Method in the Madness

Recap

In the previous posts, I looked at two of the four Dimensions of Character.  The Motivation Set described the sorts of innate attitudes that a character could display, such as Pursuit or Support or Disbelief.  Another set, called the Purpose Set, described what each character was striving for, such as Order or Change or Knowledge.  I showed how these dimensions could be expressed 4x4 grid patterns, onto which we can map the characters of the story, and see relationships between them.

Dramatica proposes four dimensions, so in this post I will introduce another dimension of character, which Dramatica calls Methodology.


The Method

Where a character has an innate Motivation, and strives for a Purpose, the Method dimension describes how this character goes about getting the Purpose.  What thought processes does the character mainly use as a way of moving toward the Purpose.  Again this can be arranged as a 4x4 grid in the usual pattern.

Certainty	Probability	Proaction	Inaction
Possibility	Potentiality	Protection	Reaction
Deduction	Reduction	Acceptance	Evaluation
Production	Induction	Reevaluation	Nonacceptance

These are again arranged in pairs of opposing Methodologies.  Dramatica says that each of your characters need to have at least one of these Methodologies, but can have combinations. 

Let's have a look at what each of these sixteen Methodologies mean.

Certainty	The method of always waiting until the character is certain before acting.  This makes the character risk-averse, safe, but sometimes unwilling to go out on a limb to gain the prize, so sometimes misses out on the prize because of this.
Probability	The method of going with the most likely.  This makes the character calculating, and can sometimes seem as if they change sides according to the weather.  A character who follows probability can sometimes avoid the downsides.
Proaction	This is the tendency to be a self-starter, to begin moving towards a goal without external prompting.  Although this makes a character a driver, it can also lead to bad decisions though premature choices before all the facts are known.
Inaction	The trait of failing to take action when presented with a problem, or giving no response at all.  This can lead to dragging of feet on positive actions, achieving nothing, and for getting in the way in a negative sense, sometimes for good.
Possibility	Thinking about all the possible solutions to the problem, not being tied down to the most likely.  Sometimes this manifests itself as over-thinking, and in some cases not concentrating on what is most likely in favour of other possibilities.
Potentiality	Appraising all options in solving a problem according to their potential for most gain, and sometimes acting as if that was true even if it is not probable.  Leads to the character seeing benefits that others don't, and missing pitfalls.
Protection	A character builds a wall around their concerns to avoid them being interfered with by actual and potential threats.  This character resists attempts to force it down a path it hasn't chosen and can see such approaches as a threat.
Reaction	Not acting on a problem until it manifests, the Reaction character only acts in response to another character.  It never acts pre-emptively, and this can lead to delays which may have been advantageous.
Deduction	This is the methodical way of thinking which tries to eliminate all competing possibilities until only one remains.  This is the mainstay of the detective novel.  A deductive character can sometimes miss a possibility when two answers are true.
Reduction	A method of thinking which judges competing theories on their merits and ranks and groups them according to relative likelihood.  This sort of thinking sometimes leads to fixed ideas unable to recalculate based on changing circumstances.
Acceptance	When a character has decided not to oppose anything that comes along.  This can diffuse conflict in certain circumstances, but in the long run can mean that bad situations are allowed to continue unopposed..
Evaluation	The ability of a character to piece together a collection of seemingly unrelated facts into a cohesive theory which allows him to assess the relationships between the parts.  This needs to be continually updated to maintain correct understanding.
Production	This is a process of thought where the character determines potential of solutions, by ruling out the ones which cannot happen.  Sometimes this character can rule out certain possibilities early on which later become possible by change of facts.
Induction	The method of working out causal chains of events by linking seemingly unrelated facts together.  The downside of this approach is that the induction ins only one of a set of potential solutions, and it is difficult to compare each one.
Reevaluation	The re-assessment of known facts or believed theories.  Unlike Evaluation, the Re-Evaluation method takes what was guessed at before and compares with the facts since.  These characters can be swayed by new, sometimes false,  information.
Nonacceptance	The desire to oppose a course of action.  This character can be strong and steadfast against slippage, but at the same time they can be nit-picky and apply their stance against the smallest movement which may have allowed more casual relationships.

Another bit of a brain blurb

That is quite a lot of data again.  Dramatica seems to love its tables and grids, and some of these opposing pairs seem a little arbitrary at this point, but perhaps they will make more sense as I try to scatter my Fiend characters across the Methodology Set in the next post.

Using Purpose to Expand on Character

Catch Up

Last time I introduced a second dimension which Dramatica uses when characterising the players in your fiction.  This was the Purpose Set of sixteen purposes which your characters might have. Let's have a bit of fun now and allocate the Fiend characters some Purposes.


The Purposes of Jacob and Fiend

Let's start with the main character, Jacob, what does he want?  Well he wants two things, mainly he wants to overcome the block he has on his actions due to his traumatic history.  And he wants to defeat Fiend in the end.  Ultimately both these purposes promise to lead to him having a more fulfilled and ordered life.  This is typical of the Desire purpose.  He wants things to change, and this leads him to Fiend in the early stages of the story, but realises the changes are harmful.  So he really wants Equity as well, the feeling that things are on a more even keel.  Let's put that on the graph.

Knowledge	Ability	Actuality	Aware
Desire Jake	Thought	Self Aware	Perception
Order	Equity Jake	Inertia	Projection
Inequity	Chaos	Speculation	Change

Now it makes sense that the main opponent of Jake would want the exact opposite.  Fiend seeks disorder and relishes change and turmoil.  But does he want something else?  Up until now, Fiend has been a little bit of a one-dimensional character. Due to him originally being a vampire, I didn't have to explain his purpose: I've said he's evil and likes chaos, but I've not worked out why he does.  In the past, it was fine just to state a monster was a monster, but modern fiction isn't so forgiving.

So what is it that Fiend actually wants?  What does he get from the evil, what is his ultimate aim? This is probably one of the main reasons I left off writing  the original draft of this, because I didn't understand what motivates Fiend.  As we have seen, everything flows from what a character feels and wants.  So now I have to do some work.

One way of coming at this is what does Fiend partially achieve before he is defeated?  In the story he escapes, rather hesitantly, from his makeshift prison, recovers his health, ingratiates himself with the gang and eventually takes it over.  So he is a bit of an expansionist.  Is he megalomaniacal?  Does he ant to keep going until he's taken over everything?  It seems so, but it's not order he's imposing.  In some ways he's Projecting into the future a plan for the world.  So Projection is one.

But that's not all that has come out of the imagining. He also wants Jake to join him.  He thinks that Jake needs to give himself up to the inner demon.  So he is also seeking a form of Self-Awareness, not for himself, but from Jake.  He intends to do this via temptation and manipulation of his brother.  That sounds good.  So another of his goals is to make Jake Self-Aware.

Let's put them on the graph.

