Story Perspectives

Genre, Theme, Plot and Character: each of them is a different level of appreciation of story structure.  But each one needs to be seen from four different points of view in order to fully explore them.

As described in previous classes, the four essential points of view in any story structure are Main Character (I), Influence or Obstacle Character (You), Subjective Story (We), and Objective Story (They).  These represent the four “voices” we have within ourselves – First Person, Second Person, Second Person Plural, and third Person.

To completely understand any issue or problem, we need to consider it from all four of these points of view.  But what are we really looking at?  Again, as described earlier, there are four primary kinds of subject matter – External States, External Processes, Internal States and Internal Processes.  In Dramatica, we call these Universe (the fixed nature of a situation), Physics (external activities), Mind (a fixed mind set such as an attitude, fixation or prejudice), and Psychology (a manner of thinking or path of thought).

So, when we examine one of these as the potential source of a problem and, therefore, where we might best look for the solution, we are going to see it from one of those four points of view.  In other words, Universe might be the domain of the Main Character or it might be the domain of the Objective story or of the other two points of view.

Essentially, if Universe is the domain of the Main Character in a particular story, it means that we are looking at the external situation through the eyes of the Main Character – the most personal view point, the “I” which represents or provides the audience position within the story.  This means that one of the other three remaining kinds of subject matter will be associated or attached to one of the three remaining points of view.  In any complete story, therefore, all four points of view and all four kinds of subject matter will be explored.

In this way, every angle of the problem can be examined in the hunt for a solution.  But, each point of view will only look at one of the four kinds of subject matter in any given story.  It is this connection between where we are looking from and what we are looking at that creates perspective and therefore defines how the author positions the readers or audience in relation to the issues, thereby establishing the story’s message.

The Four Story Throughlines

A story “throughline” is a bit different than a story “point of view.”  A point of view is an angle from which you wish your readers or audience to see the topics of your story.  But a throughline is the entire unfolding of the story as seen from that point of view.  Sometimes, this is calleed a “thread.”

In Dramatica theory we say “you spin a tale but you weave a story.”  This is because tales are linear progressions, like threads, that carry you from a particular logistic and emotional situation  along a journey stap by step to a different logistic and emotional situation.  In other words, it is the unbroken chain of reason and emotion that holds the meaning, and it is the relative value of the destination to the point of departure that holds the message.

Think of “fairy tales” – a form of story in which a judgment is passed on the value of a path taken by comparing the starting point to the ending point.  So, this is very like a “thread” and so we “spin” a tale.  In a sense then, every tale is a single throughline following the events that unfold from a single point of view.

But a story is much more complex with a more complex message as well.  In a story, many throughlines are woven together to form a fabric, like a tapestry, in which a bigger picture – a broader, more sophisticated message, can be seen.  This occurs because (while it is easy to relate a simple chain of events in a tale), the message of a tale is nothing more than that a particular path is a good one or a bad one by virtue of how it ultimately imiproved or degraded a situation.

A story steps beyond that simple statement to tell the readers/audience that the path presented in not just good or bad, but is the best or worst that might have been taken.  This is a much bolder statement.  In fact, it is a blanket statement.  As such, no readership/audience is going to accept it out of hand.  They are going to demand proof.  And so, they will want all other reasonable paths that might have been taken to be explored, or at least dealt with to show why the one path the author is promoting is indeed the best or worst.  To cover the issue from all angle, then, an author needs multiple throughlines woven together – we weave a story.

The four throughlines presented in this video grow from the four most all-encompassing points of view – the four fundamental points of view, if you will: I, You, We, and They – descriptive of the four ways in which we classify ourselves and our relationships with others.  Naturally, there are many other smaller, yet more detailed points of view within those, and that is why the Dramatica table of story elements was developed – to help map, define, and determine the relationships among them so an author would have a tool that would allow the creation of a complete and detailed story argument to support any level of underlying message.

Four Points of View in Every Story

There are four essential points of view in every fully developed story.  They are the Main Character, the Influence Character (AKA the Obstacle Character), the Subjective Story, and the Objective Story.

The Objective story is the most familiar to audiences/readers for it is the view from the outside looking in, like that of a general on a hill watching a battle down below.  It is often thought to be the story’s plot, but in fact it the the objective (or must structural) view of characters, theme, and genre as well.

The Main Character is not necessarily the protagonist.  While the protagonist is the character leading the charge to accomplish the story goal, the Main Character represents the audience position in the story – it allows the audience to step into the shoes of the pivotal character to experience the story first hand and much more passionate in its danger and immediacy than the view of the general on the hill.

