Category Archives: Characters

Dramatica Trivia 3: The Contagonist Archetype

“Contagonist” is a name invented by Dramatica co-creator, Chris Huntley, to describe an archetype we hadn’t seen identified in our writing classes at USC.  Learn how the notion and the name came about:

When creating the Dramatica theory of story, we began with characters – archetypes to be specific.  We jotted down all the familiar ones – Protagonist, Antagonist, Reason, Emotion, Sidekick, Skeptic and Guardian.  But we had a problem…

First of all they all paired up except the Guardian: Protagonist/Antagonist, Reason/Emotion, Sidekick/Skeptic (faithful supporter / doubting opposer).  But the Guardian (essentially a helper/protector who is also the voice of conscience) just hung out there alone.

We suspected that stories had symmetry (though we didn’t know for sure and none of our instructors had ever said anything about that).  But, we really didn’t know what this character should be, or what to call it.

But, we were initially deriving our archetypes from the original Star Wars movie (episode IV) and saw that Protagonist/Antagonist were Luke/Darth (or so we initially thought).  Reason/Emotion were Leia/Chewbacca, Sidekick/Skeptic were the Droids/Han Solo and the Guardian was Obi Wan.

But then, if Darth was the antagonist, what role did the empire under the command of the Gran Mof Tarkin play?  After giving it much thought, we realized that while Darth comes off, especially in the opening scene, as the quintessential melodramatic villain, he is quickly relegated to the role of henchman for the Empire.

So, at first, we thought that the last archetype was Henchman.  But after more thought, we realized that a Henchman was more like a Sidekick to a Villain.  But after even more thought we determined that there was only one Sidekick, but he might be associated with either the Hero or the Villain.  For example, Renfield (Dracula’s assistant) is actually a Sidekick (a faithful supporter) even though he works for the bad guy.  And so, we concluded that a henchman was just a Sidekick in wolf’s clothing.

But then we realized that Darth wasn’t just a pain in the neck to our heroes, but he was also a thorn in the side of Tarkin and the Empire.  Darth chokes one of the other commanders and he is the one who comes up with the plan to let the Millennium Falcon escape with a homing beacon, which leads to the demise of the Death Star (“I’m taking an awful chance, Vader,” says Tarkin.  “This had better work,” indicating it is Darth’s idea.)

So, if Darth screws up both sides, we realized he was similar to the archetype of the Trickster.  But, he also represented the dark side of the force – the temptation of the dark side.

And then we had it.  Darth was actually the opposite of Obi Wan.  Rather than functioning as Obi Wan’s help and conscience, Darth represented hinder and temptation – the exat opposites.  So Obi Wan /Darth represented a pair of archetypes, completing the symmetry of that part of story structure.

But – what to call that character?  He wasn’t really a trickster, but more like a monkey wrench in the plans of both sides.  And, he was also the tempter.   So, Chris considered that this new archetype was against both the Protagonist and the Antagonist, and cleverly named him the Contagonist.  Con (against) Protagonist/Antagonist: Contagonist.

Since then (some 22 years ago as of this writing), I’ve seen the word creep into a number of literary discussions on the Internet that don’t mention Dramatica at all.  So, I suppose that’s a good indicator it is becoming part of the overall language of story.

Now, if only my spell checker would recognize it!

Melanie Anne Phillips
Co-creator, Dramatica

“Hero” is a Four-Letter Word (Part 3)

Excerpted from “Hero” is a Four-Letter Word

Redistributing the Hero

In part 2, we split the hero down into its component structural and storytelling elements.  But why would one want to do such a thing?  In this part, we provide a well-known example of how the components of the hero can be reassembled in different combinations to create a powerful dramatic impact.

In the classic story of racial prejudice, To Kill a Mockingbird, the Protagonist function and the Main Character View are separated into two different characters, rather than into a single hero.

The Protagonist is Atticus, played by Gregory Peck in the movie version. Atticus is a principled Southern lawyer in the 1930s who is assigned to defend a black man wrongly accused of raping a white girl. His goal is to ensure justice is done, and he is the Prime Mover in this endeavor.

But we do not stand in Atticus’ shoes. Rather, the story is told through the eyes of Scout, his young daughter, who observers the workings of prejudice from a child’s innocence.