Knowledge	Ability	Actuality	Aware
Desire Jake	Thought	Self Aware Fiend	Perception
Order	Equity Jake	Inertia	Projection Fiend
Inequity	Chaos	Speculation	Change

The Guardian and the Contagonist

Now remember that I've swapped some of the characteristics of both girlfriend Elaine, and ex Katie, so they aren't actually in the pure archetypal roles of Guardian and Contagonist any more, but they are close enough to still refer to then that way. Before working out their purposes, let's have a recap at where they were in terms of the Motivation Set after we'd made some changes.

Katie Ward	Action	Helps Jake think through his problems and supports him.
	Decision	Is the temptation to leave Fiend alone and forget about it.
Elaine Cullum	Action	Hinders Jake by trying to stop him following the right path.
	Decision	Is the conscience of the story, points to Fiend's inherent evil.

It seems from this that Katie still loves Jake, even though she is with his brother.  With her motivations, her relationship with William must be suffering through the story as he gets more and more involved with Fiend.  Unless she's fallen out of love with William, her reasons for healing Jake must be to help William as well. She doesn't believe in the good life that Fiend promises, it's an illusion. She is more concerned with Actuality.  She has Thought about the situation a lot.

Elaine is the brake on Jacob's changes. She doesn't want him to bring Fiend into the house, she doesn't want Jacob to get involved in the gang, and she doesn't want him to go up against Fiend in the end.  Her relationship with Jacob is based on him not being what she really wants, and lives with the Inequity of that. At the same time she prefers to stay in a holding pattern through Inertia.

Let's put them on the graph.

Knowledge	Ability	Actuality Katie	Aware
Desire Jake	Thought Katie	Self Aware Fiend	Perception
Order	Equity Jake	Inertia Elaine	Projection Fiend
Inequity Elaine	Chaos	Speculation	Change

Reason and Emotion

Again I've changed these characters around a bit, but we'll still refer to them that way.  Let's have a recap of where Thomas and William were after the changes.

Thomas Bower	Action	Calm and controlled whenever violent conflict is happening.
	Decision	Led by his feelings of pleasure when following Fiend.
William Fraser	Action	Uncontrolled or frenzied when tempted by Fiend's ways.
	Decision	He disbelieves it can be accomplished, by Jake or anyone.

Thomas is the older gang member, he never had ambitions to be the leader, prefers to be a right-hand-man.  He is calm and collected.  When he turns against Fiend he is doing so because he prefers Order to chaos.  He is a careful plotter, is his idea to try to defeat Fiend by finding out how he was trapped the previous time.  He is a user of Knowledge.

William is the brother, leader of the gang at the start, but something of a failure, though lack of Ability.  So this is what Fiend and the prospect of criminal success give him - Ability.  He is also something of a dreamer, and sees himself at the head of a massive enterprise, so he is a victim on Speculation about his possible future, ironic because he is killed partway through the story.

Let's put those on the graph.

Knowledge Thomas	Ability William	Actuality Katie	Aware
Desire Jake	Thought Katie	Self Aware Fiend	Perception
Order Thomas	Equity Jake	Inertia Elaine	Projection Fiend
Inequity Elaine	Chaos	Speculation William	Change

The Skeptic and the Sidekick

Again, we have messed around  with the archetypes a little, but let's recap where we were up to with Bobby and Peter, after the changes we made.

Bobby Liddell	Action	He opposes attempting to defeat the Fiend, argues against it.
	Decision	Uses logic and not emotion to help defeat Fiend.
Peter Law	Action	Always supports Jake in whatever action he takes.
	Decision	Has immense faith in Jake's abilities, more than Jake.

It seems Bobby was the answer sitting in plain sight all the time.  Although he didn't admit it in the earlier part of the story, he was there during the capture of Fiend the first time, and was traumatised by it.  He remembers the Chaos an it's only his fear of it happening again that spurs him into action.  He knows things are different this time, and it's the Change in situation that scares him the most, and makes him believe that defeating fiend is not possible this time.

Peter is the ever-ready henchman and all round fixer.  He is well-liked by everyone, knows everyone.  When anything needs done, Peter is the man to go to.  It is him know finds out Bobby knows how to defeat the Fiend. Peter is very Aware of the network of people, and buys into a Perception of the environment which is optimistic and pleasant, despite the crime surroundings.

Let's put these final ones on the graph.

Knowledge Thomas	Ability William	Actuality Katie	Aware Peter
Desire Jake	Thought Katie	Self Aware Fiend	Perception Peter
Order Thomas	Equity Jake	Inertia Elaine	Projection Fiend
Inequity Elaine	Chaos Bobby	Speculation William	Change Bobby

So what have we been doing here?

It might seem a bit contrived to fill up these squares in this way.  For some of them we've had to force them a little.  It's very possible we may decide to flip some of them around as we progress.  An important thing to notice is that diagonal pairs are in opposition, like we had with the Motivation set.  This raises a few ideas for possible scenes and conflicts that I would never have thought of before:

• William and Jake are opposite on Ability and Desire.
• Elaine and Jake are opposite on Equity and Inequity.
• William and Fiend are opposite on Speculation and Projection.
• Katie and Peter are opposite on Actuality and Perception.

One of the most striking things that I see from the grid is that Fiend and Jake do not actually oppose each other on any Purpose.  Is this a fatal flaw in the story telling?  It's a little disconcerting, but I suppose some of the best stories have people who come into conflict whilst trying to attain their own purposes- they don't always have to be struggling over the same purpose.

Quite a bit of progress, that is enough for this post, I think.

Finally, we have a Purpose

Catch up

Yesterday, I condensed all the sixteen motivational elements into a grid structure, and showed how you could move your characters around on this grid to give them different attributes from the usual archetypal characters that the simple model provides.  This was a way of showing the Motivational Set (or dimension) of the characters, but Dramatica says there are four dimensions to characters, so I will introduce you to another one in this post - Purpose.


The Dimension of Purpose

Sometimes when you look at the character and ask "what drives this character?" it is tempting to look for a motivation as a reason.  The example Dramatica gives is the sentence "Jane wants to become President" - and sometimes this is given as the Motivation for that character.  But which of the sixteen motivations that we have already documented is it?  Pursuit?  Conscience?  They don't seem to fit very well.

In reality "wanting to be President" isn't a motivation at all - it's a Purpose.  Motivation might be the sort of attitude that allows you to get there, but the "there" you are getting to is a Purpose.  A Purpose in the story is the sort of thing your character desires, not the why, not the how, but the nature of the prize.  Being a President could be for knowledge, perhaps the character wants to find out about UFOs, or it could be about Order, they want to stop a war.  In Dramatica, Purpose can is split up into sixteen elements like the other Dimensions.

