6 responses so far ↓

• 1 Laura // Aug 15, 2006 at 5:32 pm

  Dramatica brings problems like this on itself by taking words with already understood meanings and redefining them in narrow ways. In common usage a character who changes is one who is different at the end of the story to how they were at the start; different in almost any way. But in Dramatica a character can only be different in one specific way and be considered a change character; they need to change their resolve. In Chris Huntley’s comparison of Dramatica to five other story paradigms he mentions that other story gurus give “lip-service” to the idea of a character who doesn’t change. But he defines change in one very specific way, and everyone else defines change in another more general way.

  Take the example of the movie Serenity. In Chris Huntley’s review he describes Mal as a steadfast character: Mal is against the Alliance’s over-controlling nature the whole way through. But Joss Whedon, the writer/director, sees Mal as a change character. From his perspective at the start of the story Mal runs away from the Alliance and leaves innocent people to die, even though he knows it is wrong, because he needs money. But by the end he stands up to the Alliance and asks his crew to lay down their lives to do what is right (which some of them do). By Dramatica’s definition, this is growth, not change. By the rest of the world’s definition, this is understood to be change. When other writing paradigms scoff at the idea of a changeless main character they are addressing the concept that Dramatica calls growth. It’s a matter of semantics.

  If Dramatica defined change in the same way that everyone else does, this problem wouldn’t exist. In order to, “amaze your friends with the new found knowledge that a character can still have an arc without changing,” you first have to redefine change in the parochial way Dramatica does. To an average person’s ears that statement sounds like, “a character can still change without changing,” which makes no sense at all. What Dramatica really means is, “a character can still develop (or change, grow, have an arc, etc) without being convinced of the Impact Character’s point of view.” Well, obviously! There millions of ways to develop a character that have nothing to do with that character’s conviction.

  “Main Character Resolve: Change or Steadfast” is semantically confusing. Here is an unambiguous suggestion: “Conviction: MC converts IC or IC converts MC.”

• 2 J. Hull // Aug 15, 2006 at 9:37 pm

  Laura,

  First off, thanks for proving that my redesign was worth it - a post that I wrote nine months ago resurfaces!

  Let’s see if I can address your comment here…

  I actually disagree with your first point. I’ve always felt like Dramatica was more of an all-encompassing theory compared to other theories. I’ve always been drawn to it because Chris and Melanie went out of their way to use terms that weren’t prejudiced. For proof of this, one just has to look at the original terminology compared to the “easy” vocabulary available in the latest version of Dramatica.

  “Developing a Plan” is easier to understand than “Conceptualizing.” But in being easier it is also less accurate. Where is the envisioning? Or the visualizing or imagining? In our analysis of Amelie, we concluded that the last act dealt with Conceptualizing and that one example of this was how many of the characters found ways to fit in with their environment and in the lives of those around them. This is a more accurate use of Conceptualizing than the simple “Developing a Plan.”

  So I don’t think the Main Character’s Resolve is as limiting as you state. You are right, there are a million different ways a character can develop without changing their original point of view - but in order to determine the storyform you are writng you need to decide what is the central issue at the heart of your story and figure out your Main and Impact Character’s relationship to this issue. One will change, one will not. There can be no meaning unless you show the value of one changing to the other.

  As far as Serenity goes, I wish I had seen it. I’ve heard it’s great and really want to, but just haven’t gotten around to it yet.

  That being said, I have a feeling that it is the same problem that most have with the analysis of “Big.” Most see Tom Hanks as changing, whereas the reality is he is a steadfast character. It all has to do with where the story actually starts (which is not necessarily the beginning of the story). Hopefully Chris can chime in and elaborate.

  I like the idea of Conviction, but again that narrows it down - that could even be a suggestion for the “easy” vocabulary. The problem with “MC converts IC” is that it implies that the MC actively tries to change the Impact Character’s mind. In some stories this influence can happen without the Main Character even knowing it.

  So I guess overall I’m saying that the ambigousness of the Dramatica theory is it’s strong point - that in using terms that are, at first, difficult to understand and different from everyday use, they’ve come up with an understanding of story theory that explains more accurately what is going on within a piece of fiction.

• 3 Laura // Aug 16, 2006 at 3:25 am

  You missed my point. My problem isn’t with the vocabulary per se. My problem is that in your original post you treated two completely different definitions of “character change” as if they were the same thing and that has lead you to a fallacious conclusion. Your argument seems to make sense:

  A story is flawed if the main character doesn’t change.
  Richard Kimble doesn’t change, but The Fugitive is a great story.
  Therefore, the first statement must be false.

  Except that the first statement originates from outside Dramatica and the second originates from inside Dramatica. Both statements use the word “change,” but Dramatica has redefined “change” to suit its own purposes. A non-Dramatica definition of “character change” encompasses everything that there is about a character. A Dramatica definition of “character change” is limited only to a character’s resolve.

  Here’s the argument without the equivocation:

  A story is flawed if the main character doesn’t change in any way, shape or form.
  Richard Kimble doesn’t change his resolve, but The Fugitive is a great story.
  Therefore, the first statement must be false.

  That’s obviously flawed reasoning.

  Redefining words to suit Dramatica’s purposes isn’t the ideal solution, but the detailed Dramatica dictionary at least makes it bearable. (I noticed in the recent User’s Group podcast regarding Amèlie that people were asking for definitions of words. It amused me because I assumed that the people who would attend a User’s Group would be the most devoted aficionados, and yet even they weren’t sure or terms). But you can’t take those Dramatica definitions and apply them to things that non-Dramatica users have said. You can’t take the Dramatica definition of character change and apply it to what the rest of the world (probably influenced by Robert McKee) has said about character change.

