Dramaticapedia

A StoryWeaver user recently asked:

Inside the story weaver software in the stage 3 Exposition part, inside the character folder, and precisely at the structural role, it says I should describe how I will reveal to my readers or audience the structural role of my characters.  Please does that mean that I should bring out the story points and then describe how each character played, and put them in scenes or dialogue, please what doe this mean?

My reply:

A writer recently asked:

A writer asks:

Hello

I’m trying to write a novel and I have a quick question. I have my main character developed and some of the other characters. I want to know do I have to developed every single character in great detail like I did the main character?

Tony

Hi Tony

The Main Character is a special case.  As you may know, most characters are oriented to the plot (we call them “Objective Characters” in Dramatica because we identify them by function in the story).

But there are also two “Subjective Characters” – the Main Character and the Obstacle Character (also called the Impact or Influence Character).

The Main Character is special because he or she grapples with an inner dilemma that is at the heart of the story’s issues.  In fact, success or failure in the overal goal of the story depends upon how the Main Character decides in regard to that dilemma.  (Think of Scrooge in “A Christmas Carol” or Hamlet.)

This, however, does NOT mean that the Main Character has to be the Protagonist.  The Protagonist is the prime mover in the effort to achieve the goal – it represents our initiative and tenacity.  It is an Objective Character because it is identified by its function in the story/plot.

The  personal “subjective” internal struggles can be given to any one of the Objective Characters.  That character then becomes the Main Character by definition.  And, the character given the additional role of representing the opposite belief system or opposite attitude to that of the Main Character becomes the Obstacle Character.

Besides whatever role they have the plot, the Main and Obstacle Characters also have a story-long relationship battling over their ideals, with one ultimately prevailing in that realm.  And whichever one prevails (right or wrong) will be the key to achieving success or failure in the quest for the goal.

So, naturally, there is a lot more to explore in the Main Character – all its personal issues and its paradigm battle with the Obstacle Character.  And that means it needs to be developed in far more detail than any of the other Objective Characters just fulfilling their roles in the plot.

Want to know more?

Read all our most recent articles about the Main Character

Here’s an unusual situation where both Chris and myself independently answered the same question from a writer. Comparing our two replies is both interesting and also sheds light on two different ways of looking at the same central story structure concept.

A writer asks:

In your book, Dramatica, you have Obi Wan as the obstacle character. This is counter-intuitive. In every other story methodology, Obi Wan is the mentor, and Dark Vader is the opponent. Darth Vader directly opposes Luke.

Please explain.

Chris Huntley’s reply:

Most every other story methodology does not identify the four throughlines and their significance.

In the “big picture,” the empire is at war with the rebels. The constant warring between the factions causes trouble for everyone. In that throughline, the empire, led by Gran Mof Tarkin, is shown to be the “bad guys,” the rebels are the “good guys,” the farmboy from Tatooine is the hero driving the story forward, the retired Jedi master is the guardian (mentor), and the emperor’s henchman is the one that seems to mess up everyone’s agenda. This throughline is the logical part of the author’s position.

Luke, as the Main Character, is someone who dreams of being a do-gooder, or saving the day, etc., yet he is stuck on a planet as far from the core (and action, he thinks) as is possible. He has Jedi blood, unbeknownst to him, which gives him skills and powers beyond his years. It is raw talent that needs training and focusing. He tests himself by putting himself in dangerous positions, which turn out to be far more dangerous than he can handle (e.g. the Tuskan Raiders, Breaking Leia out of the cell block, etc.). This throughline provides the personal side for the audience to empathize and step into the story.

Obi-wan is Impact Character. He is Luke’s trainer, not only in the use of the Force but in learning to believe in himself — to trust himself…to trust the Force. This throughline provides the influence needed to force Luke to grow.

The relationship throughline is about the Mentor/Student relationship that develops between Ben and Luke. This throughline is the emotional center of the author’s position.

NOTE: In Star Wars (1977), Darth Vader does not directly oppose Luke. In fact, the two only have one somewhat direct confrontation at the end of the story in the trench on the Death Star. In subsequent films, the two come into direct confrontation, but that is, as they say, another story.

