My "Aha!" Dramatica Moment

A Dramatica user's analysis of "Stardust"

It happened to me while watching the movie Stardust with my children, not that there wasn't much that came before it  -- many hours of studying and pondering and questioning the Dramatica Theory of Story. I saw the value in the concepts but had never felt it all "click" into a holistic sense of how a good story is constructed. Then it happened, not the "aha" moment but a significant one immediately preceding it: a yawn.

I found myself watching the visually stunning and melodramatic events on the screen with only a small amount of interest. Why, I wondered? Wasn't this all really amazing, exciting stuff? That's when I decided to try out my hand at deciphering the problem with the story -- Dramatica-style. I watched the rest of the story with different eyes and came up with the following observations.

WARNING: THE FOLLOWING CONTAINS PLOT SPOILERS.

The first thing that came to mind after the movie was over was that for most of it, I didn't know what I was waiting to happen. Most of the story moves along without a clear limit. Initially, it appeared that the "find the star in one week" time limit was the lock, but there was a problem with this. I never really believed that Tristan should be with Victoria to begin with, and it turns out that this was the basis of the Subjective story, which further diminished the power of the limit. A new limit is again established at the end of the story when Yvaine (the fallen star) is captured by the witch who wants to eat her heart: if Tristan doesn't get to her in time, she'll be killed. This limit works, but it comes way too late.

The second thing I realized was that the Overall story was very thin and somewhat obscured by too many sub-plots (none of which were complete stories in themselves). To begin with, the main story is about Tristan trying to win Victoria's love by fetching the fallen star from the land beyond the wall. The two side-car subplots are of the three princes seeking the stone the fallen star (Yvaine) wears around her neck and of the witch hunting her for her heart. As I already mentioned, the main story is weak due the lack of viewer buy-in: why does Tristan want to be with Victory when she seems vain and shallow? The other two sub-plot stories are weak because they are incomplete. The "princes story" lacks any subjective story (although it appears as if there will be one regarding Primus -- the good prince -- until his throat is cut), so it is just a set of men running around chasing something (without a discernable limit, either, I might add). The witch story has a good limit -- her time is running out as the last of her powers wane -- but once again there is no subjective story: it's just a witch who wants to live forever. The overall affect of this scatter-shot sub-plotting is that there appears to be no overall Concern to the story. There is no argument being made, not point to the story, no "this leads to that" statement. Just a bunch of characters pursing their own interests.

Thirdly, the MC story is flimsy. I can't seem to put my finger on what Tristan's Concern or Problem were. What about his back story made him need to pursue the hand of a "popular" girl with whom he had nothing in common?

Finally, given the lack of an MC Concern and Problem, what was it that Yvaine, the IC, had to make help him stop or start doing? What was the Issue at the heart of their relationship? Does he need to stop being shallow (is that his problem? He doesn't seem the shallow sort) or start recognizing the value of "unpopular" love? She makes a few comments to him about "searching for love in the wrong place" but her words don't really seem to impact him. It's also not very hard to see how Tristan could easily change to wanting her without changing at all: she is a drop-dead gorgeous star who glows when he holds her. Who wouldn't want her? To solve this gap in the story, the movie piles on cliché character development. It even ranges into a seriously out-of-place "hero's quest" segment where Tristan is trained in the ways of a warrior by a wise pirate. Was that Tristan's problem? Was he not good enough with a sword? I don't think so.

I apologize to the dramatic purists for not plugging this into the story engine and listing out all the Dramatica vocabulary involved. I guess it's not a very good "dramatic story analysis" in that regard, but that is not why I wrote it. My motivation was to share an experience with all the other story-fanatics out there about how time spent with Dramatic does pay off. Only months ago, I watched the movie Eragon with my kids and left feeling baffled by why I found it so boring. I worried that without being able to clearly explain the problems on other stories, how would I avoid making them in my own work? Thanks to many subsequent hours of Dramatic study and Stardust, I'm less worried about that now (I won't really stop worrying until I write a story that doesn't have any problems).

On a final note, I think it's only fair to say that my kids wound up mostly enjoying the movie. The ending is rather fun and there were a lot of melodramatic and visual goodies. To be clear, I don't think they will think back on it and remember it as a "wonderful, moving story," but it went down pleasantly enough with a handful of popcorn. For me, it will always hold a special place -- the troubled story behind my Dramatica "aha" moment.