Knowledge	Ability	Actuality	Aware
Desire	Thought	Self Aware	Perception
Order	Equity	Inertia	Projection
Inequity	Chaos	Speculation	Change

These are again arranged in pairs of opposing Purposes.  It does not seem that Archetypal characters map onto this grid in the same way as Motivational ones, because Purposes are not archetypal and are story-driven.   Dramatica says that each of your characters need to have at least one of these as a Purpose, and it's fun to have two each. 

Let's have a look at what each of these sixteen Purposes mean.

Knowledge	The gaining of information that the character knows or feels to be true. A prime example of a Knowledge Purpose in fiction is the detective wanting to find out the identity of the perpetrator of a murder in a detective story.
Ability	The capability to do something that the character wants.  An example of an Ability Purpose is Luke Skywalker finally being able to use and rely on the Force to guide his actions.  It was always within him, and he finds it at the end.
Actuality	This is a knowledge of the true state of affairs.  An example of an Actuality Purpose is a person who is trying to find out the identity of his real father, and is not happy with the explanation his mother gives him.  He prefers the truth at any cost.
Aware	This is when a character accurately perceives all that goes on around him, sometimes ignoring his own part or thinking.  An example Aware Purpose would be an introvert who wants to be part of the in-crowd and the social scene.
Desire	The wanting to change situation or fortune for the better.  This can be in material terms or relationship terms.  Any rags to riches story will contain an element of a Desire Purpose.  As will many love stories, where the Desire is for love.
Thought	The examination of all aspects of a problem.  Sometimes all a character wants is the time, space or capability to examine a problem thoroughly.  This could be a point of conscience, religious belief or any sort of intellectual problem requiring Thought.
Self-Aware	When a character is unsure of their thoughts, they sometimes seek clarity as a Purpose.  Many love stories fall into this category as the main character struggles to decide what they want out of a relationship, usually between two suitors.
Perception	The view that the world is as it seems, not how it actually is.  many discovery stories are based on the idea that the world that everyone sees is not as expected, such as The Matrix with its simulation. Some characters prefer the illusion to the reality.
Order	The organization of a system according to patterns.  Some characters seek to restore or establish order as a way of minimising hurt or unfairness.  An example would be someone taking charge of a plane crash site, or a life raft in order to maintain calm.
Equity	This is a balance of powers or movements so that things are relatively stable.  Equity may be of mind, or of society. At the end of Jaws, the shark is dead, everyone is now safe, and life can go back to something normal.
Inertia	This is the tendency for things to stay the same, or to stay moving at the same speed.  A warrior for an expanding race seeks to keep up the momentum of conquest, and the old emperor is happy to keep what he has.
Projection	The ability to extrapolate events into the future, someone who has a Purpose of Projection imagines what is to come and has a clear vision of that in order to enact it.  Any character with a vision has a Purpose of Projection.
Inequity	This is imbalance or unfairness in a system.  The character with an Inequity Purpose will focus on the unfairness most of all, sometimes to the exclusion of what is working.  A Social Justice Warrior trying to close a factory down is an example.
Chaos	The lack of order in a system, sometimes typified by disorder and anarchy.  Post doomsday fiction usually contains elements of Chaos where the rule of law has broken down and the norms of society cannot be relied upon.
Speculation	The extrapolation of the current situation into a future which is highly unlikely, leading to erratic behaviour.  An example might be Doomsday 'preppers' who are stockpiling weapons because they sense the end of civilization.
Change	The desire to move things away from a stable condition.  Some characters prefer change to stagnation, and will always eek to maximize change over security.  An example would be an expansionist leader of an already prosperous society.

Every character in fiction has one or more Purposes which can be broken down into one or more of the sixteen Purposes.  These describe in general terms what the character wants to achieve, rather than why.


A brain dump

That was quite a lot for one day.  In the next post I will try to assign my Fiend characters to the Purpose Dimensions to try to ascertain what the devil each one of my cast of characters actually wants!

From Another Dimension

Recap

In the last post, I played around with the ideas of swapping Motivational Elements between archetypal characters to produce more interesting and believable people to populate my story.  This is especially marked if we swap Action elements between opposite pairs of story roles, to provide characters who have internal conflict between what they do and what they decide. 

However, if we were stuck with only the sixteen elements, this would produce a fairly low number of combinations, especially since many of them do not make any narrative sense.  This is not usually enough to make truly novel and unexpected characters. Luckily Dramatica has other ways to characterise the roles in the story, four in total.  These it calls Element Sets, or Character Dimensions.


Before we delve into the other dimensions...

Dramatica gets quickly complex at this stage.  Already we have sixteen Motivational elements within the Motivation Set (dimension), and when trying to ascribe certain elements to certain characters in my story it was taking half a page or more to get them down on paper.  If we're going to add another three dimensions, each with sixteen elements of their own, then it's going to get messy.

Luckily, Dramatica comes with a table format to encode the elements which makes them take up less space on the page.  Let's encode the Motivational Set in this new table format:

Consider	Logic	Pursuit	Control
Feeling	Reconsider	Uncontrolled	Avoid
Faith	Conscience	Support	Help
Temptation	Disbelief	Hinder	Oppose

You can see from the sixteen squares that we have shorthand for the sixteen Motivational Elements.  They have been arranged so that diagonal pairs at the edges are in conflict, so that Consider is pitted against Reconsider, and Feeling against Logic, and so on. 

Another important thing to see is that the grid splits into four parts.  The top half and the bottom half are the split between Driver Characters and Passenger Characters.  The left half and the right half represent the split between Action and Decision characteristics.

If we want, we can allocate the eight Archetypal characters onto this grid, so we can see the relationships:

Consider Protagonist	Logic Reason	Pursuit Protagonist	Control Reason
Feeling Emotion	Reconsider Antagonist	Uncontrolled Emotion	Avoid Antagonist
Faith Sidekick	Conscience Guardian	Support Sidekick	Help Guardian
Temptation Contagonist	Disbelief Skeptic	Hinder Contagonist	Oppose Skeptic

You can see that the Archetypal characters map very evenly into the pairs of the Element Set.  If we wanted to swap some of the motivational elements, we would just move the names of our characters from one box to the next, having no doubles and no empty boxes.  This is a lot easier than writing it out long-hand.  Let's do that for Fiend with the set-up from yesterday's swaps:

Archetypal characters from Fiend Consider Jacob Logic Thomas Pursuit Jacob Control Thomas Feeling William Reconsider Fiend Uncontrolled William Avoid Fiend Faith Peter Conscience Katie Support Peter Help Katie Temptation Elaine Disbelief Bobby Hinder Elaine Oppose Bobby

With the element swaps from yesterday Consider Jacob Logic Bobby Pursuit Jacob Control Thomas Feeling Thomas Reconsider Fiend Uncontrolled William Avoid Fiend Faith Peter Conscience Elaine Support Peter Help Katie Temptation Katie Disbelief William Hinder Elaine Oppose Bobby

First we plot the Archetypal Characters from our first stab at character creation on the left grid.  This makes it easy to see that not only have we included all necessary motivational elements, we have placed them all in the correct places for the archetypal pattern.

