Edition (Director's Cut) was used because it had more Main Character and Subjective Story material than the original. Even with the extra twenty minutes of material, identifying the storyform was no picnic.

As usual, we began the analysis by attempting to identify the four throughlines (Objective Story, Subjective Story, Main Character, and Obstacle Character) in the story. All agreed that Ripley is the Main Character -- no dissent there. Identifying the Objective Story throughline was more difficult. "Recon of the situation on planet LB426" and "A Bughunt" were suggested as possible throughline generalizations. There were two candidates for the Obstacle Character as well: Burke and Newt (the aliens and the Queen Alien were suggested but soon removed from consideration). The subject matter of the Subjective Story throughline was unclear at this point and no solid suggestions were made.

Leaving those issues unresolved, we moved to identifying the Objective Characters and their functions. Only one Dramatica archetype was identified. Hudson (Bill Paxton) is the Emotion character (feeling and uncontrolled). The rest were moderately complex characters, difficult to determine because the Story Goal was still not established and somewhat fuzzy (Save the colonists? Retrieve the aliens? Find out what was happening on LB426?).

From there we moved on to the story dynamics which, for the most part, were determined fairly quickly. We then we proceeded to identify the Objective Story Domain (Physics) and the Main Character Domain (Universe). The OS Concern (aka Story Goal) wasn't nearly as obvious as the MC Concern of the Past. It was a matter of minutes until the group had determined a storyform for Aliens. [See Alien Storyform for the Dramatica story engine settings.]

Upon discussing the various aspects of the story engine settings (storyform report) for Aliens, there was a general consensus that the storyform was a strong contender. It was also noted by several group members that the Obstacle Character throughline was sketchily drawn, and that some aspects of the storyform were only vaguely illustrated, but clearly implied.

Next month's film, "Il Postino," (The Postman--not related to the American made film of the same name starring Kevin Costner).

The DUG meeting officially ended at 10:15 p.m., a bit later than usual.