Intuitive character muscles

writing
#1

I hope Mike (@MWollaeger) doesn’t mind me quoting an awesome old post of from the Eating Worms thread.
(Mike, rather than PM you I thought this might help others in the future.)

I know I can be a linear thinker – I have a Physics degree and my job is a Software Developer. And all my writing muscles are weak, having atrophied over the last 12 years since I mostly abandoned writing when I first had kids.

Anyway, my question is whether the various Character exercises in Dramatica for Screenwriters might be helping me build my intuitive character muscles as Mike puts it. Basically, in that book Armando has you answer certain questions about each of your characters and also write sample scenes to help determine character elements. For example a “character tells the bartender his goals” scene to help you determine Purpose elements.

It feels like those exercises are working for me … they certainly have worked a lot better than other things I’ve tried before discovering Dramatica. I can stare at the Build Characters screen and say, “geez I having no F-ing idea what Purpose element fits Sister Margaret”. Then I write a sample scene without thinking about Dramatica at all. When it’s done I start pulling up the element definitions and hit myself on the head, “Ha! She is totally Perception!”. And then I feel like Armando tricked me, because the fact I assigned Perception to her hardly seems to matter at all; what matters is that I now have a much better feeling for this character than I did before.

Does it sound like I’m on the right track or are there other things I should be doing to prevent the story-logic-muscles from increasing their advantage over the intuitive-character-muscles?

P.S. Not just asking Mike – anyone please feel free to comment. Thanks!

#2

Hey @mlucas, I’m going to give sort of a fuzzy answer here, because the truth is that I can’t know what is going to work for you because we’ve never interacted, and I’ve never read your work, and vitally, I don’t know what you mean by “I now have a much better feeling for this character than I did before.”

Intuitive character building is diametrically opposed from Dramatica in that Dramatica is an outside-in kind of approach, and intuitive work is an inside-out kind of approach.

In other words, when you build something from the outside, you ask questions like, “So, I know the thief is going to rob this bank… why does he need the cash? Why this bank and not the bank across the street? What is the security system like?”

And when you build something from the inside, you daydream until you find a character you think is interesting and then you follow them around in your daydream and suddenly you see yourself watching a guy robbing a bank to get money to pay for his wife’s cancer treatment.

One is you-driven, one is muse-driven.

I know people who write 100% one way or the other. They all produce screenplays. They are universally bad. One is all plot, no heart. One is meandering moments that feel like they should be meaningful, but I can’t figure out what the meaning is. You need to do both to make a good story.

So what ends up happening is people find their way into writing both ways. Some people make a rigid plot and fill it with emotion. Some find characters and then force them into a plot.

What it sounds like you are doing with Armando’s exercises is having him provide a plot or jumping off point, and then you are following the muse. This can totally work. But it can also feel like it’s working and not actually be working, because linear thinkers tend to misjudge how intuitively they are writing (and vice versa). I’m not going to recommend not doing what you are doing, but I think it’s always smart to find a 100%-muse approach to try out.

2 Likes
#3

Thanks Mike. That helps a lot!

I think Armando’s exercises are a way for me to go from 100% “me-driven” to around 75% me, 25% muse. Sometimes if I’m lucky they might be more muse-driven if they touch on a scene that I’ve already daydreamed for that character. Which is useful, as it allows me to quantify and record aspects of the character that came intuitively.

I guess the 100% muse-driven stuff I do would be keeping the notebook by my bed and scribbling down the ideas that come to me in the middle of the night. Also, I often come up with great ideas when I’m running so I always take a small notebook in my shorts pocket, or my iPhone that I can dictate into. Running shuts off my inner critic, but it also shuts off my ability to remember stuff, so the ideas need to be written down!

And now that you mention it, whenever I focus more on story structure (not just Dramatica, I was looking at other paradigms before finding Dram) those nighttime ideas don’t come as furiously! Something to be aware of for sure.

Thanks again.

#4

I think you are right about when ideas hit you… that kind of inspiration seems (to me, anyway) more muse-driven than other things. But there is more to it than that. What you are talking about can be called insight – ideas that come in a flash. Really having intuitive muscles means that you can turn yourself over to the total flow of thoughts – so it’s not just ideas, it’s scenes, and then it’s more.

Ideas and insights are great (for linear thinkers) because you can plug them nicely into a plot. Intuitive writing does not generally share this trait.

#5

Hey @MWollaeger, I noticed you said this in another thread:

I taught a class last year exclusively to Dramatica users about how to find characters and relationships intuitively, away from the software and the theory.

I’m wondering if there’s anything “left” of that class that one can access / purchase? (videos, material, etc.) or if you are thinking of repeating it at all? Not sure if it was in-person only or not.

Thanks!

#6

Hey, it was all virtual, and there are no materials. If you are in the middle of learning Dramatica, I recommend not doing both things at once.