Now, if we want to play around swapping elements to get complex characters, instead of writing them out longhand, it is very easy just to swap pairs of character traits to give believable combinations.  I re-do the decision element swaps we tried yesterday to give the grid on the right, with the changes highlighted in red.

We can now quickly see that, for example, Katie is now Help-but-Temptation.  If we want to try out other combinations, we just swap character traits until we get a set of characters we like.  This is much quicker and easier than writing it out long hand. 

There are only three rules when doing this:

1. No character can serve two masters.  Each character has to appear twice in the grid, but they can never be opposite each other in a 4x4 grid.  For instance, a single character cannot ever pursue and avoid at the same time.  Or help and hinder at the same time. 

2. Each character must appear once on the left and once on the right, this is because the grid is split left-right between Action and Decision, and you must have one of each.  You cannot have two approaches (actions) to a problem, or two different attitudes (decisions) to a problem. 

3. Where each character appears vertically changes how important a character becomes in terms of passenger and driver aspects.  When you move a character element towards the top, you are changing that character from a passenger to a more of a driver.  Be aware of this.

When you 'roll the model' you basically look at different configurations of character elements until you get a set you are happy with.


Progress

That is quite a lot to consider, so I think I'll leave it there for now.  Yes, I know I keep promising to talk about Purpose, but I had to introduce the quads before going there.. In the next post, I promise!

Grids and quads

A bit of fun

So yesterday I introduced you to the idea of the Sixteen Motivational Elements, and showed that when they are combined within characters in certain combinations, they can lead to Archetypal characters or more complex and interesting characters.

Back in my story Fiend, I had created a set of archetypal characters.  But now we can have a bit of fun and try swapping out some of the characteristics to see if it makes for more interesting characters.  Firstly, here are the characters as I have them at the moment:

Protagonist	Action	Pursues the goal of defeating Fiend and overcoming his flaws.
Jacob Fraser	Decision	Urges others to consider that Fiend needs to be stopped.
Antagonist	Action	Prevents people interfering with his plans of chaos.
Fiend	Decision	Urges Jake and others to reconsider coming to his side.
Guardian	Action	Helps Jake think through his problems and supports him.
Katie Ward	Decision	Is the conscience of the story, points to Fiend's inherent evil.
Contagonist	Action	Hinders Jake by trying to stop him following the right path.
Elaine Cullum	Decision	Is the temptation to leave Fiend alone and forget about it.
Reason	Action	Calm and controlled whenever violent conflict is happening.
Thomas Bower	Decision	Uses logic and not emotion to help defeat Fiend.
Emotion	Action	Uncontrolled or frenzied when tempted by Fiend's ways.
William Fraser	Decision	Led by his feelings of pleasure when following Fiend.
Sidekick	Action	Always supports Jake in whatever action he takes.
Peter Law	Decision	Has immense faith in Jake's abilities, more than Jake.
Skeptic	Action	He opposes attempting to defeat the Fiend, argues against it.
Bobby Liddell	Decision	He disbelieves it can be accomplished, by Jake or anyone.

So this is the standard list of archetypal characters from my story, mapped onto the Action-Decision pairs that the Dramatica definition gives. Already, there are some suggestions for scenes from these definitions - the scene where Fiend asks Jacob to reconsider his course of action and come over to his way of thinking - that could be a quite powerful scene.  Or perhaps the scene where Bobby Liddell tells Jake that the Fiend cannot be defeated, and he shouldn't try.  Again a good scene suggested by the analysis.  This analysis of character that Dramatica has suggested is already useful in crafting scenes and plot.

But whilst Dramatica advises that archetypal characters are useful as a sort of writer shorthand - people have seen these characters time and again, so you can suggest an archetypal character, a guardian, for instance - and you don't have to fill in a lot of detail because people understand the role implicitly - but the downside of this is that people have, of course, seen this type of character many times, and this can make your characters seem a bit thread-bare and samey.


Goody two-shoes

In my story characters above, some of the characters seem a bit too goodie.  Katie Ward, the ex-girlfriend is supportive of Jake and stands as the conscience of the story (perhaps she has a strong religious conviction and this allows her to stand firm against the temptation that Fiend offers).  She seems a bit too perfect, to the point of wondering why Jake would ever have let her go.  Is she believable as an ex-girlfriend who is only in it for Jake's good and has no selfish motivation?

Dramatica says you can swap Decision elements between characters, and the suggestion is that although you can swap between any characters, it makes most impact when you swap them with the opposite pair in the character set.  So you could swap the Decision elements between Guardian and Contagonist, or between Reason and Emotion.  Let's give it a try.

Let's swap the Decision elements between Guardian and Contagonist:

Katie Ward	Action	Helps Jake think through his problems and supports him.
	Decision	Is the temptation to leave Fiend alone and forget about it.
Elaine Cullum	Action	Hinders Jake by trying to stop him following the right path.
	Decision	Is the conscience of the story, points to Fiend's inherent evil.

In this scenario, Katie is the ex-girlfriend who is tempting Jake away from the right path to be with her.  No longer is she the goody-two-shoes who is the conscience of the story.  She's actually trying to get Jake back from his current girlfriend, she has no interest in the Fiend at all.  Elaine, the current girlfriend is trying to stop Jake getting involved with the struggle with Fiend, but mostly because she is the righteous one who thinks that the Fiend is too dangerous to meddle with. She is the conscience of the story, the one who was right all along about the danger that Fiend presents.

Now that is a much more interesting dynamic!  Instead of the archetypal character roles (note I've removed the names of the archetypal characters) we have complex characters with competing internal motivations, and this can lead onto more involved and believable scenes involving those characters.  Let's try it with the Reason and Emotion characters.

Thomas Bower	Action	Calm and controlled whenever violent conflict is happening.
	Decision	Led by his feelings of pleasure when following Fiend.
William Fraser	Action	Uncontrolled or frenzied when tempted by Fiend's ways.
	Decision	Uses logic and not emotion to help defeat Fiend.

What on earth has happened here?  Thomas Bower, the once logical and level-headed older man from the crime gang is still controlled and calm, but he is driven by his feelings of pleasure.  He has become a truly frightening character indeed, an ultra-logical pleasure seeker.  I would not like to cross him!  The brother William doesn't make much sense, he's frenzied in a fight, but logical in his approach.  I'm not too fond of this one.  I would say this swap has not worked.

But so what?  We could always swap him again with some other character.  The possibilities of swapping are quite wide.  If this one didn't work straight-off, then let's try something else.  Perhaps swap William's newly-swapped Decision Element with Bobbly Liddell in a three-way swap.

