Comparison of Archetypes between Dramatica and The Writer's Journey

Hero ≈ PROTAGONIST and (Subjective Characters)MC
Mentor ≈ GUARDIAN
Threshold Guardian ≈ CONTAGONIST
Herald ≈ NONE
Shapeshifter ≈ (Subjective Characters)IC
Shadow ≈ ANTAGONIST
Ally ≈ SIDEKICK, SKEPTIC, REASON, EMOTION
Trickster ≈ NONE

I think this contrast can be more enriched in the Dramatica’s archetypes, as well as easier to understand.

I’m going to regret this later… @crayzbrian … do you want to take this?

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Haha. We both will ;).

Alright, so first of all The Writer’s Journey is not the same thing as the Hero’s Journey. The work done by Kal Bashir identifies all the steps that the story goes through before it is story weaved and identifies a number of archetypes–And he finds new steps every day as it is a fractal model. However, Those archetypes are different than what is presented in Dramatica. But, if you want to see them properly defined, The Writer’s Journey isn’t the definitive source because they are used subjectively. (The Writer’s journey even confuses the end of act one for the Hero Journey). The orginal Hero Journey archetypes are objective. But, they are in a completely different system from Dramatica. Dramatica actually has very little to say at present about those hero journey archetypes because the archetypes or elements in Dramatica Aren’t tied to the Hero Journey system.

For example, in Star Wars, Han Solo is the shapeshifter because he waffles between the restoring forces and the prevention forces before landing on Luke’s side as a restorer.

Dramatica refers to Han as the Skeptic because Dramtica looks at the Story Goal for the elements. Each element is an approach or attitude to solving the Story Goal.

The Hero’s Journey is an attempt at defining archetypes based on the inequity and the hierarchy generated by it without regard to the Story Goal.

In How to train Your Dragon, the Hero Journey would calll the Dragon the Greater Antagonist because it is the greatest preventer of resolving the inequity. But, the Antagonist in Dramatica is Hiccup because Hiccup prevents the goal of training the next generation of Dragon hunters.

In a future version of Dramatica, I would love to reclaim the Hero Journey Archetypes for Dramatica as a way to track the Inequity. But, they would still likely get tweaked as they would need to fit quads.

As a writer, I recommend using the systems to compliment one another. They are both useful for different things. But, it is hard to use them simultaneously. You can see how they used the Hero Journey to build the world of How to Train Your Dragon 1. But, the reason it was so interesting is because of the way they did the storyform from Dramatica. How cool is it to see things from Hiccup’s pov?

You can achieve similar results to the Hero Journey by doing Melanie’s Story weaver world building approach until we are able to do the topology of Hero Journey Archetypes in Dramatica.

The good news is that Dramatica is a consistent system that will not let you down. There is so much confusion about the Hero Journey that unless you have Dramatica nailed down and are still having trouble solving a story problem, you can just avoid it and write. Most of the Hero Journey issues are just world building issues. Think of it as the structure behind the rules of the world. But, you will naturally get feedback about your story world from other writers and readers.

Mastering Dramatica has a much higher payoff than studying the Hero Journey because it is from the Author’s pov and lets you hone your message.

That wasn’t so bad was it? :wink:

If you really want to make your head spin, one of the questions I have in the way of solving the problem is “what does it mean to be a pursuer of a judgment of Good” --That could be what the Hero is instead of an MC/Protagonist combo. Is it just the MC? Do all MC’s want to resolve their personal problems? Then, why do the Protagonists usually get identified in movies like Andy in Shawshank as the Hero instead of Red the MC?

Anyway, the key to adopting the archetypes from the Hero Journey is to identify who the Hero is in Dramatica and so far I haven’t been able to settle on that. Until then, I’m focusing on Mastering Dramatica!

Back to work!

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@jhull @crayzbrian hahaha…Thanks a lot. You’ve solved one of my confusion. :smile:

This seems to be an exciting piece of news… :smile:

What really makes me “head spin” is my poor English. I’m reading it very hard with the translation software, haha…:smile:

Thanks again .