the tearing down story

June 7, 2005

Now to focus on the Tearing Down story. Usually this is a Change story. Here we find the Main Character in a fully justified position at the beginning of the story. They have a major problem in their Backstory that is so embedded within them that they’re completely blind to it. They can’t solve it.

They may have a found a form of peace with it, something Dramatica calls a Balanced Inequity, but the problem still lies deep within them. They may or may not be aware of it, but the point is they can’t do anything about it.

The story then is the process of the Main Character “tearing down” those walls of justification to get to that problem - to shine the light on it.

Scrooge in A Christmas Carol is so set in his ways that he can’t imagine himself changing. But through the efforts of Marley and his ghost cohorts, Scrooge’s walls are torn down in such a way that change is made possible.