Thomas Bower	Action	Calm and controlled whenever violent conflict is happening.
	Decision	Led by his feelings of pleasure when following Fiend.
William Fraser	Action	Uncontrolled or frenzied when tempted by Fiend's ways.
	Decision	He disbelieves it can be accomplished, by Jake or anyone.
Bobby Liddell	Action	He opposes attempting to defeat the Fiend, argues against it.
	Decision	Uses logic and not emotion to help defeat Fiend.

William would then still be frenzied and uncontrolled in a fight and is now skeptical that the Fiend can be overcome.  He would be continually telling Jake that his plans won't work.  Bobby Liddell on the other hand would still oppose all attempts to defeat Fiend, but when forced to try would adopt a logical approach to it.  That works better.


Stick or Bust?

So do we stick with these swaps in our archetypal characters?  In the Dramatica parlance, you can swap and re-swap and this is called "rolling the model".  But with only 16 elements, the possible combinations are still quite small.  As mentioned earlier, Dramatica doesn't leave it there, and in the next post I will have a look at Purposes.

Now things start to get tricky

A small delay

I've left off a week, because I had some other things to attend to.  The next section is going to introduce a bit of the complexity of Dramatica into the proceedings, and it will ramp up considerably from here.  So let's get going.


Where we were up to

Dramatica introduced the idea of archetypal characters, and in the last post I used the idea of archetypes to come up with a few more characters for Fiend.   These characters are fine, but they seem a bit one-dimensional - the goodies are too good, the doubters are too skeptical, etc. 

In Dramatica, archetypal characters describe a set of essential story functions which need to be present in order to demonstrate all aspects of the Story Mind, but they actually represent groupings of these functions which are a bit simplistic for good fiction.  We'll now expand these definitions by the use of what Dramatica calls Character Quads. 


Action and Decision

Each of the eight archetypal characters can be looked at in terms of two characteristics : Action and Decision.  This allows us to look at what the character does (approach) as separate from how the character thinks (attitude).

Protagonist	Action	Pursues the goal
	Decision	Urges others to consider the necessity of achieving the goal
Antagonist	Action	Prevents or avoids the achievement of the goal
	Decision	Urges others to reconsider the necessity of the goal
Guardian	Action	Helps the efforts to achieve the goal
	Decision	Is the conscience of the story
Contagonist	Action	Hinders the efforts to achieve the goal
	Decision	Is the temptation to take the wrong path
Reason	Action	Calm and controlled in its actions
	Decision	Always uses logic and not emotion
Emotion	Action	Uncontrolled or frenzied in its actions
	Decision	Always responds to feelings and not practicality
Sidekick	Action	Always supports the course of action
	Decision	Has immense faith almost to gullibility
Skeptic	Action	Always opposes everything
	Decision	Always disbelieves people, courses of actions, sincerity...

Dramatica calls these sixteen characteristics the Motivational Elements, and says that each of them must exist in your story to prove the Story Mind argument.  Where each pair exist in the same character, for example "Pursues-Considers" - this defines the Archetypal character with those two elements.  In Star Wars, Obi Wan Kenobi helped Luke, but also served as the conscience of the story as the last remaining follower of the Jedi.  Because he has both of these roles, he fulfils the archetypal Guardian role.

But these pairs do not always have to go together, in fact Dramatica argues that better, more fulfilling characters happen when an action characteristic from one archetype and a decision characteristic from another archetype are combined in the same character.

Think of Quint and Hooper from the movie Jaws.  Quint is not a man of science, he's a hardy sea captain. He bases his approach to the shark on emotion - the emotion of fear - based on his experiences.  But unlike the usual Emotion archetype, he is not frenzied or uncontrolled when the shark attacks - he is the very epitome of control.  In fact it is the man of science, Hooper, who should be the Reason archetype, get flustered and panics when the shark attacks.  They have swapped one pair of characteristics and it makes them better, more complex - and believable - characters as a result.  They are no longer archetypal characters.

This is a quick introduction to the Sixteen Motivation Elements, but characters also have Purposes, and these can also be characterised, but that is for another post.

A quick one for today

I hope to go into this in greater detail tomorrow.

Welcome to the Party

Where we got up to last time

In the last post, I introduced you to the eight archetypal characters which can be found in fiction.  Some of these characters are found in almost every Hollywood movie, such as Star Wars, or Jaws.  We have all seen the 'Guardian' character who helps the hero change to attain the goal, we have all seen the Skeptic character who say it'll never work. Through over-use, a lot of these archetypal character seem a bit thin.


Let's try it for Fiend

Although Dramatica goes into immense detail about complex characters later in the theory document, perhaps the standard ones will be enough for Fiend.  Even if we don't stick with them, we really need some more characters anyway, so this would be a good time to create them, even if we change them around a bit later. So let's look at the archetypal story roles we need:

1. Protagonist

We need to name him, so I'll just pluck a name out of the air.  Jacob Fraser.  Known as Jake by every one, he had a troubled upbringing.  He is late 20s, medium build but strong.  He has dark eyes and dark hair.  He is a little bit scruffy, and doesn't like having to get dressed up.

2. Antagonist

This has to be Fiend, but I think that needs to be a nickname he is given, so he needs a name to start with.  The original outline had his vampire origins in northern Europe and this is still something that would add a bit of flavour.  The online German phone book can help.  Friedrich Recker.

3. Reason

This is a new character, someone who can always inject a bit of logic into any course of action.  Not the brother.  Perhaps an older friend of the brother, who used to be a big name but is now older and wiser, and knows people.  Let's call him Thomas Bower.

4. Emotion

This is the brother.  He's a hothead, but he's thrilled with success.  He's enthusiastic for what the Fiend leads him to do.  He isn't organised enough to be a success by himself.  He gets angry at everybody at some time or other, but can be equally kind.  Let's call him William Fraser.

5. Guardian

His brother's girlfriend is an ex of Jake.  They broke up because Jake never opened up about his past.  She thought he was the love of her life, and still cares about him.  Although now with his brother, she still wants to protect Jake and helps out whenever she can. Let's call her Katie Ward.

6. Contagonist

The contagonist should deflect Jake away from his goals, but not necessarily be opposed to him as  a person.  I'd like to introduce a partner for Jacob.  She thinks she loves him, and is trying to mould him into an image of his brother.  She has low ambitions.  Her name is Elaine Cullum.

7. Sidekick

Everybody needs a friend, who is supportive of your actions, even if they are a bit suspect.  So for this, I've created Peter Law, tall, light-brown haired.  He's not into the petty crime thing, but doesn't give Jake a hard time about it.  Good natured and supportive.

8. Skeptic

At some point in the proceedings, they have to defeat Fiend.  They find someone who knows how to do it, from the previous time it was done, but he sees this time is different, and is determined that it cannot be done this time in the same way.  Let's call him Bobby Liddell.