Why not make Atticus a typical hero who is also the Main Character? First, Atticus sticks by his principles regardless of the dangers and pressures brought to bear. If he had represented the audience position, the audience/reader would have felt quite self-righteous throughout the story’s journey.

But there is even more advantage to splitting these qualities between two characters. Here’s how it works, step by step:  First, the audience identifies with Scout. And we share her fear of the local boogey man known as Boo Radley – a monstrous mockery of human form who forms the stuff of local terror stories. All the kids know about Boo, and though we never see him, we hear their tales of his horrible ways.

At the end of the story, it turns out that Boo is just a gentle giant, a normal man with a kind heart but low intellect. As was the custom in that age, his parents kept him indoors, inside the basement of the house, leaving him pale and scary-looking due to the lack of sunlight. But Boo ventures out at night, leading to the false but horrible stories about him when he is occasionally sighted.

As it happens, Scout’s life is threatened by the father of the girl who was ostensibly raped in an attempt to get back at Atticus. Lo and behold, it is Boo who comes to her rescue. In fact, he has always been working behind the scenes to protect the children and is not at all the horrible monster they all presupposed.

In a moment of revelation, we, the audience, come to realize we have been cleverly manipulated by the author to share Scout’s initial prejudice against Boo. Rather than feeling self-righteous by identifying with Atticus, we have been led to realize that we are just as capable of prejudice as the obviously misguided adults we have been observing.

The message of the story is that prejudice does not have to come from meanness, but will happen within the heart of anyone who passes judgment based on hearsay rather than direct knowledge. This statement could never have been successfully made if the elements of the typical hero had all been placed in Atticus.

So, the message here is that there is nothing wrong with writing about heroes and villains, but it is limiting. By separating the components of the hero into individual qualities, we open our options to a far greater number of dramatic scenarios that are far less stereotypical. 

Are there more ways to split up the stereotypical hero and redistribute his traits?  Absolutely!  But to explore these, we first need to take apart our villain as well.

“Hero” is available for Kindle

Hero

Narrative Dynamics (Part 4)

Excerpted from the book, Narrative Dynamics

The Dramatica Model

In this book, I’m documenting the development of a whole new side of the Dramatica theory – story dynamics.

Dramatica is a model of story structure, but unlike any previous model, the structure is flexible like a Rubik’s Cube crossed with a Periodic Table of Story Elements.  If you paste a story element name on each face of each little cube that makes up the Rubik’s Cube, you get an idea of how flexible the Dramatica model is.

That’s what sets Dramatica apart from other systems of story development and also what gives it form without formula.  Now, imagine that while the elements on each little cube already remain on that cube, they don’t have to stay on the same face.  In other words, though there will be an element on each face, which ones it is next to may change, in fact will change from story to story.

What makes the elements rearrange themselves within the structure?  Narrative Dynamics.  Think of each story point as a kind of topic that needs to be explored to fully understand the problem or issue at the heart of a story.  That’s how an author makes a complete story argument.  But, just as in real life, the order in which we explore issues is almost as important as the issues themselves.  At the very least, that sequence tells us a lot about the person doing the exploring.  In the case of story, this is most clearly seen in the Main Character.  So, the order of exploration of the issues by the Main Character illuminate what is driving him personally.

The Dramatica model already includes a number of dynamics that describe the forces at work in the heart and mind of the Main Character, as well as of the overall story, the character philosophically opposed to the Main Character and of the course of their relationship as well.  But, in a structural model – one in which the focus is on the topics and their sequence, there are a lot of dynamics that simply aren’t easily seen.

For example, you might know that in the second act, the Main Character is going to be dealing with issues pertaining to his memories.  But how intensely will he focus on that?  How long will he linger?  Will his interest wane, grow, or remain consistent over the course of his examination of these issues.  From a structural point of view, you just can’t tell.

And that is why after all these years I’m developing the dynamic model – to chart, predict and manipulate those “in-between” forces that drive the elements of structure, unseen.  Part of that effort is to chart the areas in which dynamics already exist in the current structural projection of the model.

