Write Brothers Dramatica Pro 4 (Win/Mac)

List Price: $269.99 Discount Price: $149.95

Customer Reviews:

Even the demo makes this software shine [Posted on 2005-08-21]
I have heard about Dramatica Pro for years and never touched it. Now, I finally gave in to get the demo--and stayed up till 3:00 o'clock in the morning! I could not afford to lose the valuable information it was giving me. For those who know their story ahead of time, great! Dramatica helps you know it better. I knew my story dealt with the issues of trust and identity. I knew how these things played out. What I didn't know was that about Impact Characters and the total relationships between my themes, my characters, and the action going on. Using Dramatica forced me to answer questions that probed even deeper into my story than I had known how to go. For this alone, I would buy the software. Particularly so I can go to sleep at night and continue in the morning.

Not for Creativity [Posted on 2005-12-13]
I tried a demo of this software from [...]. This product was totally not what I expected. I worked with this software for two days and decided to buy Power Writer instead.

You can build a story using this software by generating character templates and then answering questions about the themes and relationships within the story. You can jot notes all along the way, but I found I was writing the same thing down over and over again. Eventually that pays off when your getting towards the end and the notes are already there, but it is long, tedious, and not fun. You start with almost 33,000 possible storylines that narrow down to one and then you can map out your Chapters and export everything to a word processor to print out. You can use the print out as your personal guide and then start writing your story. Characters can be complex or straight archetype templates. I think when you get focused on the templates it narrows the possibilities for dynamic and interesting people. A hero isn't always hero-like, but it is good to know the basic archetypes. I also found the templates greatly reduce the possibilities for the story's theme and progression. I did not want my hero to only be logical and then only be able to be categorized as a do-er...these things kind of killed my storyline altogether, but I am sure it created a storyline that I could have worked with instead.

The demo does not let you print, export or save so I do not know if the reports were any good or not. I do not know if they were clear cut or just a lot of additional information I may or may not need.

I found the process a lot of boring busy work and not much fun. It has a nice interface and is easy enough to use, but it doesn't allow for a lot of creativity or research notes. The tutorial was simply a lot of reading, but easy to understand.

I highly recommend the demo...it saved me a lot of money and busy work.

Dramatica 4 reviewed at Microfilmmaker.com [Posted on 2006-03-18]
"...This is a helpful program and a worthwhile investment for someone struggling from writer's block or who has difficulties organizing his or her ideas. If the user is willing to sift through the terminology, he or she will gain a useful tool to aid his or her writing..." -Jessica Lake, Microfilmmaker.com

HUGE DISAPPOINTMENT! [Posted on 2006-04-19]
This product is so hyped, yet such a disappontment - hard to install, re-install and actully use.
And it would seem all the company cares about is getting your money. Support is terrible. When I wanted to move it to my new computer, the serial number wouldn't work because I had already installed it on my old computer (even though I had un-installed it on my old computer before I tried to install it on my new computer). Their answer was to buy another copy!!

Enjoyed the ride but totalled the car at the end. [Posted on 2006-09-10]
I'll be brief.

*) Answering the huge battery of questions forced me to look at my novel from different angles and made me reconsider direction in many scenes based on the POV of my reader. Now that was fantastic and rated five stars.

*) Storyweaving is a huge let-down. After many hours answering detailed questions where the user has to use the help button to decipher their Dramatic-specific terms, I was notified that:

[I'm not required to complete the exposition part of the Storyweaving and that I can go ahead and create my scenes.]

If I build my own scenes and chapters, what did I pay for?

Option two: I let the program build a scenario for me and let me tell you; this was a most bizarre use of the information that I so carefully crafted a provided.

Two stars for storyweaving + Five stars for everything leading up to storyweaving divided by two = Three stars.

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