Best regards,
Chris Huntley
Write Brothers Inc.

My reply:

The Obstacle Character, by definition, is the one who stands in the path of the Main Character approaching life in his same old usual way. He is an obstacle to staying in a mental rut. It is the Obstacle Character who constantly pressures the Main Character to change his ways, to alter his manner of thinking or of doing things. Clearly that is Obi Wan, not Vader.

Now, while Obi Wan may traditionally be labeled a “mentor”, that label doesn’t work for every Obstacle Character. For example, an Obstacle Character may not like, care about, or even be aware of the Main Character. It could be a rock star whom the Main Character will never meet. But, by following the disintegrating life of the drug-using rock star in the tabloids, the Main Character comes to realize that he must change his ways and does, perhaps. Therefore, this character has been an obstacle to the Main Character continuing down the same path – his original life course, but he would hardly be seen as a stereotypical “mentor”, which is far too limiting a label.

Further, in the original Star Wars movie, “Episode IV – A New Hope” (to which I believe you are referring) Darth does not directly oppose Luke. Darth opposes everyone. He chokes his own people. It is he who comes up with the plan to release the Millennium Falcon with a tracking beacon which ultimately leads to the rebels getting the plans that destroy the death star (“This had better work, Vader….”).

Darth is a character we call the Contagonist – a name we coined to describe this character who is not the head villain (the Emperor as represented by the Gran Mof Tarkin and all his storm troopers is the real villain of Star Wars, as we see even more definitively in the prequels. Darth, in fact, is diametrically opposed to his old master, Obi Wan. That is why the two of them must battle one on one.

Now, this is not to say that Darth is the opposite of Obi Wan’s function as Obstacle Character. There are two kinds of characters in stories: Objective Characters who are seen by their function, such as Antagonist and Protagonist, and two special Subjective Characters who are seen by their points of view, such as Main Character and Obstacle Character. Luke and Obi Wan (and any Main and Obstacle Characters would) have two different perspectives on life, and it is the heart of the story to see if the Main Character will or will not be convinced to adopt the Obstacle Character’s view.

This is what leads to the leap of faith or moment of truth for the Main Character. In Luke’s case, Obi has been on his case for the entire movie to reach out and touch the force, to trust himself and his abilities, even so far as to put him in a helmet with the blast shield down during training so Luke could only rely on his own feelings. That is why just before Luke destroys the death star, he is using the targeting computer and Obi’s voice returns to remind him, trust your feelings, Luke. Luke finally let’s go, trusts in himself and turns off the computer, much to the dismay of the command center. And yet, it is that decision, driven by a story-long pressure from Obi Wan as the Obstacle Character, that brings him to that necessary step if he is to ultimately succeed. (Imagine how unfulfilling it would be if he turned off the computer and as a result failed to destroy the death star, or if that scene had not been even included with Obi Wan’s voice – the ending, though a success, would have lacked something that helped make it so fulfilling).

But, that is only Obi’s subjective character role. Obi Wan also has an objective character role – the Guardian (comprised of Support and Conscience and more). The Guardian is an archetype, meaning it is actually made up of a number of different character attributes that all share a similar flavor, just as in chemistry all the elements naturally fall in to families, such as the rare earth elements or the noble gases. That’s why chlorine and fluorine are so similar, for example.

When all the elements from one family end up in the same character, it is an archetype. So, the opposite of the Guardian is the Contagonist (made up of Oppose and Temptation, among others). By “nature” he opposes everyone, not just Luke. But, his function to oppose is in DIRECT conflict with Obi Wan’s nature to support. Similarly, Darth’s “Temptation” (of the dark side) is balanced and diametrically in conflict with Obi’s “Conscience” (to follow the force).

So, while Luke in the plot must get past Darth who, like many implementations of the Contagonist archetype, is essentially the empires guard dog, it is Obi who opposes Luke’s desire to be part of the system with all its tech toys and weapons and convinces him to trust his own inner abilities.

Of course, there is far more going on in Star Wars than this simple exploration. And, each of these concepts appears in different ways in different stories. But, this should at least outline for you the purpose of the Obstacle Character (also called the Impact or Influence Character) and why Darth, though dressed in black, is not the real villain of Star Wars, just the henchman of the villain.