  Another example of a Dramatica term slipping in meaning is the Dramatica definition of “hero.” Out in the non-Dramatica world the “hero” of a story is just the “main character” most of the time, not a combination of protagonist/main character. Part of this problem has got to be that Dramatica was developed by people who had never read any other story paradigms until recently (that is, at least Chris hadn’t. Not sure about Melanie). Although this probably did prevent “contamination” it means that many of Dramatica’s terms are way out of sync with the rest of the world.

• 4 J. Hull // Aug 16, 2006 at 10:55 am

  From what I’ve read (and I think I’ve read every screenwriting book out there - I love ‘em), the non-Dramatica defintion of change is Dramatica’s definition of change.

  My original post is not all that complicated - in my conversations with people in the story departments at the studios I’ve worked in, they always talk about how they must have their main characters “arc.”

  What drives me crazy is that they use “arc” to really mean “change.” 95% of them don’t understand that the Main Character does not have to have a fundamental change of their point of view in order to have a good story.

  That’s all the post above was meant to address.

  The user group meetings are not just for the uber-fans - it’s filled with different people, some experts, some first timers - but all people who are interested in learning more about the theory.

  And again, I think the strength of Dramatica lies in the fact that it is different from anything out there. It does take awhile to assimilate it into your own thinking, but once it is, I think it holds great value for your writing.

• 5 Chris Huntley // Aug 16, 2006 at 3:23 pm

  Semantics are ALWAYS a problem when discussing abstract concepts such as those in story. There is no agreed upon terms for character, main character, protagonist, hero, character change, etc. There is lots of overlap between the various usages, but the definitions range from specific to general.

  No matter what labels you use, Dramatica breaks character “change” into subcomponents (Growth and Resolve). This lets authors be more specific about the type of significant change a character goes through. Character change doesn’t happen in a vacuum. It affects other character, plot, theme, and genre development. Having more refined “tools” with which to identify/develop your character change lets author’s fine-tune the story to a greater degree than the more generalized approach by the other paradigms.

  In my comparison between Dramatica and the other paradigms, I tried to make the distinction between character growth and character resolve–a distinction that other paradigms do not seem to make. Character growth, specifically Subjective Character (MC & IC) growth, describes how a character responds to the internal and external changes in and around him/her. Dr. Kimble absolutely grows over the course of the story–he adapts his behavior according to the changing environment. However, his ultimate resolve is to stay the course, which arguably sparks Gerard’s paradigm shift from someone who doesn’t care about his target’s guilt to someone who believes his target is innocent. That’s a significant shift for the head of the fugitive retrieval unit.

  While I disagree with the following:

  A story is flawed if the main character doesn’t change.
  Richard Kimble doesn’t change, but The Fugitive is a great story.
  Therefore, the first statement must be false

  I agree with this reworking:

  A story is flawed (its message to the audience is confusing, unrealistic, or unintentionally ambiguous) if the main character doesn’t grow over the course of the story.
  Though Richard Kimble does not change his resolve, over the course of the story he grows in his conviction to see his personal issues through to the end.
  This is one of the reasons the Fugitive is a strong story.

  In the case of “Serenity,” I believe that the main character is fundamentally the same as he was at the beginning. He is a moral character who always struggles between doing what is right and what is expedient. He doesn’t kill everybody in the bank when he robs it. In fact, he saves their lives by getting them locked in the vault when the Reavers come. When the colonist tries to get on the vehicle, Mal pushes him off because of the risk to his crew because of the added weight–but he shoots the colonist when the Reavers get him to save him from being eaten alive. The scale of what he does might change as the scale of events in the Overall Story get larger, but he is pretty consistent in his approach (though he is conflicted by it).

  As a Main Character, Mal believes in personal freedom — the rights of the individual are as important, if not more important, than the rights of those that govern them. This doesn’t change in Mal, but it DOES change in the assassin. It is in the Overall Story that we see the Serenity crew forced into scenarios that require growing risk and sacrifice. They don’t have a choice about laying down their lives at the end. If the Reavers don’t get them, the Alliance will. Getting the message out to the Universe is the goal from before the film begins, even if the principle characters don’t realize it. River was programmed to get the “secret” out of the Alliance’s control and shared with everybody. The crew of Serenity are the unfortunate vehicles for making that happen.

  The bottom line is that the audience tries to find meaning in the story. Dramatica identifies two story points associated with the Main Character (MC RESOLVE and MC GROWTH) that identify areas of meaning for the audience. The four combinations of these two story points (Stop/Change, Stop/Steadfast, Start/Change, Start/Steadfast) identify different types of character development in a story and suggest where the character is personally at the beginning of the story, how the character’s development unfolds, and where the character is at the end of the story. This is useful information for an author creating a story or trying to identify problems with his character’s development.

  Cheers,
  Chris Huntley
  Write Brothers

• 6 JD // Oct 8, 2006 at 5:51 pm

  J. Hull —- From what I’ve read (and I think I’ve read every screenwriting book out there - I love ‘em), the non-Dramatica defintion of change is Dramatica’s definition of change.

  I read a couple of other screenwriting books, but none of them ever mentioned an impact character or a main char/impact char story. I think that’s the most unique part of dramatica. But the way dramatica describes _change_ is completely dependent on the existence of an impact character and the argument between mc and ic. So, I don’t understand how it’s possible that _change_ could mean the same thing across the board when impact character is unique to dramtica. To me it doesn’t make any sense. Could you please explain?

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