Symptom, Response and Crucial Elements

questions
#1

Hello All,

First, thank you to everyone that has replied to posts and posted content. The information is helpful to understanding Dramatica’s concepts.

My question concerns the OS,MC,MC/IC Symptom (Support) and Response (Oppose) in my story, which are all the same. MC Crucial = Support and IC Crucial = Oppose are also the same.

Story configuration:

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Should the Main Character be assigned the Support Element and the Impact Character assigned the Oppose Element?

If the Main Character were also the Protagonist this puts both the Support and Pursuit elements in the same Player, which seems odd.

Plus, since the Main Character’s “Response” is Oppose wouldn’t the MC be assigned that Element?

While my Story Problem is Help it is the lack of Help that is problem. This “flipping” of the problem seems to make the Symptom and Response trickier to model because the Main Character is only “opposed” to the root cause of the story problem, not the problem that the characters are facing.

I am interested to hear thoughts about this.

~eric

#2

Some links for consideration:
http://dramatica.com/questions/can-you-explain-the-crucial-element-further



http://forums.screenplay.com/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=19

Also an important bit of information: The crucial element is not all that crucial.
It is ultimately what ties the subjective throughlines to the objective throughline/s, but that usually happens by itself if you use the other story points.

Another important bit of information:Google is your friend. You’re probably not the first person to ask any question you can think of.

#3

A couple things that might help:

  1. The Main Character’s Response of Oppose is only in regards to their own personal problems, and will likely seem very different to the Overall Story’s Response of Oppose. For example, your MC’s father might be cheating on her mother, so she sees her mother’s continued support of him as a problem (Symptom:Support). And she responds by speaking out (Oppose) against her father in front of the whole family. Meanwhile, in the overall story, she might respond by opposing a war, or opposing abortion, or something.
    Note that the Build Characters screen elements are objective only, they’re only in the context of the Overall Story. So no, you wouldn’t assign Oppose to the Main Character in this case.

  2. I think it’s okay to have a Protagonist who also Supports something or someone. They could pursue the Obtaining story goal (e.g. winning a law case), and also support someone else who is concerned with some other form of Obtaining (getting a divorce).

As far as the “root cause of the story problem”, I think it would be best to forget about that. It might exist, but would be super hard to define, especially before you have your story planned out really well. Better to just worry about each throughline’s source of trouble individually.

Does that help?

#4

@mlucas Ah! Yes, the MC is definitely opposed to the IC (even though the IC is a love interest) because of a philosophical differences regarding the OS Goal. Thus the IC see’s the MC’s Support of the OS Goal as a problem and, of course, the MC is Opposed to that.

That helps a lot, thanks.

Thanks @bobRaskoph for the links, they are helpful. And yes, Google has been my friend!

~eric