An ensemble of cast and crew

Well, that's quite a collection of characters.  At the very least, the archetypal character model within Dramatica has allowed me to create a whole ensemble of new characters who have very specific functions within the story.  This might have taken a long time if we had just started writing and hoped for the best. We haven't fleshed them out yet, but let's look at how they might change the outline of the story.

Jake Fraser works for his brother William in a low-level criminal gang.
A violent incident in Jake's past means that the he controls his emotions carefully.
This led to the break up of a relationship with Katie Ward, a childhood sweetheart.
Katie has become involved with his brother William, but still cares for Jake.
Jake discovers a man trapped in an abandoned church next to his house.
Jake releases the older man, Friedrich Recker, almost by accident.
Fred comes to live with Jake and his girlfriend Elaine, and his health improves.
A series of grisly murders occurs in the neighbourhood.
Elaine is increasingly irritated with Fred's presence in the home.
Fred gets involved with William, Thomas and Jake in crime.
William wants to emulate the Fiend, but after an incident Jake turns against Fred.
Fred becomes the leader of the criminal gang and adopts the moniker Fiend.
Thomas Bower tries to convince William to leave, but is rejected.
Violence and crime escalates, as does the chasm between the brothers.
Fiend really wants Jake to join him, he can sense the controlled anger in him
Fiend starts manipulating William into wilder schemes as a sort of blackmail
William gets killed at some point, releasing and heightening the tension
Jake, with Thomas, Pete and Katie, try to find out how the Fiend was trapped originally.
They track down Bobby Liddell, who was a young man at the time.
Bobby explains how it was done but is skeptical it can be done the same way this time.
Jake needs to get close to Fiend to enact this, so feigns complicity
Final scene where a Fiend is defeated

Well, that has certainly beefed it up a bit!  We now have some character conflicts, between Jake and his current girlfriend Elaine, between the two brothers, between Elaine and ex-girlfriend Katie.  Between oldster Thomas and his long term friend William. And Between Freddie the Fiend and just about everybody.  Is there something else still there between Jake and Katie?  Does William's death make a difference to that?

A word of difference

The story just got a whole lot bigger, and some of that was thanks to Dramatica.  I would probably have invented characters for the protagonist's love life, and I would have had to invent some gang members and friends, but I don't think I would have been so logical about doling out the character traits without working from that direction first.

And these are just the archetypal characters, what will happen when we start to look at Dramatica's character quads in the next episode?

A Man of Excellent Character

Where we got to...

In the last post, we looked through the rough story outline I'd written for the Fiend story, and decided on a Story Mind for it.  We decided that as well as the Fiend being defeated by the main character in the end, the actual crux of the story argument was more about the way the main character was suppressing his anger because of an earlier trauma, and in releasing this block the outcome of the story was achieved.


So have we decided in which throughline the argument is made?

We immediately dismissed making the argument in the Overall Story Throughline, and I although the story is provisionally titled 'Fiend', I don't think I want to make him the focus of the story, I want him not to change very much throughout the story, so I don't think we will be making an argument in the Impact Character Throughline.

The main decision is between making it in the Main Character Throughline or the Subjective Story Throughline.  In simpler terms, is the argument proved in the way the main character changes, or in the way the relationship between the main character and the impact character changes?

I think it's obvious that it's the Main Character who has the block, and it's him who changes.  The relationship between him and Fiend does change throughout the story, but the argument isn't about a relationship, it's about a change of mind in the main character.

So in this 'spin of the model' the Story Mind is proved in the Main Character Throughline.


Let's take a breather and consider the options

We've come some way towards giving the story some depth, but before we commit too much to it, we should really stop and consider alternatives.   Perhaps some other arrangement would make a better story?

What if we made the brother the main character, the protagonist the impact character, and Fiend just a normal supporting character?

We'd now have a story where you are this small-time criminal, who has been carrying your sissy brother for years because you felt sorry for him after a bad thing happened.  You meet this amazing Fiend guy who shows you how to move your operations into the big time.  Just as this happens, and you start to have some success, your nit-wit brother starts telling you it's all bad, and you need to ditch your new friend.  Your friend Fiend tries to win your younger brother over, but the more he tries the more your brother starts acting up.  Maybe you should have listened to your brother, because Fiend gets you killed in the end.

Not too bad at all.  The story would be about a declining relationship between brothers.  The Story Mind would be proved in the Subjective Story Throughline, and the Story mind argument might be something like "always trust your brother, or things will turn out bad for you".  We lose the Fiend being defeated, because  the brother dies before then, so the story ends.  Do we need to kill him off in this version of the story?  Interesting ideas.

Let's 'spin' again.  What if we made the Fiend the main character? 

To get this one to work, we'd need to do a little more thinking.  Who could be Fiend's impact character?  Which one of the brothers would influence change in Fiend the most?  Well, in the original premise, I didn't really want Fiend to change much once he was released - this is OK for a main character - he is allowed to choose to stay the same.  I suppose it makes sense that our original protagonist is the impact character - he is the one who releases Fiend, who nourishes him then turns against him and ultimately defeats him.  The brother is just a pawn, to be discarded at a suitable point.

Not too shabby either, but it seems a little weak.  The Story Mind would be in either the Main Character Throughline, or if we want to place more emphasis on Fiend's fascination with the protagonist, in the Subjective Story Throughline.  The Story Mind argument might be "worshipping evil and chaos leads to a grim ending" or something along those lines.

Part of the problem is that Fiend will be an interesting, yet unsympathetic character.  It would be hard to have him as the main point of view for the whole story.  In explaining his thinking too much, we'd lose a bit of the mystery about him.  I like the idea of ambiguity about Fiend, is he supernatural or just an evil man?  With him as the main character, you'd lose that.

You can continue spinning as often as you like.  I only have three fleshed-out characters in my outline, so the options are limited, at the moment.  Out of the ones I have tried, I prefer my original one, but it's always worth considering the alternatives.


A man of impeccable character

Dramatica has a lot to say about characters, but it splits them into two types to start with:  Overall Story Characters and Subjective Characters.  You'll note these are the same names as two of the perspective throughlines, and they serve the same function. 

Subjective Characters are the main character and the impact character.  They are involved in looking at both sides of the Story Mind argument, and they define the Subjective Story Throughline. You get to examine the problem from both of their perspectives.

Overall Story Characters are everybody else.  They do things and talk, but the reader never sees the main problem of the story through their eyes, only observes what they say and do.

In our story, the protagonist (I'll need to name him soon!) and Fiend are the Subjective Characters.  The brother, and all the un-named others who will be our story, are Overall Story Characters.


Archetypal Characters

Dramatica observes that in fiction there are a set of characters who almost always appear, or appear with regularity.  It calls them Archetypal Characters.

1. Protagonist

The protagonist is the main driver of the story, he is the person pursuing the story goal or solving the problem presented by the Story Mind.  He is sometimes, but not always, combined with the Main Character.  When he is, he's known as the Hero.  

