I was writing the next lesson in an email course we offer on Narrative First–one about best practices in developing the Main Character of a story and their role within the Overall Story, and it occurred to me–it would be really awesome if Subtext, our story outliner app, did this for you automatically.

So, I quickly opened up VSCode, made the changes in the controller, tested it, committed the code, and pushed it–all within the span of about 10 minutes.

And now everyone across the world benefits from this insight into developing a story.

Now, when you build a story in Subtext it automatically adds the Main Character Player to both the Main Character Throughline and the Overall Story Throughline. If you were James Cameron in 1985, it might look something like this:

I can’t tell you how much I love being able to do this. Instead of having to wait around months or years for the next version of a software application I use to come out, I can just do it myself and get it done while everything is still fresh in my mind.

And then writers across the world can start using it moments after I roll the changes out.

What an incredible life.

From the Subtext updates page:

The latest and greatest version of Subtext is now LIVE! This release puts forth a new and life-changing process for quickly developing an imaginative and meaningful complete story. We’re super excited to be able to offer this to you, and hope you have fun writing those stories you’ve always wanted to tell. Enjoy!

Three months. 14 weeks of intense coding and re-coding and imagining and building and it’s now here, ready for writers to make their own.

Now, onto all that documentation!

If you’re participating in NaNoWriMo this November, you’ll want to check out Subtext–the SaaS app for writers we’ve been running the past year. Designed to help you quickly and efficiently find a meaningful narrative for your story, Subtext enables you to focus on the fun part of writing–the writing itself–while taking care of the sometimes tricky task of figuring out what to write next.

And there’s a brand new version of Subtext set to release this weekend.

With an all-new redesigned Storybeats view, this latest and greatest version gives you greater control over the more delicate details of your story.

Storybeats can now be broken down into smaller, more refined beats–giving you a greater understanding of what should happen in each Act.¹

But you won’t have the right set of Storybeats until you know what it is you want to say with your story.

Calling upon our catalog of over 400+ unique narrative structures from film, television, plays, and novels, Subtext helps you figure out your story’s message–and then guides you towards saying it in the best possible way.

A complete story makes an argument. This Narrative Argument consists of a unique ordering of events–or Storybeats–that effectively argue a particular approach towards solving the problems we face in our lives.

And while it helps to see how your story works from Act to Act, the real power lies in focusing on one of the four central Throughlines essential to every complete story.

This latest version of Subtext offers the chance for writers to quickly switch contexts–from the Main Character to the Overall Story, to the Influence Character and their Relationship with the Main Character–allowing the writer to focus on those individual Throughlines to the exclusion of others.

If you’ve participated in NaNoWriMo before, you know that you can start to lose sight of things come mid-November. With this new Throughlines view from Subtext, you can quickly step back–remind yourself of the essence and most important beats of your story–and then promptly dive back into the writing process, safe with the confidence that you’re not wasting your time writing scenes you’ll eventually throw out.

We also took the chance with this latest release to add an all-new Player Roles view to Subtext.

Here you can add individuals, groups, and relationships that will drive and hold the point-of-view for each of the Storybeats found in your story.

Once created, you just drag and drop them onto their respective Throughlines–making them available for selection from within each Storybeat.

And the very best part about Subtext is the instant reactivity of every interaction. Decide days before Thanksgiving that you want to change the name of your Main Character? Just change it here within the Player Roles view and your change cascades throughout the rest of Subtext.

Lastly, no writing tool would be complete without a means to progress quickly towards the next step in the process. When you’re finished developing the structure of your story–or when you’ve done enough that you feel like you’re ready to start writing– merely click the Treatment button and find your Storybeats organized into a traditional three Act structure.

Download a version in Markdown for use in writing apps like iAWriter or Scrivener, or choose Fountain for screenplays in apps like Highland or Slugline.² The work you do in Subtext is not wasted time; regardless of where you do your actual writing, Subtext gets you going with a perfectly formatted and deeply meaningful outline.

