Meaning and Prediction

I was wondering what the Dramatica guides had to say about catharsis in stories, and it turns out the theory doesn't have much to say at all. From Chris Huntley's perspective, most story processes are either Post-Aristotelian or based on Campbell's Hero's Journey, or both. He argues that Dramatica is something different altogether:

An early axiom determined in the development of the Dramatica theory was this: If you look for Meaning, you cannot Predict. If you look for Prediction, you cannot find meaning. In other words, you can try to find meaning in a work OR you can predict how to put it together—but not at the same time from within the same context. Why? The short answer is that we use one as the given in order to evaluate the other. When looking for meaning, we assume a particular story structure. When looking for structure, we assume a particular meaning (author's intent). It's tied to the same reason we can see light as particles and waves, just not at the same time within a single context. One aspect defines the basis for the others. Story structure provides the basis for seeing meaning in the story. Meaning provides the basis for understanding and manipulating structure in a story.

In other words, meaning is tied to the audience's experience of the story while structure is tied to the author's perspective of the story. The audience perspective allows a synthesis of the underlying story elements to discover its "meaning." The author's perspective assumes a given meaning (author's intent) to manipulate the arrangement of the story's structure and dynamics. It's all a matter of context.

For example, Robert McKee approaches story from the audience's perspective whereas Dramatica approaches it from the author's perspective. McKee speaks of author and audience but always with an eye on the story's meaning—a view only available to someone looking at story from the inside. This view is great for understanding audience reception but limited when trying to fix story structure problems. In this regard McKee is in the same boat as Syd Field, Christopher Vogler, Michael Hauge, Lajos Egri and probably most all other story mages.

One major difference between Dramatica and more traditional story theories seems to be this:

• Dramatica works with story from the objective author's view that allows writers to clearly manipulate elements of a story's structure. From this author's perspective, it is difficult to find the meaning of specific author's choices.
  
• Many other story theories work with story from the subjective audience's view that allows writers to see the meaning of flow and elements of the story. From this audience's perspective, it is difficult to predict which story elements are essential and how they should go together.

So when we talk about genre and aesthetics, we're really looking at story meaning from the audience perspective. We're trying to write as readers rather than as writers. As a result we lose our predictive edge. To understand the essence of a story, what differentiates it from others, and how, as a writer, we can bring something unique to the table. Most story processes, including Aristotles's Poetics are really descriptions of art and not genuine instruction manuals.

From the writer's perspective, the challenge is to look at your work like a recipe, or a code block. You know what you want the outcome to be, a cake or an application, so now you have to look at what elements you'll need to include to achieve that effect. To borrow from business-speak, it's beginning with the end in mind in order to predict a result. If I do this, my story will come out like that. If I include these genre elements, my story will come out like Close Encounters. If I change this, this, and that, it will be more like Signs.

The challenge is to think about story elements as though they were DNA, and predict the effect of mutations on this animal or that.