Judgment: Subjective or Objective?

It’s sounding more and more like this is the case for the story you’re writing. Even more so, it sounds like you’ve objectively identified the story as scarring, angsty, severe, a Bad overall experience, that turns out to be a good thing. (Which still suggests a Success/Bad story.)


Actually, I’m wondering if you’re attributing a morality to the Dramatica terms of Good and Bad.* I made this error when I first started with Dramatica. Story Judgement is related to the Objective Story, since it’s part of the Objective Story Plot Dynamics. Thus, there is no morality inherent to Story Judgement.

@Lakis gave some great examples to relate this idea. Here are some more.

Note: I capitalize Dramatica terms, but I leave non-Dramatica terms lower case. This is especially important when dealing with common words that have specific meanings in the theory.

Think about an author writing a story from the perspective of a villain. Given the right frame, the author might stop the story when the villain has won and feels good, and even make the story feel Triumphant (Success/Good). However, the author could still frame the entire story as morally wrong, thus giving a moral judgement of bad.

Other combinations are possible as well. You can write a story that comes out feeling severe while the characters still achieve their goals (Success/Bad). Yet, still indicate the entirety of the experience as morally right, thus giving a moral judgement good.

The Story Judgement is an indication of fulfillment and severity, not one of morality.

*You might not be, but I’m writing this for when people might do so.

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