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Dramatica Tip of the Month
May, 2000

Connecting the MC problem with the OS problem

The MC problem and the OS problem generally don't start out having much to do with one another, but over the course of the story the development of one and the development of the other become intimately tied. So, rather than seeing a story as "a mother who has to solve a mystery but who has to get over the death of her daughter before she can do this," look at it as "a mother driven to solve mysteries because of her daughter's death cannot solve the current case because the personal, unresolved issues she has with her daughter's death blind her to the secret behind the mystery!" Story elements only become connected when YOU, the author, make them connected. Without the connections, the story is meaningless. You must supply the meaning, and in Dramatica you begin that process by creating the storyform. After all, what is a storyform other than a tangled web of connections (relationships)?