John Truby, in his book, discusses an interesting character type, not discussed in dramatica, called fake-opponent ally and Fake-ally opponent. In case of a fake-opponent ally, it is basically a character who audience think is an opponent but is actually an ally (Like snape in harry potter universe) ; in case of fake-ally opponent, it is a character who we think is an ally but is actually an opponent (Ophelia in Hamlet). In dramatica, how can we create such a character in relation either to the main character (subjectively) or the Protagonist (objectively)
Hi @kmkvarma as a fellow Truby expert, the Fake ally opponent is the Contagonist here in Dramatica. The fake ally opponent isnāt exactly an archetype but just another complex character in Dramatica. Here youāll find that characters made with the theory are 4D. Having motivations, purposes, methodologies and measures of evaluation. Iāve studied some of the other paradigms and trust me there are lacking when compared with Dramatica. Even Truby.
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Iām a Truby expert too. I donāt think itās lacking, I think itās a different take on the same material. Heās great on genre, and the accordion structure is pretty sophisticated. What Dramatica gives you a is a complete underlying theoretical model, which Truby doesnāt pretend to do. Truby is more like the latter Wittengenstein*: he gives you a series of very effective methods and therapies, a professional entertainment professionalās understanding of genre, and a useful accordion structure.
*snortle
Truby is by no means a hack. Heās a master at what he does. But there are a few concepts that he muddles over, and you can tell heās using some sort of guru awareness to get out of a corner. His methods are very solid but not as satisfying to me as they used to.
Dramatica is working at atomic level. Truby at molecular. Save the cat at the level of the elements table. Like that. Not a perfect analogy, but you get the idea. The algorithms and the software allow Dramatica to ādisassembleā to the level that it does and provide flexibility and usability. Truby āpre-assemblesā into forms a writer, or a newbie writer, can easily recognize without the technical knowledge Dramatica requires you to develop, or the special vocabulary. As Melanie Anne says, itās a question of how far down you want to go.
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Since everything in Dramatica is from the Authorās point of view, the āfakeā part of a āfake opponentā or āfake allyā character is not directly represented in Dramatica. However, the motivation for the character to pretend to be an opponent (or pretend to be an ally) probably involves some sort of conflict, so that part would definitely be important to Dramatica.
The conflict behind such a pretense could be represented by any number of story points, depending on the story and its storyform. It might be a Story Prerequisites of Playing a Role, for example, or an IC Issue of Falsehood, or indeed as @Khodu suggests, the Contagonist character elements of Temptation and Hinder playing out in the overall story. These are just some of examples of the literally thousands of possibilities though.
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Truby has a very deep appreciation of how the audience could feel. So you can combine the two with certain ideas that fit. But I find that the more I use dramatica, the clearer things Truby says are and then some. For example he says the Self revelation may happen in the character and is the single most important step for the characters growth. Which is our typical Change character. The leap of faith or reflection moment where the start/stop part comes in. Then Truby now says a much more advanced form is when the self revelation isnāt seen when the character keeps going for the goal. He says the character may not have that moment but the audience does. Seems to me like a Steadfast character. But you see he focuses on audience appreciation of meaning not how an author should see it. So like I said earlier, pick what works for the work.
This is exactly what I mean, that Truby pre-assembles some of the atomic bits. No question in my mind itās a very good thing to know about the Fake Opponent Ally because itās a common character in Hollywood. Dramatica reminds me of Smalltalk: everything is an object, even when maybe it makes more sense from a users point of view if the thing were a primitive. Dramatica gives you radical low level ability to assemble, and an algorithm that helps. Two fascimunating approaches.
Interesting project for someone: take the some of the Truby stuff and ātranslate itā to Dramatica, even if its only a single case and there are a hundred gazillion context/type/element variations in Dramatica .
Doesnāt Dramatica also deal in Reaction theory? Taking the audience into account? Iām still a newbie so (Scooby voice) I ronāt roh.
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There is a lot of misconceptions about the Hero Journey floating around. But, this archetype is a combination of the loyal ally and the shapeshifter from that system. You can have them together in one player or not and they are definied by which team they play for. So, you can have them restoring equity or preventing thatāit depends on where their loyalty lies. The shape-shiting element depends on which side they pick in the end. It seems like Truby does not acknowledge that a Shape-shifter like Han Solo plays for niether of the two mentioned sides and shifts to the restoring force in the end. Remember that, most of the attempts to use the Hero Journey in Hollywood are audience appreciations when the Hero Journey is actually an objective perspective that is orthogonal to Dramatica in some regard and then subjective in other regards.
