Here’s a video I recorded a few years ago, based on one of my more popular articles about creative writing and story structure.
What makes a character “great?” Probably not what you think…
Use these easy techniques to ensure your characters ares both structurally sound and passionately compelling…
At the core of a story’s message is a very simple issue – whether the author is telling us it is better to be like the main character or not. This is usually thought of as the moral of the story and is proven to the readers or audience by how the main character fares after making a choice or taking a leap of faith at the climax.
For characters like Scrooge in A Christmas Carol, the message is that it is better to change one’s attitude toward others and adopt a new way of thinking. If you do, things will work out better. But for other characters, such as in Field of Dreams or Rocky, the message is to stick by your beliefs because that’s the only way to solve your problems.
Sometimes change is good, as with Scrooge. But imagine if Ray had given up on building the ball field or Rocky Balboa had determined there was no way to win and he shouldn’t continue to try.
Stories can be written about characters who change or about characters who don’t. That’s the first part of the message. The second part is what happens to the character in the end as a result of their choice to change or not.
This results in four possibilities:
Each of the four combinations provides a different kind of message about changing or sticking to your beliefs. So far, so good. But now you need to get that message across to your readers or audience.
The first part of conveying your message is to be clear about the nature of the human quality or thought pattern that your moral is about. That aspect of your main character that defines him, just as Scrooge’s lack of concern for his fellow man is the issue at the heart of him. How you do this can be subtle or straight out, but by the time the moment of choice is upon your main character, your audience or reader needs to absolutely and with total clarity know what that issue is or your message will be unclear.
The second part of conveying your message is to show that as a result of his or her choice, your main character is better off or worse off than they were. This element of your message has two components:
For example, suppose you have a story in which a character changes his beliefs, achieves the goal, and is elated. That’s fine, and the message is that whatever his issue was, it was good he changed his point of view. But change is not always good, so in another story a character might change his beliefs, still achieve the goal, but be miserable in the end because he hadn’t resolved his anguish or he had to take on an emotional burden to accomplish his quest. For example, in Avengers: Infinity War, the villain Thanos has to kill the person he loves the most to accomplish his goal, and this leaves him logistically satisfied yet emotionally devastated.
On the opposite side, a character might remain steadfast in his beliefs, fail in the goal but find personal salvation or true happiness in the end. Or a character might remain steadfast, succeed in the goal but be left personally raw. An example of this last combination can be seen in Silence of the Lambs in which Clarice Starling is successful in saving the senator’s daughter, but could not let go of the screaming lambs in her memory, as pointed out in the end by Hannibal Lecter (“Tell me, Clarice,” are the lambs still screaming?”) This is why the ending music over her graduation ceremony is so somber – she achieved the goal but could not let go of her angst.
And, of course, you can have the quintessential tragedy in which a change or a steadfast character fails and the goal and is miserable in the end, such as in Hamelt, or the penultimate feel good story in which a change or steadfast character both succeeds in the goal and find (or holds onto) great happiness, true love, etc., as in the original Star Wars movie (Episode IV)
The point here is that change, in and of itself, is neither good nor bad until you see the results of that change. And also, a character does not have to change to grow, but can grow in his or her resolve.
And finally, the ramifications don’t have to be cut and dried: all good or all bad. Rather, by treating the goal and the emotional outcome separately, you have the opportunity to temper your message with bitter sweet and sweet bitter endings as well, thereby creating a more complex message for your readers or viewers.
Also from the author of this article…
Think of the large structural elements in a story as tectonic plates in geology that push against each other driven by an underlying force. In geology that force is generated by currents in the mantle. In stories, that force is created by the wound-up justifications of the main character that puts him or her in conflict with their world at the point the story begins.
