James Hull has written a great article on Screenplay.com about how to figure out your main character’s arc. In most cases, if your main character doesn’t have an arc, you don’t have a compelling story. Needless to say, this article is an important one to read:

This usually becomes a case of battling over semantics, which is why I constantly make the case for writers and those interested in story to study and really learn what the Dramatica theory of story has to say about this. Those who discount the theory for being too complicated are correct – it is too complicated…but that’s because it has to be in order to be accurate.

Unlike most paradigms of story Dramatica comes complete without caveats. No bending of its concepts to fit certain films, no subjective interpretation needed in the determination of who fits what role. I’ve heard plenty of arguments on both sides in regards to Shawshank – some say Red is the “supporting” protagonist, others say Andy is. Everyone says, “It all depends on how you look at it….”

Dramatica doesn’t see story that way. Main Character and Protagonist have two very concrete definitions independent of who is doing the actual analysis. Dramatica is complex, but clear.

The difference between the two concepts? The Main Character is a perspective, a personal throughline through which the Audience can experience the film. The Protagonist is an objective character function, a character whose primary goal is the successful resolution of the Story Goal.

Main Character is more than narrator and more than point-of-view. The Main Character provides an intimate look at the story’s problem from within. More than simply commenting on the story’s events, the Main Character comes to a story with personal baggage that may or not be eventually resolved.

The Protagonist only cares about pursuing the Goal.

Now sometimes the two are the same: Luke, Neo, Jake Gittes, John McClane and Mr. Incredible. Sometimes they’re not: Scout and Atticus, Sarah Connor and Kyle Reese, and of course, Red and Andy.

Red gives us a chance to feel what it is like to support a corrupt system. From a big picture third-person perspective we get to see the effects of everyone simply going along with the Warden’s ways, but it is only through Red that we get that first person perspective. And it is in that dissonance between the subjective and objective views that the story of Shawshank Redemption grants an Audience meaning – something they can’t get in real life. We, as humans, can’t be both inside and outside of ourselves at the same time.

Stories can.

As far as Rise of the Planet of the Apes goes, you can read my initial review of it. Overall I thought the story wasn’t cohesive. There were missing parts of the arguments being made that left the film feeling unclear about what it was trying to say.

There are two stories going on, one with Will and Caroline that tells us change is bad, and the other more prominent one with Ceaser and Will that tells us change is good. If the film itself were longer perhaps these two competing arguments could have melded together, but it isn’t. More time is spent on the Ceaser story, leaving Will’s substory emaciated and under-developed.

This isn’t to say I didn’t enjoy it - I actually had a great time, but as you’ll see I make a distinction on my site between Entertainment and Structure. So ROTPOFTA wasn’t bad…

It just could have been better!

Main Character - viewpoint character which INCLUDES personal baggage tied to the story’s central inequity

Protagonist - character who PURSUES the successful resolution of the story’s goal regardless of an intimate look into any personal baggage

Sometimes one and two are the same (most American films), but not always.

Neither “The Ishmael” nor the “Supporting Protagonist” as defined by this site [the TV Tropes site linked above] includes that key component of personal baggage. Audience Surrogate sounds closer to the Main Character concept described above, but again I can’t find reference here to the requirement that there be personal issues pertinent to the story at hand.

That’s the key.

In Shawshank Redemption, Red not only provides the narration he gives us an intimate look at what it is like to go with the system. He is an institutionalized man and shows up to each parole board meeting with hat in hand, saying what he thinks he should say.

This is the same problem everyone else in the story has to deal with. From the fresh fish not following orders to shut up to good ‘ol Tommy doing what he can to help the Warden out, everyone in Shawshank suffers from the effects of supporting the powers that be.

But we’re seeing their stories from afar, from a third-person objective perspective. Andy, who clearly is the one driving the story’s successful resolution and thus is the Protagonist, spends an inordinate amount of time in the hole, yet we never get to feel what that is like. He goes in, he comes out and suddenly he’s a different person. We are not him.

Red’s journey, however, we see from a very personal very first-person perspective. Red’s surprise is our surprise. We even walk through the jail doors into his parole board meetings! We’re with him every step of the way.

The dissonance created between the two perspectives gives the story meaning and is why we feel compelled to watch it over and over again. In short, it is giving us something we can’t get in real life — a simultaneous look inside and outside of a problem.

