Dramatica Pro 4.0
By Screenplay Systems Inc.
$400, for Windows 95/98 and Power Macintosh
818-843-6557
www.screenplay.com
There still is no free lunch or software that will write your book for you. However, for those who want to write a respectable novel, short story or screenplay but just can’t get started, one solution is to get serious, sit down and get through the laborious filling out of forms and answering of hundreds of questions posed by Dramatica Pro 4.0.
This is serious software, as that sticker price shows, but those who try it will be amazed at how the program forces them to think through such hurdles as creating credible, non-cardboard characters, developing believable but also gripping plot lines, and then using a palette of writer’s tricks to turn the thing into art.
Beware: The software does not write the book for you; it merely produces what could be described at best as a solid first draft that outlines the entire creation scene by scene, chapter by chapter.
Because the software can draw upon templates based on the work of successful writers, the skeleton that emerges from long sessions with Dramatica will cure anybody’s writer’s block. Much of this is done by forcing the user to create situations for characters and then deciding which outcomes best advance the story.
This software delivers the frame, but writing remains the art of putting words together with style and grace, and even with this software, that still comes from the entity between the keyboard and the chair, not from the computer.
