Death changes ones nature, stops consciousness, ends progress, loses a life, is ever present, continues into the future, stops learning, understanding, or doing. It ends or prevents just about any process or presumably carries the process infinitely forward. Is there any area that a consequence of death doesn’t legitimately work for?
Unchanging???
Hmm, interesting question.
Maybe anything works, but it all depends on and must be presented in the context of the story, especially the initial inequity.
Becoming dead as a direct consequence of failing to Obtain something will look different from the excess death that’s likely to happen if everyone is forced to Be in the Empire (Star Wars 1), which would also look different from the murder that results when you fail to let go of the Past (Hamlet).
Maybe?
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That’s a fairly narrow definition of death. In Gladiator, death reunites the MC with his wife and child. Death is hardly the end of things in The Sixth Sense or Hellraiser – or the New Testament in the Bible, for that matter.
As author, you set the rules. Don’t be limited by ‘reality’. That’s why it’s called fiction.
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Got it.
Didn’t mean to limit death strictly to a consequence. I was just looking at how one bit of storytelling can cover so many different (all?) areas as a consequence.
Sometimes, though, the magic isn’t in seeing how well Dramatica explains my story but but in how much I can stretch a bit of storytelling and decide it fits where it really doesn’t because of my own misunderstanding. I kind of thought someone might say ‘no, you’re looking at death as a consequence all wrong!’ and set me straight if that was the case.
@Lakis, I’m sure you’re right that it’s best to discuss death (or any storytelling) as it relates to the Dramatica term if you want the meaning to be as clear as possible. Thanks for the reminder.