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.