The third point of view is that of the Influence Character who represents a different philosophy, outlook, or moral code than the Main Character.  Just as in our own minds we balance who we are against who we might become if we change our outlook on a particular issue, so too the Story Mind struggles with this conflict of ideals which is made tangible in the structure of the Main and Influence characters.

Finally, we consider the nature of that struggle itself – the personal passionate skirmish between one world view or paradigm for living and its opposite.  This is the subjective story and it is where the story’s message or moral resides.

The Main Character, because of its first hand view is the “I” perspective.  The Influence Character whose view we might adopt is “You” for we have not yet become that person or shared its view.  The struggle between us, between who we are and who we might become (philosophically) is “We.”  And the general on the hill and all the other soldiers on the field who are not involved in our personal philosophic skirmish are seen as”They” – as if from the general’s “objective” eye.

Taken together, all four view provide the essential minimum parallax on the story’s issues so that they are fully examined from all crucial angles, leaving no whole in the story’s argument and no stone unturned in consideration of the central issues.

Motivations, Methodologies, Evaluations and Purposes

Every story has a mind of its own, as if it were a single chcaracter, a single person.  The Dramatica theory of story structure includes a chart, sort of a “periodic table,” that maps out four different levels of consideration of the story mind. T

he bottom level (Elements) describes the story mind’s motivations, and has the greatest impact on character.  The next level up (Variations) represents the story mind’s value standards and is seen the story’s theme.  The third level from the bottom (Types) describes the story mind’s methods of problem solving and is made manifest in the plot.  At the top, the fouth and final lvel (Classes) ourlines the story mind’s purposes and has the greatests structural impact on genre.

Taken together, all four levels can be seen as a map of the topical or thematic aspects of all the dramatic elements in a story.

Levels of the Story Mind

The mind of your story, as with our own minds, can be seen to have four levels of consideration which fall into four topic categories describing the kind of thing that is being considered.

For any topic, the mind considers in terms of its Motivations (created at the character level), Value Standards (at the thematic level), Methodologies (at the plot level), and Purposes (at the genre level).

The four primary topic categories are Universe (an external state or situation), Mind (an internal state, attitude or fixation), Physics (an external process or activitiy), and Psychology (an internal process or manner or pathway of thinking).

Picking one of these four topic categories as being the nature of your story’s problem determines where your reader or audience will be looking.  Picking one of the four levels of consideration determines where they will be looking from.  The combination of what you are looking at and where you are looking from creates perspective and it is that perspective that defines the very nature of your story’s unique underlying dramatic structure.

Theme and the Dramatica Chart

The Dramatica chart of story elements is the equivalent of the Periodic Table of Elements in physics or chemistry.  In fact, it provides guidance for how to create the specific chemistry of your story by comining different dramatic elements.

Each of the four quadrants of the chart is a different family of dramatic elements, much as the periodic table is divided into families such as the “rare earth elements” or the “nobel gasses.”  Unlike chemistry, the Dramatica chart further sub-divides the families into four sub-family levels, allowing for extremely precise descriptions and control of the the topical subject matter of your story’s theme.

Dramatica Class: Main Character vs. Protagonist

The following is excerpted from a class on story structure presented by co-creator of the Dramatica theory of story, Melanie Anne Phillips, signed on as Dramatica.

Dramatica : The Main Character is not necessarily the Protagonist. First of all, a Protagonist is an archetypal character, and although archetypes work just fine, there are an infinite number of other kinds of more complex (and more simple) characters that can be created. But suppose we have a story with a Protagonist, and the Protagonist is NOT the Main Character… A story like To Kill a Mockingbird.

The Protagonist of a story is the driver of the Objective story. In other words, they are the most crucial soldier on the field. But we don’t have to see they battle always through their eyes. Just like we don’t always have to identify only with the quarterback in a football game. In To Kill a Mockingbird, Atticus, the Gregory Peck part in the movie, is the Protagonist. He is the driver of the Objective story – the story all the characters are concerned with. He is the one who wants to have the black man wrongly accused of rape freed. Do the two of you know the story?

Dan Steele : Unfortunately, not too familiar with the plotline.

RDCvr : Sort of, saw the movie a long time ago.

Dramatica : Well, the parts we are interested in are pretty simple, so it shouldn’t hold things up. The antagonist of the story is Bob Ewell, the father of the girl who was supposedly raped. He wants to have the man executed or at least lynched. But, the Main Character, the one through whose eyes we see the story through is Scout, Atticus’ little girl. The audience identifies with her, and even the camera angles in the movie are from her eye level whenever she is in a scene.

