How do you illustrate Character Elements?

questions
#1

Hi.

I’ve been watching some some of the Story Embroidery videos, they’re great, I think I finally understand how to go from the abstract concepts to illustrations.

However, I’m still a little clueless regarding the Character Elements and I would like to know other people’s opinion on how you incorporate them to your screenplays, not only how you illustrate them but when and how you incorporate them to the plot and to the illustrations.

Do you use them as reference when developing the Story Points illustrations?
Do you incorporate them later, once you have completed all your Story Points illustrations?
Which Character Elements reports do you use and how?
Do you illustrate each one of the 64 Elements only one or several times?

Assuming I follow a process similar to the one on the Story Embroidery videos, is there a similar process I should follow to add the Character Elements to my story?

Thanks!

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#2

Bear in mind, I’m a chronic procrastinator, meaning I haven’t actually done any of this in any actual capacity. But the way I see it, the way you illustrate the story is all up to you. You do eventually need all 64 Elements, but one thing I recommended in another of my posts was to start planning out the story and see where it’s not firing on all cylinders.

Like, maybe as you sketch all your characters out, you can’t find a good character to represent Support. None of your characters can really pick it up without feeling awkward, so you look at your story. Huh. There’s this scene, right here, where the Main Character is agonizing over the pain he has to bear; that’d be a perfect time for someone to Support him. What about a servant girl? She’d be nothing more than a bit part, but she’d come in to bring him some food, see him upset, and offer to listen to his plight. When he explains how he feels, she assures him that he is strong, but that doesn’t mean he has to struggle alone. And those warm words of comfort help restore his courage, and he sallies forth the next morning a stronger man. Now, of course I came up with that example exactly so I could demonstrate how to do it, but hopefully, when you look at your story, you can see it, too.

Don’t misunderstand me, though. This isn’t like Save the Cat or the monomyth where it’s gotta be exactly how it’s described in the book. The beauty of Dramatica as opposed to those other paradigms is that you can cast these Elements however you want. StC’s Fun & Games is kinda like Feeling, but in a specific way. What if I don’t want my characters to have a light-hearted moment of whimsical pleasure? Dramatica doesn’t have a problem with that; one ideation of Feeling isn’t any better or worse than any other. And the monomyth has a Guardian, but again, the Guardian has to have a specific role and meet certain standards. What if I want my character to ignore the advice of the (actually really annoying) Guardian and decide to seek help from the Contagonist instead? Dramatica says go for it; that kind of Guardian is just as Guardian-y as Joseph Campbell’s.

In the end, that’s all I or anybody else here can advise. Have all the Elements, and have them interact somehow. Hopefully, it’ll all slip together as you write.

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#3

Thanks for the reply, @actingpower.

I like how Dramatica is much more encompassing than other paradigms. In fact, I think a Save the Cat type story or a Hero’s Journey could be a very specific group of storyforms in Dramatica.

Nice example of how a supporting character could be used to illustrate an Element. So basically it’s kind of a checklist to see what parts would be missing?

Just as there are film analysis and story embroidery/assembly videos and threads here I think it would be useful to have analysis and story embroidery/assembly exercises focusing on the 64 elements. Would someone be interested in starting such an analysis? Maybe for a film whose storyform has already been analyzed, like Birdman.

P.S. I’ve been procrastinating my reply for a couple of days :smiley:

#4

Perhaps. Really, the difference is in the intent. The goal of most story theories is to explain what the audience sees; Dramatica’s goal is to create a structure in the background for what the author sees.

I didn’t want to give off the impression that it was a checklist (hence my comparison to Campbell and the Cat). It… is, I guess, in that you’re supposed to have all 64, but it’s not as restrictive as the word “checklist” implies. It should feel natural, like the story’s missing something without it, rather than trying to squeeze something in where it doesn’t belong. When one character proposes to Evaluate something, it’s only natural to have a character recommend Re-evaluation in response. When one character tries to gauge progress through Unproven, another character will stand by Proven in contrast. That’s just common sense.

It’s difficult to analyze stories that deeply because most of the characters exhibit multiple traits, and they can be difficult to disentangle, especially considering some but not all characters stick to Archetypes. 64 is also an extremely daunting number, meaning it’d take a lot of work to find all of them. Really, I think it’s best to think either in effective presence or egregious absence. e.g. “I love how X movie depicts Y character as pursuing Equity!” or “It seems like story A doesn’t get much Conscience to balance out the Temptation from character B.”

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