Of course, the current features found in Subtext continue in this latest version:

• the ability to randomize individual Storybeats to help light your latest brainstorm
• the Writers Room–a weekly get-together with fellow Subtext writers and story expert Jim Hull to go over questions of narrative structure and theory
• expert customer support that helps not only with the technical aspect of things–but also, the actual structuring and writing of a story
• the entire back catalog of Writers Room meetings and video tutorials which now totals close to 20 hours of educational material
• and the ever-expanding database of storytelling and story structures–updated weekly to keep Subtext fresh and alive and most importantly–a great inspiration for you, the storyteller.

We’re really excited about this new version of Subtext as it represents our most profound passion–the telling of a great and moving story. We hope you’re inspired to write something great this November and look forward to celebrating with you when you finish this December 1st.

Justin Jackson provides a mission statement formula for creatives who make things on the Internet for other creatives:

I help _______ to ________, so that they can _________. I do this by ____.

I always struggle to write mission statements. Even though it’s Covey’s 2nd Habit, I always skipped past it to go straight to the more fun Habit #3: First Things First.

But something about Justin’s approach intrigued me enough to write my own:

I help writers structure their stories fast and efficiently, so that they can spend more time on the fun and creative part: the actual writing. I do this through my app Subtext, and through my teaching, blogging, and podcasts.

That actually feels really really good to get down.

Once you’ve defined your mission, it becomes a compass for your work. It helps define who you’re helping, and what you’re empowering them to do. The actual shape of the work (whether you’re making software, videos, etc…) is less important.

I can see that. And appreciate the greater clarity in my purpose.

Thanks to Jack over at Statamic, I now know why all the developers I know are moving from Slack to Discord to wrangle their communities.

This kind of thing is important to focus on when it comes to the future of our interactions. Seth explained it best this morning in his post on Semi-public:

There’s a huge opportunity to become an organizer of semi-public groups. These entities will become ever more powerful as the economies of the firm begin to fade, replaced by the speed and resiliency of trusted groups instead.

As the organizer of the Dramatica theory of story semi-public group, I’m interested in better ways to bring writers together. Redesigning their site, shuttling the community from one forum instance to the next, and of course, building a SaaS for my start-up that will fuel further development of the theory in this century.

I always thought Discord was a thing for gamers, and always felt it weird that the VueJS and Laravel communities were moving there. Now I see that Discord is making moves to make it a developer platform as well.

Might be time to check it out.

Last August marked the one-year anniversary of when I started to build Subtext,my Saas for writers. I started this blog post in Drafts the week of the 18th, and am only now getting around to publishing it.

That’s how busy and crazy excited I have been working on it.

I’m in the midst of a major update right now with tons of cool new features, but I thought it would be fun to log everything I’ve been able do in just 12 short months:

• Gists
• Videocast Documentation
• 409+ Storyforms
• Narrative Argument
• Structure Builder
• Storyform Connections
• Treatment View

And all of this completely one-hundred percent on my own.

Which is part of its massive appeal to me.

Features Discovered Along the Way

The Narrative Argument was not a part of the original release, but rather was a compelling feature I discovered about three months into development. Everyone struggles with the Dramatica theory of story; the app is overwhelming and the terminology even more so.

Subtext is my move to make Dramatica more appealing to the masses.

The Structure Builder was also not a part of the original release, but could be now considered the core feature. And the newest version in development blows the current one away.

Reunited with a Past Love

All of this while starting out knowing zilch about Laravel and PHP. And even less about VueJS and JavaScript.

When I was a kid I taught myself Assembly Language and C, thinking I would make video games. But then I got sidetracked with a career in animation, and only recently rediscovered my love for programming.

The idea that I can build something, push it to a server, and then watch as people around the world engage with it creates a joy within me unlike anything else.

I’m looking forward to increasing that joy over the course of the next year.

So this is pretty incredible. While I couldn’t fully use the latest version of Subtext because I’m still pulling my hair over async/await issues and “this” in Javascript–I was able to use the model of what I’m building to very quickly write out a pitch for a new sci-fi television series.

One hour from nothing to something really awesome. Completely random–but following a narrative structure that sets up the potential for the specific ending I want to write. It’s amazing how incredibly lush the storytelling feels.

As much as I believe in what I’m doing, even I’m shocked and amazed at how good this story is after only working on it for such a short time.

We’ll see how it goes at the pitch tomorrow, but if nothing else–I am beyond excited about the potential of Subtext going forward.