Read Narrative Dynamics

Available in Paperback and on Kindle

Narrative Dynamics (Front Cover)

Storytelling Tip: Trapped in a Routine

As with real people, characters can become trapped in their routines. When a person sets up a routine in order to achieve a goal, service the infrastructure of his or her life, cope with an emotional necessity, or engage in a desired ongoing experience, the situation, reasons, passions, or even the nature of the person himself may have changed in some way that makes the routine no longer effective, counterproductive, inordinately costly, or unsustainably unpleasant.

Still, because the human mind responds to conditioning, a person may continue in their routine by sheer force of psychological inertia. And since the human mind filters out going non-threatening repetitive stimuli (such as a ticking clock or air conditioner noise – called a selective filter) a person may never even become aware that they are in a routine, no matter how difficult or unenjoyable the routine is.

Stories that explore such issues can be very involving for readers or an audience, as they not only strike close to home, but also spark internal consideration which may illuminate similar solvable dissatisfactions in their own lives.

Learn more about incorporating thematic topics in your story in our book:

A Few Words About Theme

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Learn more about storytelling in our book:

50 Sure-Fire Storytelling Tricks!

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“Hero” is a Four-Letter Word (Part 2)

Excerpted from the book, “Hero” is a Four-Letter Word

The Hero Breaks Down!

Groucho Marx once said, “You’re headed for a nervous breakdown. Why don’t you pull yourself to pieces?” That, in fact, is what we’re going to do to our hero. 

Now many writers focus on a hero and a villain as the primary characters in their stories. And there’s nothing wrong with that. But as we are about to discover, there are so many more options for creative character construction.

Take the average hero. What qualities might we expect to find in the fellow? In fact, there are four principal attributes.

For one thing, the traditional hero is always the Protagonist. By that we mean he or she is the Prime Mover in the effort to achieve the story goal. This doesn’t presuppose the hero is a willing leader of that effort. For all we know he might accept that charge kicking and screaming. Nonetheless, once stuck in the situation, the hero provides the push to achieve the goal.

Another quality of a stereotypical hero is that he is also the Main Character. By this we mean that the hero is constructed so that the audience stands in his shoes, or at least right behind his shoulder. In other words, the audience identifies with the hero and sees the story as centering around him.

The third quality of the most usual hero configuration is being a “Good Guy.” Simply, he intends to do the right thing. Of course, he might be misguided or inept, but he wants to do good, and he does try.

And finally, let us note that heroes are usually the Central Character, meaning that they get more “media real estate” (pages, screen time, lines of dialog) than any other character.

Listing these four qualities we get:

1. Protagonist.

2. Main Character.

3. Good Guy.

4. Central Character

Getting right to the point, the first two items in the list are structural in nature, while the last two are storytelling. Protagonist describes the character’s function from the Objective View described earlier. Main Character positions the audience in that particular character’s spot through the Main Character View. In contrast, being a Good Guy is a matter of personality, and Central Character is determined by the attention given to that character by the author’s storytelling.

You are probably familiar with the terms Protagonist, Main Character, and Central Character.  But you’ve probably also noticed that I’ve used them here in very specific ways. In actual practice, most authors bandy these terms about more or less interchangeably. There’s nothing wrong with that, but for structural purposes it’s not very precise. That’s why you’ll see me being something of a stickler in its use of terms and their definitions: it’s the only way to be clear.

In fact, it is not really important which words you use to describe the four attributes of the hero.  What is important is to recognize each of these qualities and to understand what they are.

“Hero” is available for Kindle

Hero

Psychology, Personality, Persona and Perception

When developing characters, consider the four “P”s – Psychology, Personality, Persona and Perception.

Psychology is the underlying mentality of the individual.

Personality is the individual’s manner and style.

Persona is the impression the individual wants to create.

Perception is how the individual is seen by others.

All four of these attributes are present in every real person, and must therefore also be present in every fictional character, be it human or otherwise.

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“Hero” is a Four Letter Word (Free eBook)

If you are only writing with Heroes and Villains, you are limiting your stories!

Heroes and Villains are stereotypes, not archetypes.  As such, they are comprised of a number of different attributes which can be reassembled in different ways to create far more interesting and original leading characters.

In this new eBook, I pull together several of my best articles on heroes and villains along with new material to help your characters break free from the shackles of tired, cliche storytelling conventions.