2. Antagonist

The antagonist is the other character in the story who tries to prevent the protagonist from achieving his goals.  Sometimes the antagonist has the plan, and it's up to the protagonist to stop him. He is sometimes combined with the Impact Character.

3. Reason and Emotion

This pair of characters are there to demonstrate different ways of thinking about the problem.  In the movie Jaws, the part of reason is taken by the research scientist Hooper, whilst Quint just hates sharks emotionally.  Hooper has modern gizmos to hunt the sharks and is organised, Quint has a ramshackle boat and faulty equipment.

4. Guardian and Contagonist

This pair of characters are there to help and hinder the main character.  In Star Wars, Obi Wan Kenobi is the guardian who teaches and encourages Luke, whilst Darth Vader is the contagonist, who tries to tempt him to the dark side and puts things in Luke's way.

5. Sidekick and Skeptic

This pair of characters represent the struggle between confidence and doubt.  A Sidekick always has faith in the actions of the Main Character or other characters, and a Skeptic always doubts they will work.  In Star Wars, Han Solo is the eternal skeptic, but C3PO is the cheerleader for Luke's actions.


Now we have the players

As well as splitting them into Subjective and Overall Story character types, Dramatica further splits them into two groups of four - Driver Characters and Passenger Characters.

Driver Characters - Protagonist, Antagonist, Guardian, Contagonist
Passenger Characters - Reason, Emotion, Skeptic, Sidekick

The Driver characters are the ones who push the story on, make the decisions.  The Passenger characters observe and comment, allowing the reader to see all the pro and con arguments in the courses of action taken by the Driver characters.

These eight character archetypes are well known and used in many stories, but although Dramatica acknowledges them, it also points out that they make for simple characters, and are not very useful for complex storytelling.  This is where Dramatica gets right down to the nitty-gritty.


Enough for now

Although we haven't done a lot on Fiend today, there was quite a bit of theory to get through.  if you think Dramatica is all lists and theory, you ain't seen nothing yet.  The next part will confuse you and blow you away.

The End of the Beginning

Where to start?

Dramatica splits the task into two main areas - Structure, and Storytelling.  Since we're doing this in the order they are presented in the theory document, let's start with Structure.

Structure is about the design of the elements of the story and the relationships between them.  Certain types of story have a certain structure, and the type of story that Dramatica is concerned with is called the Grand Argument Story.

From the theory:

A Grand Argument Story is a conceptually complete story with both an emotional and logical comprehensiveness.

This is a little woolly at the moment but becomes clearer when you read on.  What it means for us is that we will be writing a Grand Argument story, because those are the ones that are known generally as Dramatic stories, which involve the conflict of characters through plots and scenes towards a climax where the main argument is proven or disproven. 

All conflicts set up between characters need to be resolved. All emotional growth of the characters has to be completed.  At the end, there are no loose ends, and the reader can look back over the entire story and see what the decisions taken by the main characters have led inexorably to a conclusion which was inspired by the opening conflict and, in the end, proven or disproven by the facts.


The Story Mind

The Story Mind is a concept which Dramatica claims is unique to this modelling system.  If you've ever looked the ideas behind theme before, some of the concepts may be familiar.   The Story Mind is the argument you wish the story to prove. 

If the story is about rags to riches, the Story Mind is the complete argument that certain actions or decisions by certain types of people can lead from ruin to success.  If the story is Riches to Rags, then the Story Mind is the complete opposite argument. 

In my interpretation of this, the Story Mind is a bit like the attitude your story is going to have.  The Story Mind is the thing which is trying to get you to believe in the correctness of the argument.  It's the thing presenting the facts to you, so you can draw the correct conclusions.  It's the town gossip passing judgement on the facts of the story.  "I always knew that hard working boy would be rich someday!"  This is the Story Mind speaking, and it should be almost the first thing you need to think about when writing a story, because it will affect not only the actions but the characters themselves.


Back to my story idea

So what is the Story Mind of my novel-in-waiting, Fiend?  On first glace, it doesn't appear to have a Story Mind at all.  It is a sequence of events which does not seem to want to prove anything.  Defeat the Monster stories can seem a bit self-serving, because the motivation for the actions of the protagonist are usually one dimensional.  The man defeats the monster because ... he just does!  Perhaps revenge for killing a companion, or simple self-preservation.  Not the deep and resonating themes I would like for my novel.

So it seems like my first stab at a story synopsis has simply duplicated the paper-thin storylines of a million slasher movies.  No wonder my inner Muse didn't want to proceed with this one, it was pulp!

So what do I do now?  


Isn't Dramatica supposed to help?

It has helped.  Already, it has found the major flaw in my story synopsis.  In fact, it's a fatal flaw, because without a Story Mind argument, there is no reason for the main characters to do anything at all.  Dramatica can only help at this stage by highlighting the glaring fact that my story isn't really a story at all, just a sequence of related scenes.  Like an anecdote without an ending.

So, is it as simple as just choosing a random argument?

Sort of.   Like most writing, it's easier to critique an idea into shape than to come up with a fully-formed one.  Let's just try a few and see if any of them are better than another. (Dramatica calls this 'rolling the model')

Although my original intention was to write a 'monster' story involving criminal gangs, that wasn't really a story.  Stories are all about people, and I don't have any people yet, except for a few placeholder characters from my outline:

1.	The protagonist	A man, who has some terrible incident in his past which causes him to suppress his anger, and who now works for his criminal brother. Releases Fiend and is the one to defeat him in the end.
2.	His brother	An older man, more successful in criminal activity, but is easily swayed by the Fiend and his ideas of chaos and success. Is ultimately killed.
3.	Fiend	A possibly supernatural charismatic man/monster who starts off weak and helpless, trapped in a church, but once released wreaks chaos with the lives of those around him. Ultimately defeated (killed or trapped again)

Obviously the final story will need more characters than this, but from the outline, these seem to be the most important players.  Apart from a few hints, there is not much meat on these bones.


A first stab at a Story Mind

So what could my story be trying to prove?  That trespassing in derelict churches leads to the death of a sibling?  Working for your brother leads to monsters roaming the streets?  I think that Grand Arguments need to be something more general, that a reader can relate to their own life.  There isn't enough in the synopsis to go on, so I need to go into creative mode.

What about the suppressed anger?  It could be that the violent incident in the protagonist's past has led him to not use physical violence even when he really should.  Perhaps this has made him into something of a sissy with his brother, and the gang culture he inhabits.  How can a sissy defeat a monster?   By getting over the fear of his own strength?  Realising he can be powerful without being cruel? Is this is start of a Story Mind?

What about "Over-reaction to a trauma in your past can inhibit your success in future.  Letting go of those fears leads to empowerment."