Dramatica Users Group Meeting with Dramatica co-creator Chris Huntley. Tonight’s film was the 1970 classic heist film Le Cercle Roge.

I thought for sure we wouldn’t find a complete storyform–but like always, Chris helped guide us to a better understanding of the narrative.

This is the reason why I keep coming back to this class for the past 20 years. I always always_ learn something. Whether it’s something new, or something I already knew, these monthly get-together are a great way to reset the mind for narrative.

For instance–an easy way to identify Protagonist and Antagonist, which in Dramatica is not always the “good guy” and the “bad guy.” They always come together at the climax, because their conflict determines the Story Outcome.

In Cercle, Matei is the Protagonist and Vogel is the Antagonist. And it’s only when they finally meet at the end, that the narrative comes to a successful resolution.

The one thing I keep putting off when it comes to Subtext, my Saas for writers, is the documentation. I know it would be nice, but I always figure it will be something I get to eventually.

Phil Cross posted a quote from Taylor Otwell, the man behind Laravel–the PHP framework behind Subtext:

I promised myself never to release Laravel until I had great documentation

If you’ve seen the documentation for Laravel you know how great it is, and if you’re eagerly awaiting Nova, a super-powered Admin module for the same framework, you know how annoying it is that you once again have to wait for Taylor to finish the documentation…

…until you realize just how important that is to the final product. Phil reminded me:

This 1000 times over. Accessible and easy to navigate documentation is part of what drew me to Laravel. Glad the quality hasn’t decreased. I pretty much always have the docs open in 1 tab at all times.

I never really thought of this before, but that’s exactly the reason why I chose Laravel over everything else. All my favorite apps seem to run on Ruby, but there was something about how well Laravel was explained and documented, that I didn’t really have a choice.

The framework is great, but I think it was the attention to the detail that made me realize I was on the right track.

Which means, I have some documentation to work on!

First day of #Laracon was great. Watched Nova presentation as best I could. At first, I was less than thrilled–but as Taylor demoed more and more of its features, I started to get all kinds of ideas on how to use it with Subtext.

If nothing else, I’m looking forward to diving into the code to see how elegant things are behind the scenes.

Oh. And I guess I have to switch to a light theme for code editor 🤣

Other presentations look so-so, though I would love to see more of Vue’s CLI.

Going to watch a better version of Taylor’s Nova talk tomorrow.

Statistics never work as well as we might hope. Since we’re humans, statistics don’t change minds. It’s the story we tell ourselves (and others) that do. Statistics are merely a consistent and reliable way to tell yourself a story that’s actually useful and resilient.

Waking up to this on statistics from Seth kinda sorta feels like a sign to add the Analytics feature to Subtext.

You know, like how certain story structures result in higher box office performance.

Novelist Mike Lucas discusses what he considers Subtext Awesomeness: The Narrative Argument:

One of the amazing features of Narrative First’s Subtext service is that Jim Hull has gone through and “curated” all of the analyzed stories with a narrative argument. The argument is built up from the story structure (the storyform) with the elements of the argument worded as to best apply to the particular story.

This took an inordinate amount of time to complete. For the most part, I’m like Rain Man when it comes to Dramatica storyforms: I can pretty much run down any of the 400+ storyforms and discuss key Storypoints in each.

But there were some films that left me questioning whether or not I hit upon the right expression of the Crucial Element and Story Goal (Or Consequence) in each narrative.

Listening to Mike, it sounds like a did a pretty good job:

Somehow, seeing that same Crucial Element of Logic applied to another Steadfast story, and one I knew well, was like a lightning strike in my head. Suddenly I understood why poor, lovelorn Devin is the Main Character of this story. And with that, I had my narrative argument… This gives me chills because Subtext, like Dramatica, kind of peered into my writer’s soul a bit there…

And that’s exactly why I put so much time into creating Subtext. Because I want every writer to experience that same level of magical realization that comes with this kind of exposure.

Mike drives into the why and how in much greater detail, including the essential contradiction that exists in these kinds of stories.

Teacher Alan Jacobs on how leaving Twitter and social media:

has made me significantly calmer about my own future as a writer, in large part because it has re-set my mental clock. I have always told myself that I have time to think about what, if anything, I want to write next, but I haven’t really believed it, and I think that’s been due to my immersion in the time-frame of Twitter and other social media.

