Sorry for adding to this thread.
I read in others threads that the normal way is referring to this thread.
I will adhere to this way.
My apologies
No worries. Please don’t think you’re being ignored. I had planned to come back tomorrow when I had time to see what I could come up with.
Thanks! I don’t feel ignored. I just saw that other people do refer to the thread .
Never the less, I’ll wait on your reply in this thread 
Hi @Jeri ,
I did see your note and was thinking about it. Part of the problem is that I think the process has evolved a bit to be less rigid by using the other Psychology quads (Conceptualizing and Becoming) more loosely for the second half of the justification. I haven’t totally wrapped my mind around this though and haven’t been following the Conflict Corner classes – maybe @JohnDusenberry or @mlucas can explain better.
I’m having trouble seeing how OPPOSE is the root of this conflict (not saying it isn’t, I’m just having trouble seeing it). Maybe you could give more context?
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OPPOSE doesn’t have to be the element. That is what I currently have and might be wrong.
My MC has lost a loved-one.
He started to work again very soon, with his “mourning” in his head/thoughts.
“All people die, my loved-one was too soon, but what can you do”
He tries to stop thinking about it, and that causes him
- unconcious still think abouts it.
- seeing similair loved-ones by other people collegues
So by not mourning he halts his mourning process. (The five stages of grief are: denial. anger. bargaining. depression. acceptance. (from for example: https://www.healthline.com/health/stages-of-grief)
His therapist wants to help him into start the mourning
So denial would then be the element but I didn’t see that one. Then I thought oppose
Another thought/direction I have is that he needs to face life, and also facing the loss of his loved one. He needs to integrate the fact his loved-one died, because otherwise he can’t go one like this.
HTH
Denial is an Issue (one level up), so it’s possible that’s what you want, but looking at the gists, I’m not sure.
It might worth backing up to the Domain and Concern levels. From your description, it sounds to me that your character might be in Mind/Memory. You could see if anything fits under that.
A few more questions.
Is this a short story that you are basing around a specific quad? Or is it something you’ve worked out an entire storyform for? What action / belief is going to let this man grieve and there by allow him to get back to his life? Or if a failure story, what opportunity is he going to reject that will leave him even more alone and broken?
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In the end has to be a short story. 4000 words max.
I’m currently approaching as if it would be a full story, to see which quad feels best to strip it to 4000 max.
What I read from Dramatica a specific Quad might be the best thing to do.
Backstory: He is famous dragon slayer. In the last fight he lost his son.
The village that he lifes in, becomes under a attack by a new dragon.
He is called for action/duty to face that dragon.
That fight with the dragon, should “break him in really to miss his son.” and start the mourning
The IC is a fiary (queen)
Current thinking: Queen Lady Gadriel (LOTR) or Tauriel (LOTR)
She shows him / tells him that he should mourn.
The village depends on him. He is the best there is.
If he fails the village will be destroyed.
At the start he doesn’t care about that.
When he starts mourning he should care, but I don’t see that yet why he then should.
Ahhh. okay now I see.
Well, I can tell you what I would do, but I’m not you and the story you want to tell might be very different from what comes to mind for me.
For him I would take the quad under Obtaining Approach, Self-interest, Morality, Attitude (This one being his problem quad, an “I don’t give a fig.” attitude.
And I would juxtapose that against the OS: Doing Quad: Wisdom, Skill, Experience Enlightenment
I’m not sure you have the “right” IC, I think a go getter without, all his skill experience and wisdom, that keeps rushing into the fray, and as a stand-in for the lost son, might be more effective. However that might feel more tropesque (it’s been done).
You could flip that and give him a wife that is happy to let the town, village burn and is dragging him into her grief hole.
Then you just have to decide on the order you want for both the quads give each one about 500 words and voila, 4k story done.
My MC has unprocessed grief of the loss of a loved-one
This is causing to fail in his job, and all other people as he OPPOSE to everone.
He is really needed as hero as he is the only one to solve the problem at hand.
Are you working within a Storyform, or have you settled on a Premise through Subtext?
Part of what you wrote sounds like MC, the other parts sound like his role as Protagonist. Just focusing on the part about his mourning, which sounds like the part that MC throughline, what is it specifically about the mourning that feels like a dilemma to you?
So he lost his son and he’s sad. Okay, so what? That seems totally justified. I would be sad too. What’s the other half of it?
Which gets me to the justification process to build a source of conflict. If you have a working storyform/premise, Oppose very well might be the root of the problem, especially in your case if he is in the Mind quad.
So with any element, no matter its position in the storyform, what you do is try to justify it. How do you justify his grief? Maybe something like:
I need to feel grief to deal with the loss of my son.
A totally valid argument anyone can relate to 100%
But then, what’s the other side of that coin? If that’s the cake he’s eating, how would you justify in some other context not eating that cake and just having it?
Once you find that, you’ll have two things that can’t co-exist. The mind will feel that dilemma, and the angst from it will propel the story forward.
EDIT:
As far as OPPOSE, the obvious choice to me from what you’ve described (if it fits your storyform) is seeing OPPOSE as “denying” … being in denial over the loss of his son.
Remember too, there’s a difference between what the Character thinks is the problem (really the FOCUS) and what the root of that problem really is (the real PROBLEM).
You could also look at one of the INACTION/PROTECTION quads …
jassnip wrote:
For him I would take the quad under Obtaining Approach, Self-interest, Morality, Attitude (This one being his problem quad, an “I don’t give a fig.” attitude.
