Character Functions & short stories

I’m still struggling with clarity on character functions. The pairs are:
Main character - impact character
Protagonist- antagonist
Guardian- Contagonist
Reason- emotion
sidekick- skeptic

The MC and IC can be any of the 8 archetypal characters except for the antagonist?

Remember, the MC and IC are Subjective Characters, not Objective Characters. As such, the MC and IC can be any two characters in the story at all!

As an example, “How to Train Your Dragon” has the Main Character as the Antagonist. Some stories have the Impact Character as the Antagonist (we could call it a Villain :stuck_out_tongue:). You could have, say, the Main Character be the Skeptic with an Attitude of Non-acceptance, and the Antagonist would be focused on the Potentiality of the Protagonist failing. In the end, however, the Antagonist accidentally convinces the Skeptic that there are potentialities that are good as well as bad ones, and the Skeptic switches to Acceptance, which finally helps the Protagonist overcome the Overall Story by Accepting a Permission.

See? An antagonist can definitely be the Impact Character.

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Thank-you, yes I keep overlooking that; very good clear answer. So you really have to have an MC/IC but only enough of the other objective characters needed to make the story argument.

I"m thinking short stories HAVE to have an MC/IC. What are some thoughts about short stories needing MC/IC, and protagonist and antagonist? The limited time to develop the argument among all the archetypes is difficult for me. Or do you just pick the character aspects that you need?

Remember, the Main Character and the Impact Character aren’t archetypes. They’re critical pieces of the story argument. If you want a Dramatica-approved story argument, you must have both of them, and their points-of-view need to interact in a relationship. It doesn’t matter what style of writing you’re attempting: movie, short story, rock opera, video game, whatever! If you don’t have an Overall Throughline, a Main Character Throughline, an Impact Character Throughline, and a Relationship Throughline, it can’t be a story.

As your stories get shorter, however, you have to make your Main Character and Impact Character arguments more succinct. I mean, I used this as an example elsewhere once:

“When I was in the army, I had to make some very tough choices. Our troop had captured an enemy woman, and my commanding officer wanted me to torture her for information. I knew this was wrong: she was a civilian, she was a prisoner of war, she deserved respect. But I also knew that if I disobeyed my superior officer, I could be severely punished. I struggled greatly with this problem, and the officer didn’t make it easy. But in the end, I refused to hurt her. I was punished pretty badly, but I know it was right.”

That story is less than 100 words long, but it’s a complete story. We have an Overall Throughline (Obtain information from the prisoner of war), a Main Character Throughline (the narrator’s Desire to do what is right), an Impact Character Throughline (the commanding officer’s threat of Future punishment), and a Relationship Throughline (the officer attempting to make the narrator Become willing to torture). Granted, it needs a lot more fleshing out (I don’t show how the Impact Character changes, I haven’t mentioned the Limit, I’ve skipped over most of the second and third acts), but it definitely demonstrates an argument.

Now, whether you need a protagonist and an antagonist is another story. Ideally, yes, you would. The Overall Throughline demands that you have a Goal that everyone is concerned with, and it would be helpful if you had a protagonist to pursue it. I can envision a story where we never really see the protagonist in action, though. Say, they’re a CEO in charge of completing a major bid, but we only see the action through the workers in the metaphorical trenches. Everyone is playing their part in helping this deal go through (the Reason accountant who works out the logistics, the Sidekick intern who always has a cup of coffee on hand, the Contagonist forms guy who’s always stopping work to make sure it’s being done “the right way”), but the CEO himself is just an idea without an actual presence. His perspective of Consider and Pursue is still around, but he’s not phsycially there.

Does that help enlighten you a little further? Yeah, it gets tricky when you start working with shorter media, but that’s the beauty of Dramatica: it works exactly the same no matter what kind of story you’re trying to tell.

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The latter, @LLou.

Just pick the character aspects that you need to make the (short) story argument seem well-rounded/multi-sided/suspenseful as to which “side” of the acted-out argument will “win” in the end.

It’s all about keeping us bouncing from “side” to “side,” until you finally “pin” the audience with the final argument that makes the point your story was always intended to make.

But you don’t need a ton or characters or opposing perspectives to do that — if the story is Edgar-Allen-Poe short, you can make very well do with only two… and those only briefly sketched in.

Not having read Poe lately, would you say that The Tell-Tale Heart has an MC? An IC?

My gut tells me no.

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A Main Character, maybe, since we do watch him fall apart psychologically. I’d say that’s the Main Character arc to the Overall arc of “getting away with murder.” But I agree that there really isn’t an Impact Character to give him an alternative way of thinking.

But “The Tell-tale Heart” isn’t exactly the pinnacle of short story writing. Edgar Allan Poe was a hack writer, so he just wrote to make a (rough) living. His stories are meant to shock, horrify, and disturb his readers, not really give them an engaging story of character development. Short story writing has come a long way from good old Poe. He writes fascinating stuff, but it’s really only tales, nothing more. Shoot, I read a short story once about time-travelling seagulls tearing apart the fabric of space and time, and even that had the capacity to weave a Main Character and Impact Character into it. As I said, length has absolutely nothing to do with telling a good story. If you want to write a story, if you want to pose an argument, then you need two sides. That’s just the necessity of buying into the Dramatica theory.

Regarding “The Tell-Tale Heart,” it might be a stretch, but I think one could say the ghost-heart of the murder victim is the story’s Impact Character — incessantly hounding the narrator with implied accusations until he breaks down and confesses to the investigating police officers.

Of course, in real life we would say that was but the murderer’s guilty conscience bothering him. But isn’t that often what an Impact Character has done to a Main Character? Question his choices, bring up his faults, remind him of his flaws and threaten him with exposure if he doesn’t repent and change?

No, “The Tell-Tale Heart” doesn’t offer deep characterizations or a complex plot. But it certainly makes a strong argument, that crime doesn’t pay, and that what we try to hide in the darkness will eventually be shouted from the housetops (Gospel of Luke 12:2).

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