Melanie Anne Phillips
Co-creator, Dramatica

Excerpt from an upcoming book on story structure:

So far I have spoken of characters as representing or embodying fragments of the overall Story Mind, but that is misleading; characters are much more orderly than that. The term “fragments” provides an easy visualization that each character is a part of a larger whole and that perhaps they are different shapes and sizes. This is all true. But the shapes are regular and the sizes are in specific increments.

In this section we are going to introduce the largest of the characters, called Archetypes, and then in succeeding sections we’ll break them down into progressively smaller components until we arrive at the elemental building blocks of characters called, not surprisingly, Elements.

It is these Elements which form the bottom layer of the Dramatica Table of Story Elements and, in fact, provide the Table its name. It is at this level in which the chemistry of characters is born. Some elements combine to form complex aspects of the human psyche they represent. Others are like oil and water. A character may even exist as a single element, simple and pure, yet still advance a small part of the story’s argument.

But that is for later. For now, let us start at the top.

In the Periodic Table in chemistry, elements are arranged in families in which all of its member elements share certain attributes. While they each have individual differences, a family resemblance between, say, Fluorine and Chlorine is as hard to miss as that in some human family lines.

In a like manner, the elements at the character level of the Dramatica Table are also organized into families of similar traits called Archetypes. Each archetypal family contains exactly eight elements and, collectively, they form an entire facet of the Story Mind and, by extension, of our own minds.

The names of some of these archetypes are familiar: Protagonist and Antagonist, for example. But that creates a problem. The term archetype has been used by so many others, from Jung to Campbell, that it carries a great deal of baggage. The words Protagonist and Antagonist carry even more. So for Dramatica to come along and try to redefine those terms is to be fighting a lot of inertia and preconceptions.

Still, the traditional archetypes are looking at the same character functions as Dramatica, just through the obscurity of storytelling. So Dramatica is not so much redefining the archetypes as it is clarifying them. With that caveat in mind, let us proceed.

Each archetype exists to portray one of the major facets of our minds in a story. In a sense, each presents a different kind of argument, just as we work out a problem in our own thinking from several directions. Perhaps the two archetypes that most easily illustrate this point are Reason and Emotion.

The Reason archetype represents our intellect and the Emotion archetype, our passion. Certainly Reason and Emotion are two of the largest contributing factors in any decision we make in life. So it stands to reason (and feels about right) that they must be present in any story for its argument to be complete.

Turning now to the best known archetypes, Protagonist and Antagonist, we find that they are heavily masked by the storytelling concepts of Hero and Villain. While a Protagonist can be a Hero, that role is just one set of clothes it might wear. In fact, your Protagonist might as easily be a Villain. (And, in a like manner, an Antagonist might be Villain or Hero, for as we shall later see, both Hero and Villain are not archetypes but Stereotypes, which are over-used combinations of structural and storytelling elements working together.)

When you pare the Protagonist and Antagonist down to their structural bare bones, Protagonist represents our initiative and Antagonist, our reticence. In simpler terms, the Protagonist stands in for that part of ourselves that gets us up out of our chairs to get things done; to accomplish something. The Antagonist, in contrast, is the avatar of our desire to maintain the status quo, or more colloquially, to let sleeping dogs lie.

This fits in well with our common understanding of a Protagonist as the character leading the effort to achieve the goal and the Antagonist as the one who will do anything to stop him. (Note that while it stands for reticence, the Antagonist is not lazy or inactive, but rather exemplifies that counter-force within our own minds that acts in opposition to change: i.e. “If it works, don’t fix it.”)

We’ve just covered a lot of new ground, so let’s pause for a moment to take stock: We have learned that any entity in a story that exhibits a personality is a player. And any player that advances the story’s argument is also a character. Characters are made of elements, which are the smallest and purest fragments of the Story Mind.

Groups of elements share certain family traits. When a whole family of elements is represented by a single character, it is called an Archetype. Each archetype represents one of the major families of thought that go on in our own minds as we seek to resolve life’s problems.  So far, we’ve identified four archetypes: Protagonist (which represents our initiative), Antagonist (our reticence), Reason (our intellect), and Emotion (our passion).