I’ve been finding it progressively harder and harder to write articles for Narrative First, let alone simple blog posts. Podcasts are eight-weeks behind.

Afternoons booked with clients and building Subtext contribute to this inability; that and a mutual malaise that seems to plague the early weeks of July.

There’s something exciting about the community on micro.blog, something honest and truthful. If nothing else, the openness inspires one to push forward.

And to continue to create.

And write.

The Work of Work

“Most work is NOT coming up with The Next Big Thing. Rather, it’s making better the thing you already though of six months—or six years—ago. It’s the work of work.” —@dhh, @jasonfried, REMOTE

Coming up on the one-year anniversary of when I started to build Subtext. Looking forward to refining and improving the experience over the next six months.

And the next six years.

Reading Rework whilst an animator was so inspiring to me. All I could think of when reading it was What’s the fastest way I can make this happen for myself?

Couple of years later, I found my answer.

Dramatica co-creator Chris Huntley on the difference between Dramatica and Mental Relativity:

Independent of whether it is a theory or a hypothesis or a model or a whatever-you-want-to-call-it, it is our opinion that Dramatica is model of story, while Mental Relativity – on which Dramatica is based – is a model of human problem solving and/or psychology. Dramatica represents an application of Mental Relativity to the narrative process. Though not widely advertised, the application of Mental Relativity using the Dramatica model as applied to real world scenarios is called Thoughtform.

If you haven’t read anything about Mental Relativity but you’re familiar with General Relativity, you might find Chris and Melanie’s work compelling.

Einstein blended Space and Time together with the Space-Time continuum (c squared). He did this because the Male Blindspot required him to do so.

Separate them out and you start to find the foundation for understanding Mental Relativity.

Seth Godwin on paying for software:

I like paying for my software when I’m buying it from a company that’s responsive, fast and focused. I like being the customer (as opposed to a social network, where I’m the product). I spend most of my day working with tools that weren’t even in science fiction novels twenty-five years ago, and the money I spend on software is a bargain–doing this work without it is impossible.

Nine months in to selling my own software (Subtext for Writers), I’m constantly surprised by those who hold back because they feel it’s too expensive. I gladly pay for a lot of the same apps Seth calls out, and many more he doesn’t (Grammarly is too good not to support). And I do it because I understand that if I want more of this goodness, I need to do my part.

Most of all, I love the picture he paints of those of us working to make our particular niche in the world better:

In my experience, the great software companies are run by singleminded people who bend the physics of design to their will, creating powerful leverage for those that they serve. They are craftspeople, impatient with the status quo and eager to make things better.

DHH of 37 Signals caught my attention (like he usually does) on Twitter today. This time, it’s sleep:

Most days I go to bed at 9:30-10pm, get up at ~7am. Relaxed morning routine for an hour, then drive kid to school. Usually start work around 9:30am, work until 5pm. Days with training is an hour later start. That’s the basic routine in Malibu (was different in Spain).

First off, no idea he was in Malibu, which is cool, because somehow that means if I keep working at my startup with the kind of level-headed thinking he throws out there, I could end up there someday (which would make Summer extremely 😃).

Secondly, this seems so basic and so easy that I wonder why I struggle to follow a pattern like this.

At the most, I get 7 hours of sleep, 7.5 if I’m lucky, but for the most part, I’m up within 6 hours, maybe 5.5.

I think my subconscious is trying to tell me something, because ever since I left home I’ve been fascinated with books and studies on sleep. I love staying up late to read why I should be sleeping more!

I think, too, that I might be entranced by this again because I am in control of my life. I can run with this schedule and still get all the work I need to get done.

Because I run my own business.

And because I get to do what I love throughout the entire day, rather than something I try to force-fit in an hour before “real work”, or two hours when I used to get home.

I even spent this entire weekend developing a fully functional Structure Builder for Subtext, so writers could have even more flexibility writing great stories quickly and efficiently.

I guess this will be the week I try the same schedule. Have to get up a tad earlier than 7 to help the kids, but I can adjust at night to make up for it.

Well.

Except tonight.