Same with To Kill A Mockingbird. Scout is more than simply the narrator. Yes, Atticus is a “man of action”, but that is his role as Protagonist - trying to resolve the issues of injustice that sit at the center of the story.

Scout, though, has her own personal issues revolving around justice, particularly within her relationship with the boogie man, Boo Radley. Sitting in her shoes we get a very intimate look at what it is like to be prejudice, or unjust, towards another. We get to see it from within through her, and from without through Atticus. Again, that dissonance between the objective and subjective gives us as an Audience the meaning we can’t find in real life.

That’s what makes stories so great.

Two other posts that elaborate on this idea:

The Confusion Between Main Character and Protagonist and Redefining Protagonist and Main Character

Conflict is the product of effort to resolve an inequity as it meets resistance. We look for conflict as we attempt to identify an inequity’s source(s). If we neglect to look in all the possible places conflict can exist, we open ourselves (and the story) to missing the entirety of the conflict and a true understanding of the inequity, leaving the real likelihood of failing to resolve the inequity thoroughly. So, all four perspectives and all four domains must be explored in order to understand the nature of an inequity and the nature and source(s) of conflict generated by trying to resolve the inequity.

Must have read it twenty times over the past couple of days, committing it to memory and really understanding that the true inequity of a story is something that can’t be spoken, that it sits between all these dramatic potentials.

that is in fact exactly why Dramatica was created and what it was designed to do: not to force you to conform to structure but to simply alert you to structural flaws and to show you the structurally sound options so that you can choose to fix the problem or let it slide for the sake of the Muse. But, at least you won’t be doing it unknowing and in the dark.

Not that it forces you to follow a particular paradigm, but because it forces you to see your own shortcomings.

The main problem with “Dramatica,” for me, seems to be in that the theory looks at a story in relation to, “the mind’s problem solving process.” This area of the website goes on to explain that an author must examine all possible solutions to an issue in the story. In an effort to prove that the author’s solutions are the best. The Dramatica theory of critique [sic] states that if, “you have covered every angle in your argument, you’ve mapped all the ways an audience might look at the problem and, therefore, all the ways anyone might look at that problem.”

So far so good.

This mapping turns any piece into a psychological pseudo study and relieves it of any beauty that it may contain. I would say that the appreciation of art is down by a person’s heart not his or her mind. Therefore the Dramatica Theory of the story is flawed from its beginnings. The treatment of Washington Square is just an example of science trying to capture art and study it in a laboratory. Literature lives in one’s heart and not in the lab.

Ah yes. Magical thinking. Wouldn’t it be nice to understand why your “heart” takes so strongly to Washington Square? Could it be that there is some deeper meaning, some purpose to the combination of character, plot, theme and genre that manifests some greater understanding of life that you can only find in a story?

Nah. Better to simply chalk it up to “art.”

Storywise, the film serves up the same Situation Main Character, Fixed Attitude Parent (mom) as Impact Character that we’ve seen a million times already. Same Concern of Becoming in the Relationship Throughline between them as well ( change who you are or pay the price ) More than likely the Mom will Change, as I don’t see the MC becoming a traditional wife/princess/maiden.

I agree with the sentiment that it would be nice to have a female Main Character who doesn’t have to grapple with the fact that she’s a female. There are a bazillion other issues that she could have besides her physicality/situation (woman in a man’s world).

Not much to look forward to, except for her hair…her hair looks cool.

There are characters who grow – who “arc” – yet don’t end up changing how they see the world (or themselves).

The article covers itself with the statement that not all characters have an arc, yet this is incorrect – assuming they are speaking of the Main Character of a story. Every Main Character of every complete story has an “arc”, even if they don’t ultimately change how they see the world. They have to grow and shift their approach with each Act change. If they don’t, there is no story to speak of - no development of the argument.

A short video of Main Characters who grow, those who “arc” yet don’t have a paradigm shift of their worldview, can be found in the article What Character Arc Really Means.

…I feel my brain thinking, feel it sponging up everything she’s explaining and there will be a brilliant ‘aha!’ moment and it’s crystal clear and then that pretty much dies.

Yep, that’s what it’s like. And it never ends.

I’ve been studying Dramatica for 15+ years now and still discover new and intriguing things about it.

The question now is – were these relationships for the Elements created first, and then the Issues were placed on top? In other words, were all the Elements laid out with the Dependent and Companion relationships in mind, and then each quad was examined for commonality? Pursuit, Avoidance, Control and Uncontrolled…those sound like Self-Interest and so on…