These are just musings I’ve considered over the past several days as I’ve participated and reviewed the postings in the Story Assembly thread. I realize character is a vital part of story, but I’m coming to the conclusion as I work on my own novel the Overall Story and its components are the most neglected and yet most important part of story. Now, before anyone objects to my conclusion, let me say this: without a viable context represented by the overall story, the activities of the characters lack the stability and the foundation they need to provide a satisfying story. I guess I’ve had this perspective solidified while reading Mitchell’s The Bone Clocks, which has a weighty context in which the characters all interact, some directly and others indirectly. While I think it’s fine to start off with a character or a title or a scene or two, as soon as you can, spend some quality time (maybe even the first few months or more) establishing the world in which these people are inhabiting. Like the example in the Dramatica theory book of the general overseeing the battle in which the main character is our focus, make sure that the battle is fleshed out, that its raison d’etre is clearly established. In that way, the characters will have solid ground on which to stand… Okay, now you may all slash away.
I think I understand this, but would you happen to have an example or two to illustrate?
There’s nothing to slash away, but a person who has thrived on the OS in their own writing would be able to write the complementary paragraph espousing the exact opposite view and the importance of the character.
It is all important.
A couple of illustrations… The ones that come to my mind are Middle-Earth of Tolkien. The reason why in many ways those stories have endured is because of the foundation provided by the overall story. We have all the history that has gone before, the gods, the battles, most of which is only hinted at, as it would be in our daily life. We don’t sit around discussing how elevators work, but we might tell our significant other about an encounter we had with someone in an elevator. Another example, less on the fantastic side, would be something like the spy novels of John le Carre. While we get hints about the politics, the spycraft, the intrigues that go on, all of that is like a clock ticking along, complex and taken for granted by everyone except maybe the watch-maker. Those are the elements of the overall story, “the general looking over the battlefield” that I talked about… But also look at my reply to Mike. He’s right, too. 
And of course, you’re right, Mike. If there wasn’t the influence character’s perspective, the story would be more of a tale. No relationship throughline and the story would lack a heart. No main character and you’d probably just have an action story (like Transformers) or a slasher movie maybe (most of which have only a lightly drawn main character). My issue lately is that there’s such an emphasis on creating good characters that the need for a solid context to place them in makes it so I struggle with understanding what the characters needs and wants might be. What is a soldier without a battle? A detective without a crime? It’s that balance I’m looking for, to understand why all those parts are so essential. If it weren’t for Dramatica, I wouldn’t be having these questions or moving toward a better understanding of how to get my story to work the way it should.
Yeah, it’s rough. Most writers I know have this struggle – they bias to one side or the other; when they write they rely on that side and soon they can’t do the other. Or they don’t know how to do both at the same time. So I hope you’re not beating yourself up for becoming aware that there is something you need to work on. It’s not easy, but that shouldn’t get you down.
I think as a writer I need to understand that writing a novel takes more time than I think it does (like remodeling a house, every job is going to take at least 2 to 5 times as long as I think). I only see the final published novels out there, but I don’t see all the work it takes to revise and revise and revise. And even then, I just have to decide a novel is ready enough (I don’t think I’ll ever be fully satisfied when a story is done). The NaNoWriMo mentality gets in the way. Yes, I can write 50 thousand words in a month, but to finish a novel, I can’t really put a time limit on it. A year? A decade? My whole life? Who knows? But I believe the greatest chance to balance all the components that make a competent novel comes from analyzing a novel in context with the Dramatica theory. I keep lurching along in my understanding, but each lurch provides new revelations that help to spur me forward. This time it was Overall Story. Next time, who knows?
Agreed. Balance is good. I guess it all comes down to how well the different pieces harmonize the central theme.
To be perfectly honest though, and this might be unrelated, but my memory of reading Tolkien was not particularly a fond one for the very reason that there was too much exposition that seemed to cloud the central story. I remember skipping over the songs after a while as I felt Tolkien was mostly indulging in his own imagination and not carrying me forward.
Then again, I’ve always been an impatient reader. Proust is out of the question. 8^/
Didn’t somebody say The Lord of the Rings was mainly a lot of walking and eating? And I would agree: the mythology definitely is in the forefront of that particular story. Overall Story is almost the true main character of the trilogy, I think. Kind of like how New York City is this incredible presence in Helprin’s Winter’s Tale. It would be interesting to map out the percentage attributed to the different throughlines in the LOTRs. How much is made up of all that mythology, songs, stories, and just worldbuilding stuff? Not me, of course.
Yeah, I think I’ll skip that assignment too.
I thought it was all walking and hiding, especially The Fellowship of the Ring.
Worldbuilding is not OS. A lot of it is fluff. It may help you to understand some aspect of the OS, but I would never call LOTR taut. For instance, the Tom Bombadil character was completely removed from the film because his appearances are completely irrelevant to the story and the characters. Tolkien wrote it in to bridge the lighthearted tone of The Hobbit with this darker story, but it’s rather clumsily done.
I’m pretty sure even Ralph Bakshi left him out of his animated version.
I know what you mean by this, but (and this is my personal request)… I like protecting the terms of Dramatica, and saying this violates a very specific definition. We Dramaticatists have a hard enough time convincing people that the Protagonist and the Main Character are not the same, are not a hero, are not even the same person sometimes. I worry that we blur our strong objectivity when we aren’t persnickety. (Which sucks, because enjoying the city as the Main Character… it’s lovely sometimes.)
Understood… And it’s hard when you’re relatively new to all this and are trying to work your way through it all. It is daunting at times. But then again, those things worth having usually require work to obtain them.