Can’t miss Westworld! 😄

Seth Godin describes what I love about my weekdays:

Entrepreneurship is a chance to trade a solution to someone who has a problem that needs solving.

Story not working? I’ll trade you.

Solve more problems, solve bigger problems, solve problems more widely and you’re an entrepreneur.

It’s why I built Subtext. Because I’ve always wanted to be an entrepreneur, not an employee.

Resumed uploading storyforms into Subtext this morning. Today’s feature is I, Tonya–the happy family fun drama that ties abusive relationships to being the best of the best!

I remember being blown away by this film and how expertly they wove a complete narrative structure into real life events. Jeff’s paradigm shift at the end particularly impressed me. His shift from being motivated by an Influence Character Problem of Effect to resolving his drive with an Influence Character Solution of Cause (“It was all my fault”) fit seamlessly into the story’s central narrative argument: Keep tolerating personal and professional abuse, and everyone will suffer the tragic consequences of scraping by to survive.

The Story Structure of the Raiders of the Lost Ark

A tweet from director friend @ClayKaytis inspired a dive into the thematic structure of another iconic film from my childhood, Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Last week it was The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, this week it’s Raiders. Like Empire, Raiders sports two storyforms: the Raiders Story and the Ark story. And also like Empire, both stories offer both tragedy and triumph.

Something about the early 80s manifested complex and sophisticated narrative structures.

Clay wondered why Indy changes at the end (closes his eyes) and the Ark story answers that question. The Raiders one covers the relationship between Indy and Belloq and how “it would only take a nudge to make you like me.”

More importantly, the Raiders storyform focuses on everyone’s favorite bad guy: Nazis!

When the Main Character is not the Protagonist

This split offers me the prime opportunity to install the latest feature for the Story Atomizer: a visual representation of the split between Main Character and Protagonist. A core concept of the Dramatica theory of story, the subjective point-of-view of the Main Character can differ from the motivational effort to pursue.

Protagonists pursue. Antagonists prevent.

The Nazis pursue the Ark, Indy works to prevent that from happening. The Nazis spectacularly lose, while Indy ends up resolving any personal issues he had around his legacy.

A Personal Triumph–a subjective appreciation that best describes the feeling of the ending of Raiders.

Appreciating the Nazis as Protagonists allows for a better understanding of the Story Outcome of Failure and the Story Consequence of Becoming. They don’t get the Ark and they become dead!

Gaining greater meaning

Trying to force-fit Indy into the Pursuit role and the Nazis into an assumed position as Antagonist loses the greater meaning of Failure. The Ark winding up in a giant cavernous warehouse is not a Successful Outcome.

In addition, it flops the Crucial Elements for Belloq and Indy, drafting the former as Avoiding or Preventing, and the latter as strictly Pursuing. Feels better if you switch those around–and makes more sense in terms of the Story Outcome.

“It’s the mark of a charlatan to try and explain simple things in complex ways and it’s the mark of a genius to explain complicated things in simple ways.”

Been thinking a lot about this quote from Naval lately. Particularly, in context of Dramatica and its ability to help Authors write better stories.

I know so much about the theory–but so much of what I know, no one wants to hear. They want simple, easy-to-understand templates that they can use to start a story. They don’t want to know about the bade elements of every scene or the difference between a Crucial Element in a Changed character and the same in a Steadfast character.

They just don’t want to waste their time writing something that isn’t going to work.

I know what they need. And I know I can deliver something simple and clean–a dead easy approach to rapidly scaffolding a meaningful story.

2nd quarter of 2018 should be enough time.

Quite happy with this latest article: Uncovering the Major Plot Points of a Complete Story, the first in a series of articles on Plot Points.

Star Wars is not the be-all, end-all when it comes to functioning narratives–but everyone knows it. And the major Plot Points do connect meaningfully with the actual sources of conflict in the story (which I was actually surprised about).

This article focuses on Action Story Drivers. Next week’s article on The Shawshank Redemption covers Decision Story Drivers.

The Story Driver is one of the more compelling discoveries of the Dramatica theory of story: the major Plot Points of a narrative–the Act turns–are all of the same type, Action or Decision, in a complete and functioning story.

