There are some very interesting relationships in Dramatica that aren’t covered in the manual or in the software itself.

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There. This blog is now officially cursed.
(insert official SPOILER warning here)
If you have no idea what I’m talking about, then you’re not a fan of the show “Lost.” If you are, then you know that those were the numbers that Jack entered into the computer at the conclusion of last night’s [...]

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So, if justification is building up, and problem solving is tearing down, how is that different from the building up or tearing down through growth?
First, take this as a given: having a Justification (or having a wall as described here) balances out your world. It hides everything and makes you feel like everything is fine.
Then, [...]

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Dramatica can seem a bit overwhelming when you first start out. I remember flipping through the dictionary at the back of the theory book and thinking, “This is insane!”
But after eight years of working with it, I’ve got the model pretty much memorized (at least down to the Variation level) and have a pretty good [...]

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And now let’s clear things up for the Steadfast character…
Imagine you’re in a room that’s going to start filling up with water. It starts out very slow. So you put in a row of bricks and stand on it. But then, the room starts filling up faster. So you put up some [...]

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After a week or so off for the holiday, I went back to what I’ve written here and found that I was thoroughly confused. On the one hand, I had spent several weeks writing about the four different types of stories - Building Up and Tearing Down for a Change Character and for a [...]

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An example of a Tearing Down Change Character would be Scrooge in A Christmas Carol. He starts out saying, “Leave me alone. I don’t want to be bothered.” But then ends up saying, “What can I do to help?” That’s the most typical of Change characters.
A Building Up Change Character has a [...]

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We’ve gone over building up and tearing down for Steadfast characters, and we’ve covered the tearing down of Change characters (the most typical). But what we haven’t covered yet is the building up of justifications in a Change character.

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As with all things Dramatica, the Main Character Dynamics (Resolve, Growth, Approach and Mental Sex) can be seen as relating together in a single quad.

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Continuing what Chris and I were talking about two weeks ago, concerning the coil or the circle….
A Change character is the coil, he’s come around to a different place at the end of the story. The Steadfast character’s path is more of a circle, basically coming back to the same place they started. But [...]

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