Copyright Melanie Anne Phillips

What is a character? Like most dramatic concepts, it depends on who you ask. Some say characters are just ordinary people in extraordinary situations. Others say characters represent personality types. And then there are those who see characters as archetypes personifying human ideals and exemplifying quintessential human qualities.

As varied as these descriptions are, they all share one thing in common: They are looking at characters through the veil of storytelling. As before, when we strip that away, we begin to see the true structural nature of characters: past their personalities and into their underlying psychologies.

But before we delve into the structure of characters, let us take a moment consider their personalities, as that is what makes them intriguing, involving, charismatic and memorable.

In a story, anything can have a personality: a person, an animal, a tree, the sea, a star, even a virus. This stands to reason because in our every day lives we imbue inanimate objects with human qualities when we name our boats, call the wind Mariah, or refer to the Fatherland, Mother Russia, or Lady Liberty. In Dramatica, we call any entity that exhibits a personality a player.

Some players are just part of the background as with extras in the movies. Others are tools of convenience an author uses to drop information or solve a logistic conundrum in the plot. And still others are nothing more than window dressing – simple elements of entertainment that are purely storytelling devices.

But a player can also perform another dramatic task: it can function as part of the story argument. When it does, the player has become a character. To be a character, then, the player must (through its attitudes and/or actions) illustrate one of the ways the story’s central problem might be solved. And so, by this definition, not every personage populating a story is a character. Simply put: while all characters are players, not all players are characters.

As we shall fully explore later, the Main Character and Influence characters are special cases for these two players represent the best and worst of all the approaches that might be tried. (Which is which depends on the message the author wants to send – again, much more on this later.)

Now we shed a little more light on a statement from the beginning of the first chapter:

The elements of the story, therefore, must do double-duty. Characters, for example, must depict fully developed people in the storytelling so that the readers or audience might identify with them and thereby become personally involved in the entertainment and, perhaps, internalize the message.

Structurally, however, each character idealizes a different facet of the Story Mind’s conflicting motivations, made tangible, incarnate, so that we (the readers or audience) might directly observe the mechanisms of our own minds, see them from the outside looking in, and thereby gain a better understanding of how to solve similar problems in our minds and in own lives.

And so we see two distinct kinds of functions in each player when it also acts as a character: the fully developed aspect that makes it a real person and the small fragment of the overall story mind’s psychology that makes it part of the story’s argument.

Ultimately, as the story unfolds, all of these fragments will come together through the interactions of the characters like pieces of a puzzle to create the overall message of the story.

A writer recently sent these questions.  First, their letter, then my response:

Kris:

I’ve been following Dramatica for almost a year now and when you think you’ve got everything sorted out, something comes along to make you question what you thought you knew!  In Dramatica some of the traits you have for the Main Character are :

• Critical Flaw
• Problem
• Symptom

The reason I’m lost is how does this relate to other theories talking about a main character just having a need and a want (aside from their external goal)? I get that the ‘need’ is Dramatica’s ‘solution’ but what is the ‘want”s (their superficial want right at the beginning of the story) equivalent in Dramatica’s terms? They talk about the ‘want’ as being something main characters usually overcome in realisation that they have a much deeper inner need which is fueling this ‘want’. I was thinking that Critical Flaw maybe this ‘want’ because it hinders their progress but main character’s don’t overcome their Critical Flaw do they? Otherwise you’d have a character who could overcome their external problem, internal problem AND critical flaw – that seems like too much of a stretch.

I guess what i’m asking is if you could help enlighten me on what a main character’s (external/superficia/what-they-think-will-solve-the-problem) ‘want’ is in Dramatica terms? Is it the Symptom? (If that’s the case then – e.g. in the Social Network, the main character’s ‘Symptom’ is to get into one of the elite Harvard clubs when you could argue his ‘Solution’ is to get back with his ex-girlfriend which he doesn’t seem to realize truly until the end of the film)

Any help would be greatly appreciated,
Kris

My response: