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.