Sometimes, in geology, this force gradually raises or lowers land in two adjacent plates. Other times it builds up pressure until things snap all at once in an earthquake. So too in story psychology, people are sometimes slowly changed by the gradual application of pressure as the main character’s justifications gradually unwind through experience. Other times the pressure applied structure just builds up until the character snaps in Leap Of Faith – that single “moment of truth” at the climax in which a character must decide either to change his ways (or outlook) or stick by his guns believing his current approach is stronger than the pressure bought to bear against him, believing he just has to outlast the forces against him to ultimately triumph.
All of these variations result in four basic kinds of growth arcs for your main character: A gradual change over time, a gradual strengthening of his resolve, an abrupt change in a leap of faith at the climax, an abrupt decision not to change.
Learn more at Storymind.com
In narrative structure, there are two forces that converge to create a sense of rising tension that culminates at the climax: the quest to achieve a goal and the increasing pressure to change a deeply held conviction. Each of these forces informs the other so that, ultimately, the choice to change one’s nature or remain steadfast in one’s views and potential success in achieving the goal depend upon one another. In some stories, success depends upon the personal choice. In other stories, one’s nature is determined by success or failure. But in all cases, the interrelationship between the outcome of the plot and the culmination of the main character’s growth, builds the potential that drives the story forward to its conclusion.
The Dramatica Table of Story Elements is really a model of the mind. Twisting and turning it represents the kinds of stress (and experience) we encounter in everyday life. Sometimes things get wound up as tight as they can – so tight they get snarled and can’t loosen up on their own. And this is where a story always starts. Anything before that point is backstory – how things got wound up in the first place. Anything after that point is story, which is about how external events work to sever the Gordian Knot in one’s thinking that can’t be untied by oneself.
How is dramatic potential created? The Dramatica chart (below) organizes all the categories of things we think about. Notice that the chart is nested, like wheels within wheels. That’s the way our minds work – we think in many levels at once, not in a single straight line. And if we are to make a solid story structure with no holes, we have to make sure all ways of thinking about the story’s central problem or issues are covered.
We all have certain fundamental broad-stroke mental traits such as Reason, Initiative, and Skepticism. As individuals, we use the full spectrum of these tools to try and solve our problems. But when we get together in groups, we quickly self-organize so that one person emerges as the Voice of Reason for the group, another as the Goal-Oriented Leader, and another as the Resident Skeptic.
We specialize in this manner because when trying to solve a group problem or advance a group agenda, we are far more productive together is we each focus on just one of these fundamental tools rather than being a collection of general practitioners all trying to do all the jobs. In this manner, the group gets far greater thought, depth, and action in each area, and then we come together to share with the group what we have found in our area – to say, “this is what it looks like from here.”
In short, the group becomes a model of the individual mind, since that is exactly what we do as individuals, but now each of our attributes has become an archetypal role in a group narrative.
And that is where archetypes really come from – not the collective unconscious per se, nor from myth nor dreams, but simply from the attributes that are common to us all.
So in a sense, the narrative of an individual, and the narrative of a group are the same system at work at two different fractal dimensions.
And each of these has identical structural elements and dynamics.
And yet, the purposes of the group, though shared by each individual in the group, may sometimes come into conflict with a given member’s individual purposes. In fact, all the conflict and tension that is generated in stories and in life come from the dissonance between the needs of the individual and the needs of the group.
The Dramatica model presents this elegantly. The structural model you see can be the mind of one person or the collective mind of a group. It is the same structure, interpreted in two different ways.
When we look at the four levels of the structure as if it were a group mind, we see (from the bottom up) motivations, evaluations, methods, and purposes. When we look at the same four levels as a group mind we see Characters, Theme, Plot and Genre.
The Dramatica twists and turns like a Rubik’s cube, but not arbitrarily. Rather, there are two “justification wind-ups” – essentially two sets of dynamics that torque the structure, twisting it into a position that best fits that mind to its environment. One of these is the Main Character wind-up – representing the compromises he or she has had to make in their outlook to get by in the world and the other is the Objective Story wind-up, which represents the compromises a group mind has had to make to survive. In fact, it is these compromises that determine personality – all the attractions and repulsions based on our unbalanced minds.
