There are four throughlines that must be explored in every story for it to feel to readers or audience that the underlying issues have been fully examined and the message completely supported. Throughline 1: The Objective Story The Objective Story is the big picture – the situations and activities in which all the characters are […]
The protagonist and antagonist may not be who you think they are. For one thing, a protagonist is not necessarily the hero of a story. Structurally speaking, the protagonist is the one who shakes up the status quo – that’s the “pro” part, while the antagonist is the one who tries to stop that effort […]
The message of a story comes from context. It is context that eventually convinces Scrooge that his way of looking at the world is incorrect. Yet, before he was shown the bigger picture, his personal experience presented quite a different picture. The Influence Character in a story (the ghosts, in the case of A Christmas […]
A Dramatica student asks: In Dramatica theory, are all Objective Characters be-ers and all Subjective Characters do-ers? My reply: No, there is no assignment of be-er or do-er to objective characters at all. Objective Characters, such as the archetypes, are all defined by their functions only, when seen in terms of structure. Naturally, in storytelling, […]
All meaning comes from perspective – putting things in context. And perspective is created by the combination of what you are looking at and where you are looking from. Change the object of your intention and perspective is altered. Shift your point of view and perspective shifts as well. The Dramatica Story Structure Chart is […]
Here’s an unusual situation where both Chris and myself independently answered the same question from a writer. Comparing our two replies is both interesting and also sheds light on two different ways of looking at the same central story structure concept. A writer asks, regarding the original Star Wars movie (Episode IV): In your book, […]
This extensive free online program is based on a one-day seminar developed by Melanie Anne Phillips, co-creator of the Dramatica Theory of Narrative Structure, creator of StoryWeaver story development software, and founder of the Storymind Foundation: an effort to promote understanding and application of narrative structure in the real world. Under Construction – Links […]
The difference between a tale and a story is that a tale is just a linear step by step progression through plot events and character growth in which the next step can be anything at all, as long it makes logical sense, within the logic of the tale’s “universe that you establish as an author. […]
Today’s story structure topic: “Main Character Resolve” Every main character needs to grow over the course of a story, but there are two ways to do that: They can grow to the point that they change (like Scrooge) They can grow in their resolve (like Clarice Starling) In the first example, Scrooge is set in […]
Protagonist tries to achieve the goal. Antagonist tries to stop him. That’s the simple answer, and it is true enough. But there is a lot more to know about these two essential characters, and the more you learn, the more powerful and effective your Protagonists and Antagonists will be. To begin with, a Protagonist is […]
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