Mix and match the and you get a broken story, like Dreamworks’ Bee Movie. Keep them consistent, like they do in _ Star Wars_ or _ The Shawshank Redemption_, and the story works.

Tonight, we looked at _The Accountant_—a Ben Affleck thriller with ALOT of story 😄.

Turns out the film contains two storyforms: one with Ben as the Main Character and Anna Kendrick as the Influence Character. The second one positions Medina as the Main Character and JK Simmons as the Influence Character.

Been doing this with Dramatica co-creator leading the class for over 20 years now—and look forward to at least another 20 Years.

Working through an analysis of Coco with other Dramatica aficionados, a mistake in my article this week popped up. Turns out it was sunrise, not midnight, that set the limit for the story. Big difference between time and space. I corrected the article–

–which is what I love about the Dramatica theory of story. Pure objectivity. If this were an analysis under any other more-subjective paradigm–the defense of Oh well, that’s just the way I see it would have ended any meaningful dialogue.

Objectivity keeps us honest.

And keeps us growing.

Like the show itself, there is so much to love about the storyform for the first season of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. I thought the focus on inappropriate behavior (Non-accurate) and the Influence Character’s Solution of Determination (“She’s great…”) was enough, but looking over the entire storyform so much of it rings true–and explains why the show is so massively awesome.

The key to my excitement is this: while I did pick Storypoints like the Main Character Concern of Preconscious (everytime she opens her mouth people lose their mind!) and the Overall Story Concern of Doing (the stand-up comedy circuit in Downtown NY), Dramatica–a theory of story based on the psychology of the human mind–picked the following Storypoints–

–on its own!

• Main Character Unique Ability of Confidence(the storypoint responsible for bringing Success to the story).
• Relationship Story Catalyst of Ability (or Talent) the catalyst for conflict within the marriage (she’s way better than him at comedy)
• The Main Character Critical Flaw of Knowledge–as a housewife in the 1950s she doesn’t have a clue as to how the “real” world works (or know what she can or can’t say…that’s actually probably a better indicator)
• The Influence Character Unique Ability of Security (Joel does bring home the bacon) and his Critical Flaw of Wisdom (stupid move to leave her in the first place)
• The Relationship Story Problem of Effect (how she kills at her wedding, sneaks in professional dancers to “affect” all the guests, and of course–her effect on Audiences everywhere)
• The Relationship Story Inhibitor of Value (how much Joel devalues her contribution).

And the list goes on and on.

The reason why you binge watch this entire show in a day or two is because of the clarity and the seamless tapestry of these Storypoints. Every bit of this story balances out. The entire narrative functions on all cylinders. I’ve never seen an entire season of television so confidently and expertly tell a meaningful and cohesive argument.

A true masterpiece of storytelling.

So, this is what I was working on this weekend, and what I’m releasing tomorrow: Storyform Connections! Quickly find stories with similar structures in seconds!

Here, the Atomizer scans 370+ films for films with Changed Main Characters & Problems of Control.

I’m so excited about this as it fulfills an initial promise of the service: the ability to see connections across storyforms.

This is the very best way to learn the Dramatica theory of story and to find working narratives that share similar structural story points to your own stories.

Personally, I’m also stoked to see that I could build something with this much reactivity and complexity in a matter of days (4 to be exact!). Regardless of tools used to build these services, the idea that you can quickly scaffold something & deliver before the week is out is astounding. Especially to someone who cut his teeth on a PC with 64KB RAM & the Assembly Language manual from Computerland.

Can’t wait to learn more this year!

So easy, even a Kindergartener could understand 🤓 Thank God for Summer, who stepped in & helped me remember how much fun it can be to teach and learn the art of story structure.

Here, Summer goes over the Four Throughlines of Disney’s Moana. Even 6-year olds understand the idea of an Influence Character and the idea that this character, or the Main Character, changes the way they think by the end of the story.

They were even able to easily identify the collective group of four Influence Characters in The LEGO Batman Movie.

Today was a nice reminder of why we do the things we do, and why I personally feel so passionate about communicating the Dramatica theory of story and its practical application within the arts.

With story, we teach the next generation, and the generations after that, how to peaceably resolve their personal and interpersonal conflicts.

I’m proud to be a part of that tradition.