| Power Structure's interface is based on nine "Views."
In each View, you can write, explore, and
hopefully be inspired about some different aspect or aspects of your story. |
|
Unlike
other programs that have complicated forms to be filled out, Power
Structure is designed to let you write at your own pace, and in the manner with
which you're most comfortable.
Fill out as much or as little
information in each View as makes sense to you. Then, as you move among them, the
information automatically moves along with you, letting you dynamically build a coherent,
structured story, not just some pretty report.
Furthermore, there's no requirement that you work in all Views,
nor
that you even use them in any particular order; they are there to inspire and aid you, not
to give you busy work.
However, for simplicity in describing
the program, we'll explore them in the order in which they appear in the program.
|
Glossary of Terms |
| Because of a disparity of terminology among
different writers and different mediums, it gets rather difficult to talk about
story elements in a completely general way... within Power Structure
itself this isn't a problem as you can set the program to use both the terminology
and structure of story telling that you find most familiar, and which is appropriate for
the medium in which you are currently writing, be it short stories, film, tv, theater,
novels or whatever. However,
for the purposes of this Web Page, I think we need to make a couple of definitions. |
| ACT |
When we talk about Act, we are
referring to the standard Three Act Structure (also known as Aristotelian Three Act Structure because it was first proposed by
Aristotle in his seminal work, Poetics) not
the Act of a Play or TV show.
This Three Act Structure is such a
common way of viewing stories for virtually all mediums that we "hard-wired" it
in. If you don't want to use it, you certainly don't have to, but it's there for you
to refer to if you like. The simplest description of Three Act Structure is Act I - You get your protagonist into a Tree, Act II - You throw rocks at
him (or her), Act III - You get him (or her) down. |
STORY
BEAT |
This is the most basic "unit" of your story, and its often called a
Plot Point, Scene, Dramatic Moment
or the like.
Depending on your viewpoint and the medium you are working in, it can be as large or as
small a unit of story as you like, but whatever you call it, this is where the
"action" of your story actually happens. Because most of the screen shots on this web site were taken from
Casablanca, in these graphics this is referred to as Scenes, but because that is very film/theater-centric, I will be
mostly talking about them as Story Beats. |
| SEQUENCE |
This a collection of Story Beats. If you're writing a Novel it would
be a Chapter, in a TV Show, it might be a Television Act, in the Hero's Journey it would be a Journey Stage, in John Truby's story structure, it would be one of
his 22 Steps™, and so on. Again, whatever you call
it, it is a larger part of the total story that should have a rhythm and flow of its
own. It typically has opening and closing "Hooks" (events that grab the
reader/viewer and keep them watching), and usually also has an overall story arc. 22 Steps™ is a trademark
of Truby's Writers Studio |
| CONFLICT |
This is the glue that holds the Story Beats
together. For our purposes, it's the smallest "unit" of story that
comprises a beginning, middle and end, and is variously also termed a Subplot or Thread. |
 |
|
|
Material Copyright © 2000 ScriptPerfection Enterprises, Inc. |
|
