Category Archives: Dramatica

Your Main Character – Do Be Do Be Do

to-do-is-to-be-nietzsche-kant-sinatra-quote-funny-poster

EXPLANATION:  Some of the characters you create as an author will be Do-ers who try to accomplish their purposes through activities (by doing things).  Other characters are Be-ers who try to accomplish their purposes by working it out internally (by being a certain way).  When it comes to the Main Character, this choice of Do-er or Be-er will have a large impact on how he approaches the Story’s problem.  If you want your Main Character to prefer to solve problems externally, choose Do-er.  If you want your Main Character to prefer to solve problems through internal work, choose Be-er.

THEORY:  By temperament, Main Characters (like each of us) have a preferential method of approaching Problems.  Some would rather adapt their environment to themselves through action, others would rather adapt their environment to themselves through strength of character, charisma, and influence.

There is nothing intrinsically right or wrong with either Approach, yet it does affect how one will respond to Problems.

Choosing “Do-er” or “Be-er” does not prevent a Main Character from using either Approach, but merely defines the way he is likely to first Approach a Problem, using the other method only if the first one fails.

USAGE:  Do-er and Be-er should not be confused with active and passive.  If a Do-er is seen as active physically, a Be-er should be seen as active mentally.  While the Do-er jumps in and tackles the problem by physical maneuverings, the Be-er jumps in and tackles the problem with mental deliberations.

The point is not which one is more motivated to hold his ground but how he tries to hold it.

A Do-er would build a business by the sweat of his brow.

A Be-er would build a business by attention to the needs of his clients.

Obviously both Approaches are important, but Main Characters, just like the real people they represent, will have a preference.  Having a preference does not mean being less able in the other area.

A martial artist might choose to avoid conflict first as a Be-er character, yet be quite capable of beating the tar out of an opponent if avoiding conflict proved impossible.

Similarly, a school teacher might stress exercises and homework as a Do-er character, yet open his heart to a student who needs moral support.

When creating your Main Character, you may want someone who acts first and asks questions later, or you may prefer someone who avoids conflict if possible, then lays waste the opponent if they won’t compromise.

A Do-er deals in competition, a Be-er in collaboration.

The Main Character’s affect on the story is both one of rearranging the dramatic potentials of the story, and also one of reordering the sequence of dramatic events.

By choosing Do-er or Be-er you instruct Dramatica to establish one method as the Main Character’s approach and the other as the result of his efforts.

This Writing Tip is Excerpted From:

blog-ad-dramatica

The Primary Colors of Story Structure

rgb-cmyk1The primary colors enable you to create the whole range of shading and tonalities you are trying to achieve in a picture.

Similarly, the primary colors of story structure enable you to create the specific mood and experience you are trying to instill in your readers or audience.

 

In color theory there are two principal models: RGB (generally used for self-illuminating displays such as computer screens) and CMYK (generally used for print media).

As with colors, narrative structure can be approached both from a three-base system and a four-base system to achieve different dramatic purposes.

Readers or Audience sees in threes – the subjective experience of three acts or of a beginning a middle and an end.  But an author sees in fours – the objective experience of seeing time as an element of the story, rather as the order in which events are presented to us.

At the end of a story, the reader or audience assembles the pieces that were doled out over time as if building jigsaw puzzle, and are finally able to join the author in seeing in all four dimensions – the finished product in which the outcome is visible in one glance that also includes the inception.

To create a story that satisfies both in how it unfolds and also makes sense when seen in its totality, each step must make sense and feel right as a progression, and collectively they must add up to a larger message in which each step is also a cog in the greater machine of the story’s structure.

The Dramatica theory of Narrative and the Dramatica software work to ensure that the primary colors of story, both in threes and fours, are present and working together toward the same purpose – your overall purpose as an author to tell this particular story in this particular manner.

blog-ad-dramatica

Does Dramatica Support Multiple Protagonists?

A writer recently asked, do the Dramatica software and theory support multiple protagonists (several people trying to achieve the goal for themselves)?