Read this new eBook FREE online

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Protagonist and Antagonist

Protagonist drives the plot forward.

Antagonist tries to stop him.

Now before we get into more detail, the Protagonist is not a Hero or even the Main Character.  And the Antagonist is not a Villain or the Influence Character who tries to get the Main Character to change his ways or values.

The Protagonist is the Prime Mover of the effort to achieve the Story’s Goal – that and nothing more. The Antagonist is the Chief Obstacle to that effort.  In a sense, Protagonist is the irresistible force and Antagonist is the immovable object.

Protagonist and Antagonist are archetypal characters.  That means they have a dramatic function in the story:

Hero is a combination character who is a Protagonist who is ALSO a Main Character (the one we identify with) and also a good guy (with good will toward others).

Villain is another combination character who is an Antagonist who is ALSO the Influence character (trying to change the Main Character’s heart and mind) and also a bad guy (with ill will toward others).

In this article, we’re going to put aside those other aspects and focus solely on  the archetypal function of these two essential archetypal characters.

Where do the Protagonist and Antagonist come from?  When people come together in groups for a common purpose, one emerges as the voice of change and another as the voice of the status quo.

The character who wishes to affect change is the Protagonist and the one who wants to maintain or return to the status quo is the Antagonist.  Over hundreds of generations, storytellers documented these two archetypes (and others) because it is what they saw in real life.  And so, eventually, the archetypal characters became part of the conventions of story structure.

But why do these two characters emerge in groups in the real world?

When we try to solve problems in our individual lives, we use all our faculties – reason, skepticism, etc.  When we gather in groups to solve common problems, we get a lot more done if we specialize so that one person becomes the voice of reason and another the resident skeptic.  This way, each of the specialists can give his or her full attention to the problem from his perspective, and as a whole, the group gets a deeper dive into the issues that if we all tried to do all the jobs ourselves.

So, in a sense, the functions that emerge in a group, represent the same traits we have in our own minds as individuals.  For example, in our own minds, we survey our environment and consider whether or not we could improve things by taking action to change them. The struggle between the drive to change things and the drive to leave them be is the same struggle represented by the Protagonist and Antagonist in a story.

So, in a word, the Protagonist represents our Initiative, the motivation to change the status quo. The Antagonist embodies our Reticence to change the status quo. These are perhaps our two most obvious human traits – the drive to alter our environment and the drive to keep things the way they are. That is likely why the Archetypes that represent them are usually the two most visible in a story.

Functionally, the character you choose as your Protagonist will exhibit unswerving drive. No matter what the obstacles, no matter what the price, the Protagonist will charge forward and try to convince everyone else to follow.

Without a Protagonist, your story would have no directed drive. It would likely meander through a series of events without any sense of compelling inevitability. When the climax arrives, it would likely be weak, not seen as the culmination and moment of truth so much as simply the end.

This is not to say that the Protagonist won’t be misled or even temporarily convinced to stop trying, but like a smoldering fire the Protagonist is a self-starter. Eventually, he or she will ignite again and once more resume the drive toward the goal.

 

What, now, of the Antagonist? We have all heard the idioms, Let sleeping dogs lie, Leave well enough alone, and If it works – don’t fix it. All of these express that very same human quality embodied by the Antagonist: Reticence.

To be clear, Reticence does not mean that the Antagonist is afraid of change. While that may be true, it may instead be that the Antagonist is simply comfortable with the way things are or may even be ecstatic about them. Or, he or she may not care about the way things are but hate the way they would become if the goal were achieved.

Functionally, your Antagonist will try anything and everything to prevent the goal from being achieved. No matter what the cost, any price would not seem as bad to this character as the conditions he or she would endure if the goal comes to be. The Antagonist will never cease in its efforts, and will marshal every resource (human and material) to see that the Protagonist fails in his efforts.

Without an Antagonist, your story would have no concerted force directed against the Protagonist. Obstacles would seem arbitrary and inconsequential. When the climax arrives, it would likely seem insignificant, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

As with the Protagonist, don’t be trapped into building an Antagonist with a mean personality. There are many stories with Antagonist’s who are actually right in trying to stop the goal.