And so, to truly understand one’s personal narrative, one must become aware of how the naturally balanced and neutral mind that exist only conceptually differs from the dynamic tensions that are self-perpetuating within ourselves.
In real life we have hundreds of narratives in which we participate, sometimes as the main character and sometimes as one of the archetypes in a larger group mind.
In the end, as complex as this view of the mind is, it all boils down to the fact that once you learn about the equations that generate Dramatica’s quads and the dynamic algorithms that drive the justification wind-ups, you lose the ability to lie to yourself. You can still choose to lie to others, of course, and you can still do terrible things to others, but you will no longer be able to see it as good in your own mind.
To know Dramatica at the core of its representation of human psychology is see the real reasons for your actions and attitudes, whether you want to or not. And I suppose that is the most accurate form of self-knowledge we are allowed in this world.
The compilation video below (used in my class on story structure and complied by Chris Huntley) really illustrates the philosophical conflict between the Main Character and the Influence Character, which is the heart of your story’s message.
Once you have viewed the video, note that one says “we’re just alike” and the other says, “we’re nothing alike.” How can they be so blind to the other character’s point of view? Because it is like one saying, “we’re alike because we are both fruit” and the other saying, “we’re nothing alike because you are an apple and I am an orange.”
You see, they are BOTH right, depending on the context. So the real philosophical argument is actually over which of the two contexts is the most truthful or the best way of looking at their relationship and by extension of looking at life. THAT is the theme of the whole story, and the message is which way you, the author, “proves” is best.
Narrative is not an artificial construct imposed on fiction nor on the real world, but it is a description of the ways of the mind beneath the level of subject matter. In a sense, narrative describes the operating system of the mind before a program is loaded.
As an example, consider that we all possess certain fundamental human qualities such as a sense of Reason, Conscience, and Skepticism to name a few. When faced with problems or inequities in our own lives, we bring all of these qualities to bear in order to seek a solution to the problem and/or see balance to an inequity.
When we come together in groups around a issue of common interest or a common purpose, we quickly self-organize into specialties so that one of use becomes the Voice of Reason for the group, while another becomes the Conscience of the group and yet another emerges at the Resident Skeptic, for example.
This occurs because the group purpose is best served when one person spends all his or her time delving deeply into the issue from the viewpoint of Reason while another focuses solely on examining the issue with Skepticism. Then, we come together to report our findings. In this way, the group sees far deeper into the issue that if we all worked as we do on our own problems, as General Practitioners, each trying to do all the same jobs everyone else is doing.
Something wonderful happened when storytellers sought to understand what goes on in our own hearts and minds and what goes on with our collective interactions. Over hundreds of generations, storytellers (through trial and error) were able to document the patterns of group thought and individual thought and embed them in the conventions of story structure.
Narrative then, is not a linear path of logic as in Joseph Campbell’s “Hero’s Journey,” but it is fractal in nature. The group mind is identical in components and operation to that of the individual mind, just one fractal dimension larger than that of the individual.
This is why story structure was not previously decipherable – you can’t explain a nonlinear system with a linear paradigm.
The archetypes in stories are derived from these roles we adopt in the group mind which in turn represent our own internal qualities. And so, the group mind provides a visible working model of the mind, just as in my youth the Visible Man model showed our internal organs beneath a transparent plastic “Skin.”
Archetypes, then, represent our fundamental qualities and the group mind is an external fractal projection of the operating system of our own internal minds. The group mind (we call it the Story Mind, hence the name of my web site) is not Jung’s collective unconscious, though it is similar in that it the systemic functioning of our minds that we all share in identically as human beings. And archetypes are not mythological, as in Campbell, but are personifications of our internal attributes as expressed through the avatar roles we adopt when we organize as specialists within a group.
In closing, suffice it to say that through narrative, we are able to look into the structure and dynamics of the group mind and see the structure and dynamics within ourselves. And, as a result, narrative holds the key to understanding why we think and feel as we do, and provides the methods and techniques that can solve both our external problems and internal inequities.
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