Power Structure: Story Development software for writers

Power Structure’s questions aren’t designed to be filled out in order to be able to print some fancy report... They are there to make you think, and then help apply those thoughts directly to the story at hand

Powerstructure, claiming to be the first story development environment is designed for writers who aren’t searching for an electronic muse but who have a story that they want to tell, and who simply want a better "place" to do it. With Power Structure there are no complicated forms to fill out, no new theories of story or arcane terminology to learn. Instead, it conforms to you, its nine unique story views giving one a playground of the mind where one can explore, develop and yes, even structure, the best writing of one’s career.

One can instantly jump from looking at the smallest detail of your story to the big picture with the click of a mouse. Graphically track conflicts, subplots, characters and themes so you never lose track of what you set out to do and what you’ve accomplished. it has been done by the same team that brought you ScriptThing and Movie Magic

With Screenwriter, Power Structure brings the same intuitive ease-of-use, power and flexibility that these programs are known for and applies them to the story development process. It has complete integration with both ScriptThing & Movie Magic

Screenwriter allows you to take a script that you want to rewrite, and simply open it in Power Structure and have all your entire script in the programme ready for analysis and rewriting. When you’re done with the restructuring/rewriting, simply click a button and it exports it back to a ScriptThing/Screenwriter Script with all your dialogue, character names and so forth still all formatted correctly for you!

It will give you means to be innovative, graphic methods of looking at your story, its conflicts, character development and more so that you can easily spot weak areas and strengthen them. It will let you write in a manner that is most comfortable to you, letting you jot down ideas and write scenes in any order you want.

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. 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 particlar order; they are there to inspire and aid you.

However, for simplicity in describing the programme, here’s exploring them in the order in which they appear in the programme.

Glossary of Terms
ACT: Act refers 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 it’s 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, we talk 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.

This is the first View in the program. It is where you can explore your overall big story concepts. It is here that you can type in a synopsis, or think about backstory, or write that potentially crucial pithy two line pitch. And like most everything in Power Structure, you can change the category names in the drop-down list, in addition to being able to add, delete or revise any of the basic categories.

Characters view
Power Structure’s questions aren’t designed to be filled out in order to be able to print some fancy report... They are there to make you think, and then help apply those thoughts directly to the story at hand.

This View is where you explore your characters, with questions that spur you into thinking about their past and future, and how they grow and evolve in the story. Fill in as much or as little as makes sense to you; think about how each character’s strengths and weaknesses affects their changing roles in the story, think about what they all want at the each of the major turning points, how their desires change, and how the characters evolve. Aristotle codified the basic 3 Act Structure of dramatic storytelling in his Poetics well over two thousand years ago, and not only is the concept still going strong, but it is wonderfully compatible with other models of storytelling such as Campbell & Vogler’s Hero’s Journey.

Power Structure brings the power of the 21st Century (give or take a year!) to these ancient concepts, helping you build your stories with strong acts that have dramatic relevance for each of your characters, thus helping you to create an extremely strong framework on which the rest of your story can be built.

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