Think of James Bond for a moment.  The “Bond Villain” is almost always the Protagonist – starting some new scheme with a goal to change the world.  Bond himself is the Antagonist, as strange as it may seem, for his job is to prevent the change and/or put things back the way they were.  So, as described earlier, it may well be that the Protagonist is the Bad Guy and the Antagonist is the Good Guy. Or, in fact both may be Good or both Bad, as often happens in more sophisticated stories.

The important thing is that the Antagonist must be in a position in the plot to place obstacles in the path of the Protagonist, not just to make the quest more difficult (another archetype does that), but to actually try to prevent the Protagonist from succeeding.

Now that you know a bit more about who the Protagonist and Antagonist really are, see if you can’t refine their dramatic functions in your next story or even the one you may currently have in development

—Melanie Anne Phillips

Learn more about Archetypal Characters

External and Internal Dependencies

As co-creator of the Dramatica theory, I often take some of the concepts so for granted that I forget to consider wider application of them.

For example, in my classes I often speak of the three kinds of character relationships: Dynamic, Companion, and Dependent.  Dynamic relationships are directly conflicting, Companion relationships have a tangential effect, and Dependent relationships are complementary.

And each kind of relationship has a positive and negative version.  For example, a positive Dynamic relationship is when two opposing view duke it out and through that conflict spark a new idea – a synthesis that would never have occurred without hammer to metal.  In a negative dynamic relationship two opposing character will simply beat each other into the ground.

In a negative Companion relationship, two characters have a detrimental indirect impact on one other, just as a byproduct of each doing what each is doing.  For example, a fellow building a toy for his son’s birthday in the garage unknowingly kicks up wood dust that causes his neighbor to suffer an asthma attack.  A positive Companion relationship might be that same fellow’s other neighbor who discovers the wood dust keeps pesky birds away from his garden.

A positive Dependent relationship is when characters feel that “I’m okay, you’re okay but together we’re terrific!”  The negative Dependent relationship is saying, “I’m nothing without my other half.”  And so the phrase, “You complete me” might be either positive or negative, depending….

But, I’ve said all this before.  What inspired me to write this article was, as I said above, that sometimes my familiarity with a concept gets in the way of my perceiving its implications.

In this case, what I’ve never considered before was that if characters in a Story Mind represent our thoughts – different attributes of our psyche, such as reason, emotion, confidence and doubt, then relationships among characters must be illustrating the kinds of relationships we have among our own thoughts.  If this analogy of the Story Mind holds true (and it should), then we must have thoughts within ourselves which share Dynamic, Companion and Dependent relationships.

And so, I began to question myself as to where I may have seen such internal relationships within my own mind.  I began with the Dependent relationship as that was the kind I happened to be examining in characters when this concept struck me.

What would be a Dependent relationship between two different thoughts of mine, I wondered?  And then I realized these relationships weren’t between thoughts, but between feelings.  The example I found within myself were actually several and initially all of the negative variety as illustrated thus: “If I can only finish this book I’ll be satisfied with my work as an author.”  Paraphrased, this means, “I won’t be satisfied until I finish this book,” or, “I’m incomplete without this accomplishment,” or “This book will complete me,” which is really a negative feeling re-phrased to sound positive so it is more palatable to myself.

Easily, I had many things for which I longed.  If I looked at them positively such as “Life is good, but that other potential situation would be even better,” then it was a positive Dependent experience.  But, if it was “I can’t be truly happy until X happens, is achieved or obtained,” then it was a negative Dependent experience.

Suddenly I found myself examining all kinds of relationships among my feelings – such things as “being of two minds,” in which my sense of self (the Main Character in my head) has it out with how things might be if I had a change of heart (the Influence Character in my head) over issue X.  And in so doing I realized that from the Main Character’s view is is not “who will I be” or “how will I be” if I change, but it rather seems more like “what will it be” or “how will it be” (my life situation) if I stick with my desires or abandon them from some replacement plan?

