explaining the Dramatica quad

March 31, 2006

Every Dramatica quad is designed to provide the author with an objective viewpoint of the items being considered. Take for instance, the quad of context - you have a “They” perspective, an “I” perspective, a “You” perspective, and a “We” persepctive. These match up, in Dramatica, to the Objective Story, Main Character, Impact Character and Subjective Story. These are the four different perspectives you can take when examining the problem at the heart of a story.

The thing with these quads is that subjectively - you need to “stand” on one to evaluate the others. In your own life, you can take the “I” perspective, and still be able to appreciate the “You” perspective and the “We” perspective.

But you can’t truly take an objective “They” viewpoint of yourself.

The same holds true if you adopt the objective “They” viewpoint. You can see an individual “You” and their subjective perspective (their relationship), but you can’t adopt the “I” perspective.

You can’t simultaneously be in a story and out of a story. Just can’t happen.

With that in mind, I found it interesting to learn that “3 but not 1” relationship exists even within some of the essential questions. Take for instance the four Story Questions (Story Driver, Story Limit, Story Outcome, Story Judgment). The first three deal with an objective viewpoint of the story, whereas the fourth, although technically objective, still deals with the Main Character alone.

For those who don’t know, the Judgment asks whether or not the Main Character has resolved their angst by the end of the story. This trips up a lot of new authors because they think what Dramatica is really asking is what kind of a judgment is the Author placing on the story.

It’s not. It’s a crossover from the Objective viewpoint of the structure of a story to the Personal Main Character viewpoint of the structure of a story.

In a quad, three will will fit, but the third will feel “jockeyed” in there.

In the Main Character question quad (MC Resolve, MC Growth, MC Approach, MC Problem Solving Style), it’s the MC Growth that is the crossover item. It deals more with growth in terms of the larger picture and is furthest from “Main Character” - and probably why it’s the most difficult and ethereal question to try and answer when analyzing a story.

Again, this info probably won’t help you write a million dollar screenplay, but to me it strikes a nerve that says there’s more to this Dramatica stuff than you may think.