And I would juxtapose that against the OS: Doing Quad: Wisdom, Skill, Experience Enlightenment
Do I understand correctly that you would base the whole story on the Activity Quad? So ignoring Situation, Manipulation, Fixed Attitude? That’s also an approach I guess, didn’t think of that.
So OS: Obtaining, MC Doing, IC Understanding or Gathering Information and RS vice versa?
And bend the standard rules that OS is diagonal to RS and MC to IC?
jassnip wrote:
I’m not sure you have the “right” IC, I think a go getter without, all his skill experience and wisdom, that keeps rushing into the fray, and as a stand-in for the lost son, might be more effective. However that might feel more tropesque (it’s been done).
Yes, you might be right here. Although the fairy feels right as fantasy genre, she feels more like a Guardian type, and that doesn’t create conflct. I’m also thinking if I can make the dragon the IC. The dragon will bring the resolve in the end for the MC.
JohnDusenberry wrote:
Are you working within a Storyform, or have you settled on a Premise through Subtext?
Storyform
JohnDusenberry wrote:
Part of what you wrote sounds like MC, the other parts sound like his role as Protagonist. Just focusing on the part about his mourning, which sounds like the part that MC throughline, what is it specifically about the mourning that feels like a dilemma to you?
Good point. If I treat him as a Protagnost with his moral duty to be the dragon slayer and keep the village save, i can see that as a motivating force. So perhaps giving him a morality to the village instead of I don’t care at all Attitude/Self-interested
The MC part is that he doesn’t allow himself to grief. He has slayed so many dragons, it’s part of the job.
Loosing his son, he treats the same way, but as it’s a loved-one, that doesn’t work. He denies that feeling (first stage of grief) and that gives him more trouble in doing his duty.
JohnDusenberry wrote:
So he lost his son and he’s sad. Okay, so what? That seems totally justified. I would be sad too. What’s the other half of it?
He is sad, but doesn’t allow himself to grieve, because he is the dragon slayer. A wining dragon slayer doesn’t make the village feel safe. He has his moral duty to do.
Lakis wrote:
You could also look at one of the INACTION/PROTECTION quads …
Conbining all your answers, if I try to write it in a justification way as a truism:
A character needs to do it’s DUTY (PROTECTION?) IN ORDER TO be a respected dragon slayer UNLESS a character can’t grief (INACTION)
Doesn’t feel right, doesn’t feels as a conflict.
Can I ask what the MC Concern and Problem Quad are? vs. the OS Concern and Problem quad?
EDIT: And is he Changed/Steadfast, and what is your Driver and PS-Style?
OS: Situation, C: Future: I: Openness P: Disbelief
MC: Manipulation C: Changing one’s nature I:Rationalisation: P: Oppose
Driver: Action
PS-style Intuitive
Judgement Good (I think starting to mourn is the solution and that’s good)
Resolve: gives steadfast (but I would expected Change…)
So just verifying your storyform… does it feel to you that by the end of the story your MC is still focused on mentally dealing with rationalizing or making excuses about the way they think about things? (In this case, I would guess the death of their son).
And second question, who do you feel is in the right emotional headspace to handle the all the actions that get in the way of the plot moving forward? The Dragonslayer, or the Fairy Queen?
My storyform might be very wrong. I’m trying to learn and apply the Dramatica stuff, to get my stories better.
And I’m having trouble answering your questions.
So just verifying your storyform… does it feel to you that by the end of the story your MC is still focused on mentally dealing with rationalizing or making excuses about the way they think about things? (In this case, I would guess the death of their son).
In the end my MC should burst out in to tears and realise that he misses his son. One’s he sees that it’s really something to loose a son, and that it is ok to grief, that it’s the ONLY RIGHT thing to do.
And second question, who do you feel is in the right emotional headspace to handle the all the actions that get in the way of the plot moving forward? The Dragonslayer, or the Fairy Queen?
I would like to have the Fairy Queen to tell him that he should mourn, but that the Dragonslayer pushes her aside because of duty. And at the end he sees the Fairy Queen was right all along
Is he or his society so callous that he doesn’t know this? You are setting up a STAR TREK Mr. Spock type scenario, but that was built into the culture, that emotions were bad.
I don’t see that in anything you’ve described. What horrible, absolutely unacceptable, thing does he think is going to happen if he grieves?
What universal TRUTH do you believe about grief, and how it is expressed?
It’s better to use two illustrations of the same story point (Element etc.)
So (this isn’t perfect, but):
A character should take action to protect (PROTECTION) his people in order to be thought of as great UNLESS a character needs to protect his emotions (PROTECTION) in order to be able to go on living.
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jassnip wrote:
Is he or his society so callous that he doesn’t know this?
Then that would be he. Possible causes: Bad childhood? Grown up on the street? Always need to be strong kinda type? That would have made him the best dragon slayer…
jassnip wrote:
I don’t see that in anything you’ve described. What horrible, absolutely unacceptable, thing does he think is going to happen if he grieves?
He looses his job as dragon slayer, his position in society? (doesn’t feel right …) A guy doesn’t cry. Soldiers are trained to fight and experienced with killing, winning and loosing…
jassnip wrote:
What universal TRUTH do you believe about grief, and how it is expressed?
Me personally it’s ok, and it’s up to anyone to feel free to express it . But my MC doesn’t think like this.
Lakis wrote:
A character should take action to protect (PROTECTION) his people in order to be thought of as great UNLESS a character needs to protect his emotions (PROTECTION) in order to be able to go on living.
Yes this feels better then mine.