What is Problem Solving?

All characters are driven by their justifications, but only some of the actions they take will end up solving a problem. From the author's "objective" view, approaches that lead to solutions are "problem solving." Approaches that do not are simply justifications.

The process of "problem solving" describes the paths an author promotes as being the most suitable approaches to the story's problem. The process of justification describes all paths that are not as suitable.

In a binary sense, the best path of all will be represented by either the Main or Impact character. The remaining character of the two will represent the worst path. Of Main and Impact, one will be problem solving, the other justifying. All the remaining characters represent alternative approaches between the two extremes.

From an author's perspective, it is just as important to know how things got started as it is to know how everything turns out. How is it that people can become so misguided? How is it that characters can become so justified?

Problems Start Innocently Enough....

It is the nature of people and characters as well, to try to find a source of joy and a resolution to that which hurts them. This hurt might be physical suffering or mental torment. The resolution may be to rearrange one's environment or to accept the environment as it is. Regardless of the source of the inequity or the means employed to resolve it, all thinking creatures try to maximize their pleasure and minimize their pain. That is the primal force that drives us in our lives, and the dramatic force that drives a story.

If our environments would instantly respond to our desires, and if our feelings would immediately adjust to new attitudes, all inequities between our environments and us would equalize at once. Unfortunately, this is not the case. Rather, to solve external problems we must apply effort to rearrange the material that surrounds us, and to solve internal problems we must adopt a series of paradigm shifts to arrive at a perspective that minimizes our anguish.

Getting to the Heart of the Problem

Because it takes time to resolve inequities, we define problem solving as a process we engage in over time. Step by step we chip away at pieces of a problem until we arrive at a solution. We meet prerequisites that give us the resources to fulfill the requirements that must be completed to clear the way to our goal. Or, we change the nature of the forces at work that determine the processes that preserve the inequity, so it dissolves when its foundation erodes.

Problem solving requires identifying the source of the inequity and the nature of the effort that will end it. Each of these requirements depends on an accurate assessment of the mechanism that produces the inequity, and there lies the opportunity for error.

Characters, Problems, and Justification

Stories are about one character who is problem solving and a second character who believes they are problem solving but are in error. One will be the Main Character and the other the Impact Character. In terms of the Story Mind, these two characters represent our own inability to know in advance if the method we have chosen to apply to a problem will lead to success or failure. When our approach leads to failure Dramatica does not refer to the process as problem solving, but calls that process Justification.