Sure we all have mental images of ourselves, which we spend inordinate quantities of time lovingly maintaining as if our selves were our prized automobile which we proudly display as we motor along through life (our personas, in actuality – our means of locomotion through the social highways of our culture, local and distant, within reach and   in the stars.  But though we may consider our image and make choices to change or not depending on how it will be affected, we also, emotionally consider how that our world feels might change, if we get or don’t get, embrace or abandon, commit or hedge in regard to those things for which we would find a positive enhancement to our lives or that the ongoing absence of those things leaves our lives negative until that lack is remedied.

And, naturally, my thoughts then drifted to the relationships among groups, each a different story mind, and saw that these same emotional, passionate, motivational relationships existed among them as well.

Snapping back to narrative theory again, I was now confident that these three kinds of relationships between characters had unveiled to me a new understanding – that while each character may represent a structural element in a quad that leads it into one of the three kinds of relationships with another character who represents another element in that quad, and while these relationships might be positive or negative from a structural view, for the characters themselves they are felt, not thought, and they are lived in an ongoing passionate experience, not simply attributes that possess.

As a final thought before my interest in this topic waned, I reminded myself that most characters have several elements they represent, all in different quads.  And therefore, they not only have Dynamic, Companion, and Dependent relationships with different characters in each quad, but may, in fact, have different kinds of relationships with the same character in different quads, and any of these may be positive or negative in any combination.

And so, the variety of character relationships already known (in our theory) to be complex structurally, has now also expanded to reveal the emotional complexity of how characters may feel about their many kinds of relationships, even between two human beings.  And, by extension, how social groups manifest complex emotional relationship in their feelings about each other, and how, but intension, we can come to better understand the relationships among our own feelings, each of us within ourselves.

Naturally, of course, this ebb and flow of passions is part of the Dynamic Model of Narrative upon which I am current working with full attention.  And ultimately, I hope to describe these pressures as undulating standing waves, eventually refined into a nice math model and an equation or two.  But, that is for another essay.

Melanie Anne Phillips
Co-creator, Dramatica

Conversational Inertia

Sometimes, no matter how one tries, a conversation cannot be turned.  Illustrating this in  conversations among characters is a way to illuminate the degree of power that is driving the conversation in a particular direction, or perhaps the magnitude of the potential behind it.

For example, my daughter is seven weeks pregnant and just posted the following note on Facebook with several additional responses:

Mindi (my daughter):  I thought pregnancy and pickle craving was a myth. I’ve nearly gone through a whole jar since yesterday.

My reply:  A jar of pregnancies?

Someone else’s reply:  pickled pregnancies?

Another person’s reply: Not even pregnancy made pickles taste good to me.

I tried to throw this conversation into a new direction, a new context, but the inertia of the social fabric drew the linear topics back to the original issue.  This is an initial indicator that those who follow my daughter on Facebook are likely not as interested in the branch in the process I moved down and are more interested in the more obvious subject of the original comment.

Conversational inertia is a hint – a whisper – that, while not definitive, is indicative of larger currents at work that move a conversation in a particular course no matter what winds blow across the surface.  The stronger and deeper the current, the greater the drive behind it.

Conversations may be between two people, in which case the inertia illustrates each individual’s underlying motivations.  In such a case, each may be speaking at cross purposes, as if two different conversations were chopped up and their pieces alternated linearly.  Such mechanisms can often be seen in the conversations between the Main and Influence characters as they each press forward with their own paradigms like two oarsman alternately rowing toward different destinations.

Conversations may be among several people in a group, in which case the inertia illustrates the underlying motivations of the larger Story Mind in which each individual represents a facet.  In such a case, there may be a single individual at odds with the group mind or the number of individuals may be split on which topic to follow, indicating that the Story Mind is literally of two minds, which functions as an analogy to our own individual mind’s when we can’t decide between two priorities or are torn between to equally attractive or equally unattractive alternatives.  In other scenarios, each individual may try to hijack the group conversation in his or her own desired direction, fragmenting the Story Mind and indicating that the collective is pulled in many direction or is simply directionless, is exploring or is going to pieces.

As a final thought for you Theory Hounds, this process is part of the Dynamic Model – the wave-driven undulations of narrative dynamics that give rise to growing motivations and repress or dissolve others.

You see it in your interactions with others and in the tides and eddies of your own mind and, therefore, you see it in stories as well.

Melanie Anne Phillips
Co-creator, Dramatica