First, the short answer is yes, Dramatica supports that.

But there’s more.

Here’s the long answer (bear with me here as the following should really open up some new ways of looking at story structure for you).

Why does structure exist in fiction and where did it come from? In real life, when people are drawn toward a point of common interest – be it by forming a club or organization or just by competing for the same thing, they quickly adopt roles – they self-organize unconsciously. What are these roles and where do they come from? We each have mental tools with which to assess the current situation, determine a potential improved situation, and to devise a plan to change what is to what we’d like better. That’s narrative’s core. It is what the individual does. We each have, for example, our ability to reason and a sense of skepticism. But in a group, like a company or a political organization, we specialize, each adopting just one of those tools as our job. And so, someone emerges as the voice of reason, another as the resident skeptic. This helps the group see deeper into the area of common concern than if everyone was each trying to do all the jobs like general practitioners.

Fiction is our attempt to understand these roles and how they interact with one another. It is our attempt to understand the best approach to take, of all those that might be considered, in order to achieve our desired goals. It is advice on how to best fulfill our obligation to ourselves in our personal narratives when they come into conflict with our group narratives. For 30,000 years we have told stories to provide guidance in life, and, through trial and error, the elements of those stories, such as the archetypal roles representing the roles we take in groups, became encoded as the conventions of story structure.

Because each of the roles in a group represents an aspect or facet of our individual minds, these conventions of story structure provide a map of how our individual minds work, as well as our “group minds.” When we developed Dramatica, we were the first to recognize that the structure of story modeled the human mind and the group mind. Armed with that understanding, we mapped out these conventions of structure from a psychological point of view and learned such things as the following:

Some stories have a single goal with a protagonist and an antagonist. Other stories have single goals but have many people trying to achieve and/or prevent achievement of the goal. But only one of these people is a protagonist and one is an antagonist. Each of the others, though seeking the goal, operates as one of the other roles, such as reason or skepticism.

So, it would be redundant to have “multiple protagonists” as they would all be trying to prove whether that same human quality is the best way to solve the problem. Protagonist represents our initiative – the motivation to instigate change. A better structured story would have one person who starts the quest, and others who join in to get there first. Then, each of the others could illustrate whether those other traits are the best ones to use and that would be the story’s message.

A good example that comes to mind are the characters in the old comedy “The Great Race” with Tony Curtis and Jack Lemon. Though Tony is the protagonist because he comes up with the idea of the Great Race and Jack is the antagonist because he is the long-time chief competitor to Tony, many people join the race, each seeking to win, and they represent the other archetypal roles in how they try to do it.

In summary, I would say that you would do better not to think of all those attempting to achieve the goal as protagonists, but as representing other human traits than “initiative,” which is what defines the actual protagonist. And from that point of view, Dramatica only allows one protagonist, but can have as many characters as you like trying to achieve the goal.

Learn more about narrative structure and Dramatica at http://storymind.com/dramatica/

Have your characters write their own life stories

Have your characters write their own life stories

For your characters to be compelling, your readers will need to think of them as real people, not just dramatic functionaries or collections of traits.

To help make this happen, have each of your characters write a short one-page autobiographical piece about themselves in their own words, describing their childhoods, backgrounds, activities, interests, attitudes, relationships, pet peeves and outlooks on life.

Try to write these in the unique voice of each character and from their point of view. Don’t write about them; let them write about themselves.

This will give you the experience of what it is like to see the world through each character’s eyes, which will help you empathize with their motivations and thereby make it easier for you to write your novel in such a way that your readers can step into your characters’ shoes.

Writing Tip of the Day

Avoid the Genre Trap

Too many beginning writers see genres as checklists of elements and progressions they must touch, like checkpoints in a race. But a genre is not a box in which to write. It is a grab bag from which to pull only those components you are truly excited to include in your story. Every story has a unique personality, you build it chapter by chapter or scene by scene with every genre choice you make. By drawing on aspects of many different genres and combining those pieces together, you can fashion an experience for your readers or audience unlike any other.

Writing Tip of the Day