In this story, the Obstacle Character is not the antagonist either. The Obstacle character is Boo Radley, the “boogie man” from next door. The author of the work, in dealing with prejudice, did a very clever thing, in separating the Main and Obstacle from the Protagonist and Antagonist. No one wants to admit they are prejudiced. So, in the Objective story, the audience looks AT Atticus and Bob Ewell, and passes judgment on them. But at the same time, we are sucked into being prejudiced ourselves from the very first scene, because of the way Scout feels about Boo.

At the end of the story, we realize emotionally, that we were just as wrong as the objective characters were. Very clever technique! About to change subject, any questions?

Dan Steele : Okay, clear on the functions/differences of Main/Protagonist/Obstacle Chars.

Dramatica : Great!

RDCvr : what is the difference between obstacle character and antagonist?

Dramatica : The Antagonist tries to prevent the Protagonist from achieving the story’s goal, the Obstacle character tries to get the Main Character to change their belief system.

RDCvr : Okay.

Dramatica : They do this by building an alternative paradigm to the one the M.C. has traditionally used. More often than not, the M.C. and Protagonist characters are put in the same “body” and so are the Antagonist and Obstacle.

Dan Steele : Fine, but what if the antagonist is the protagonist, as in man against himself?

Dramatica : In Dramatica, we call any body that holds a character a player. Actually, you have touched on some very important theory points. First of all, when it comes to the Antagonist and Protagonist and all the other “objective” characters, the audience sees them “objectively” from the outside. Therefore, we identify them by their function in the story.

Again, we can feel for them, but we must see their function in order to understand the meaning of the battle. So, putting two objective functions that are diametrically opposed into the same player, mask the function of each, and make it VERY difficult to see what their purpose is. However, in stories like “Dr. Jeckyl and Mr. Hyde”, or Sibyl, there are many objective characters in the same body, but not at the same time!

In fact, each is identified as a separate character, and each has its day in the sun. But the Main and Obstacle characters are not identified by function, but by point of view. The Main Character is I to the audience, first person singular. The Obstacle character is you. Second person singular. So, the Antagonist might be the Main Character, or the sidekick, or the Guardian or any objective character.

Dan Steele : Hmm. Am wondering though how this copes with internalpsychological conflicts of a “tormented” Main character no, make that a Protagonist.

Dramatica : Well, the Main character, being a point of view is where all that internal conflict is seen.

RDCvr : But usually you also have external conflict which reflect or push the internal, no?

Dramatica : It is important to remember that when you combine a Protagonist in the same body as a Main character, the Protagonist part tries to drive the story forward to the goal, but the M.C. part is the INTERNAL conflict of the story, and can be full of angst.

Dan Steele : Okay.

Dramatica : They just don’t HAVE to be in the same body. Dramatica needed to separate the Objective or analytical part of the story’s argument, from the Subjective or passionate part of the argument in order to map out all of each side. In a finished story, of course, they are all ultimately blended together through storytelling.

Introduction to Theme

Theme is perhaps the most powerful yet least understood aspect of story structure.  Theme is an “emotional argument” that strives to lead the reader or audience to feel about a topic as the author would have them feel.

The reason structure of Theme appears so obscure is that it is actually two things, not one.  The first part of Theme is the Topic – the subject you are looking at (exploring).  The second part is Point of View.  When you adopt a point of view in regard to a topic, you create Perspective, and it is this perspective that holds the message or meaning of a story at the most passionate and most human level.  It is also where readers and/or audience members are most strongly moved, and where propaganda can be most effective without the knowledge of the recipient.

In this first episode of the 22 part class on Theme in the overall 113 part “Dramatica Unplugged” series, you’ll learn the basic foundations of theme and get a look forward to where our explorations will take us as the Theme class unfolds.

Story Outcome and Judgment

Your story’s “Outcome” is determined by success or failure in the attempt to achieve the overall goal.  But this is independent of whether or not everyone is feeling good about the outcome, even if success is achieved.  Often the costs of achieving a goal outweigh the benefits.  And in some stories, achieving a goal may turn out to be a hollow victory.

Similarly, failing to achieve the goal may not be an emotional distaster as well if the characters learn something of greater value or grow in ways that is far more meaningful than the failed attempt to achieve.  Put these in combinations and you get the Success/Good story (a triumph), the Failure/Bad story (a tragedy), the Success/Bad story (a personal tragedy), and the Failure/Good story (a personal triumph).

Using the two dramatic elements of Outcome and Judgment and adjusting the degree of success or failure and of personal fulfillment or devestation , one can create any variety of conclusion for a story from the “happy ending” to the “sad ending” and every bitter-sweet combination in between.