Not bad.  I'll go with that for now.  The protagonist needs to try to forget the terrible thing he did when he was young, in order to release a more powerful and successful personality which can defeat the Fiend.  The Story Mind is about empowerment and letting go of the past.  "I always knew if that boy could get over what happened, he'd go far..."


The Four Perspectives

Dramatica goes on to note:

It is not enough, however, to develop a complete Story Mind. That only creates the argument the audience will be considering. Equally important is how the audience is positioned relative to that argument.

So the Story Mind is important - very important - but we still don't have a story.  We know the trajectory of the story, in that we know what will be proved by the final page - but there is more to it than that.  They say there are always two sides to a story, and Dramatica says that there are four perspectives, which it calls throughlines - that are ways of looking at the Story Mind.  Each of these have to be considered.


1. The Overall Story Throughline

Up until now we have only been looking at the overall story.  The Overall Story Throughline is the story as seen by an outside observer.  Even though we may tell the story from the point of view of one of the characters, the story exists outside of that character.  The Overall Story may have knowledge and perspectives that any individual character may not have during the course of the story.  In other story systems, this may be known as the plot.

Dramatica looks at the Overall Story Throughline as the "they" story, as if you were a dispassionate reporter telling the story of a battle from a helicopter flying over the battlefield.  The reporter is concerned with the overall progress, and is less interested in individual soldiers and their squabbles.  The Overall Story Throughline deals with things in the story that affect everybody.


2. The Main Character Throughline

This storyline is how the events unfold from the perspective of the main character.  This character may be unaware of the larger machinations going on in the overall story.  The main character is more concerned with his personal story - who he meets and talks to, what he does, what he thinks about and decides on.  This is the point of view the reader will observe for most of the novel.

Dramatica likes to think of the Main Character Throughline as the "me" story, an anecdotal story told to you personally by the person who experienced the events.  You are sitting on their shoulder as they go through the events of the story and see everything from their perspectives.


3. The Impact Character Throughline

I haven't mentioned character types yet, but Dramatica defines a character in every story that is the impact character.  This is not necessarily the antagonist.  The impact character is the person or thing which encourages the main character to adopt a certain behaviour in order to succeed.  The example Dramatica gives is Obi Wan Kenobi in the Star Wars movies - he is the one telling Luke to trust himself.  But the impact character might be an enemy, forcing you to do something you don't want to do, or tempting you to do something which goes against your principles.  It can even be an inanimate object: a planet someone is trapped on, a hokey religion the character discovers, a war situation the characters cannot escape.  The impact character has a story throughline of his very own.

Dramatica presents the Impact Character Throughline as the "you" story, the story which throws light on the alternative that the main character might pursue.  The main character is looking at the problem though the eyes of the impact character is sees that there may be another way to solve the problem.  We also can look from this perspective.


4. The Subjective Story Throughline

The final story perspective is the Subjective story Throughline, which deals primarily with the relationship between the main character and the impact character.  When the two characters meet near the start of the story, a conflict of ideas is set up.  Doubt is cast in the mind of the main character.  But as the story goes on, the relationship deepens and takes on a life of its own.

Dramatica presents the Subjective story throughline as the "us" story, the very personal conflict between two characters which can shape the outcome of the larger overall storyline, but which is separate, personal and passionate.  This is the hand-to-hand combat on the battlefield, unseen by the reporter far above.  Old foes clashing with different weapons and ideas.  This story must be told too.


All throughlines together

That idea that Dramatica proposes is that you need to show your argument to the audience through all four of these perspectives in order to produce a balanced story that convinces the reader that you have looked at the problem from all possible angles, and that when you draw them to a conclusion, you haven't tried to hide anything from them. The story will feel complete.

Taken together, the four throughlines comprise the author's argument to the audience. They answer the questions: What does it feel like to have this kind of problem? What's the other side of the issue? Which perspective is the most appropriate for dealing with that problem? What do things look like in the "big picture?"

Only through examining all four of these separate perspectives, pitting reason against emotion, can we truly reflect the Story Mind.


So what does this mean for the Fiend?

When I wrote out my outline, it was the Overall Story Throughline that I sketched out.  This is quite common for very early outlines, because we haven't yet examined the more intricate details of character interaction.  It was only when it became apparent that my story did not have a Story Mind, or a complete logical argument to prove, that we had to start looking deeper.

In western cultures (especially action Hollywood movies) the Story Mind is proved in the Overall Story Throughline.  That is, the main argument of the story is based on the dispassionate view of the events.  In "Die Hard", John McClaine doesn't really change much from the start to the end.   Hans Gruber, the baddie, is still a baddie at the end, trying to pull McClane's wife over the edge with him.   If there is a Story Mind in "Die Hard" it's that good guys always win, and crime never pays when the good guys are in town. It's impersonal.  It takes place in the Overall Story Throughline.  This is the same in lots of action movies.

Although these stories are fun to watch on the big screen, they don't make for satisfying thoughtful characters.  You don't worry how it will turn out for John McClane, you know he will still be the tough yet slightly humorous NYPD cop he always was.  He hasn't changed.  Novel writing should aim for more than that, I think.

So if I am going to avoid putting the Story Mind argument resolution in the Overall Story Throughline, where should I put it?  Well, I first have to decide who is going to be the impact character.


Fiend, You're My Only Hope

From what I've written about the story so far, I think there is only one obvious candidate to be the Impact Character.   In the choice between the weak-willed brother and the charismatic Fiend, which one of them will exert the most persuasive influence on our protagonist?  Fiend, of course.  He will be there, showing our hero what he is missing, if only he would join him.  If only he would allow the anger within him to come out, what riches would there be?

Rather than the benign teacher character of Obi Wan Kenobi, my impact character is going to be a tempter against whom the protagonist is trying to stay resolute.  Fiend is going to be more like Darth Vader, trying to turn the main character to the dark side.

Yes, I like that.


So, in which throughline is the Fiend story proven?

Somehow, my main character is going to overcome his block.  Up until near the end, he has been staying resolute and suppressing his violence.  Fiend wants him to embrace it.  What a delicious paradox if the main character embraces violence but yet still doesn't go over to the dark side of the Fiend?  Somehow, through another character trait, he finds a way of safely letting his inner beast out of the bag without falling into chaos.

It's clear the Fiend doesn't change, he embodies evil the whole way through.  As a force of nature, he doesn't have it in him to change.  So the Story Mind resolution cannot be in the Impact Character throughline.

So is the story proven in the Subjective Throughline, the relationship between our main character and Fiend? Or is it a personal proof, and in the Main Character Throughline?

I'm not sure yet.


Well, there has been some progress

We have made a decent start, I think.  Already we've moved the story on with the inclusion of some thematic elements.  We haven't yet bottomed it all out, but it seems that Dramatica really can help you think about these things in a structured manner, even at these very early stages of creation.

Tune in again soon when I begin to put meat on the bones of these characters and their perspectives.