Dramatica doesnāt make either of these decisions. But, it does respect them. Think of these choices as world building for Dramatica. Who is on what team and why. Then how does each player emody an element.
Dramatica does. In fact Dramatica genres are just that! If you know how to fiddle with the genres on the scale Melanie teaches about, you can fiddle with audience emotions and reactions the way you like. Dramatica is just so complete. Truby gives you his wealth of experience and its still subjective. But Dramatica helps you customize the audienceās experience to your taste.
Sort of, but no.
I understand the instinct to say this, but a key understanding is missing and itās leading you astray.
The Contagonist is a set of characteristics and has a structural, objective purpose.
The fake-ally, fake-opponent, shape-shifter is a storytelling device, and is subjective.
They donāt operate on the same playing fields, and that needs to be taken into account when comparing them.
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Could they be structural in any instance? Psychology domain contains the dynamic pair of Responsibility/Commitment. I could see the fake ally/enemy scenario emerging from those issues in an objective character.
A very astute point. Thank you for teaching us. Thatās great.
MAN I am glad this forum exists. At this point, I feel like I am not even sure how to ask the right questionsā¦but give it time 
Iām not sure I understand your question.
Mike, I think @SeanLester was asking about this:
I think he meant, can the manipulation involved in these storytelling devices sometimes be part of the structure, for example when the OS Domain is Psychology. I certainly think it can ā there are probably thousands of different ways that such a character might be tied to the structural appreciations. While in other cases it might not be tied to structure at all.
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I have two answers to this.
The first is that the beauty of all well-told stories is that they emerge as a whole ā so the story-telling and the meaning seem to be intertwined. That in certain ways is why we refer to things as āone storyā ā it seems like one thing. So, sure, any objective aspect of the meaning is tied to some subjective story-telling construct.
The second answer is, no. Letās just say that Snape embodies āHelpā in the Harry Potter series. When he is presented as trying to kill Potter by knocking him off his broom at a Quiddich match, and then is later revealed to have been helping him all along (by holding at bay the thing that was actually trying to kill him) ā there is in this instance a reversal. Heās bad, whoops no, heās good!
But that is entirely subjective. In fact, objectively he was helping the entire time. Our perspective as a reader is not relevant to this: JK Rowling knew he was helping.
Let me try to look at a specific example: Four Weddings and a Funeral
(I havenāt seen this movie in a while, so apologies if I screw this up.)
Charles is in love with Carrie. (Hugh Grant and Andie MacDowell.) She is potentially called a false-ally: they sleep together, she leaves; next time around sheās with Hamish, and then after that she shows up to scuttle Charlesās wedding after heās decided to bite the bullet.
In terms of the storyform, she certainly forces Charles to think about Commitment. And she forces Charles to think about Choice: her Issue as the IC. So she embodies these objective things. Subjectively, the author makes us think of these things by having Carrie show up directly before Charlesās wedding, when Choice is the last thing he wants, and the stakes are insanely high.
Likewise, the IC Problem is Oppose. But we only know this because she shows up in opposition to his wedding. The key subjective story-telling thing here is that the writer puts her at the wedding. A poor story-telling choice would have been to have her call Charles a couple of months earlier and say, āHamish and I didnāt work out.ā Notice, though, that still would have been oppose. He was engaged at that point, and here is a major hurdle.
The blending of the objective (Oppose) and the subjective (at the wedding) is what allows the movie to have several awesome moments: Charles swears over and over as the priest walks in, and then in the chapel, Charlesās deaf brother makes him translate out loud as he asks, āDo you love someone else?ā and Charles says, āI do,ā which is an amazing payoff to a throw-away line earlier (āWhenever anyone asks you a question, just say āI do.āā)
None of those scenes are forced by the storyform or the OS of Psychology. Which is why I say ānoā is the truer answer to your question. However, I also think that the first answer is the better answer, because if youāre going to give one of your characters an objective trait, then use the hell out of it.
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So awesome. Thanks for the clarification on the subjective and objective perspectives. Need to be more careful going forward. Especially with storytelling tricks. Just Leveled up. 1000EXP.
But that is entirely subjective. In fact, objectively he was helping the entire time.
That makes a lot of sense ā as Dramatica deals with the objective view of events as they are, not the subjective view as we present them or observe them.
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Thanks Mike. Not being familiar with Truby, I misunderstood what a fake-ally opponent etc. actually was ā¦ I thought the fake-ally character was purposely trying to trick the protagonist character, within the story. But I see now from your examples (and re-reading the initial post) that itās the author tricking the reader ā definitely a storytelling device.
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