Dramatica is very mathematical – at least the down-and-dirty practical part that most of us use on the computer. It’s 4x4x4 (etc.) and tends to attract people who like that kind of structure. And it’s great, because it reduces story to something we can break apart and move around.
This is wonderful because the insight that stories are about the forces at work and not the characters is one of the things that makes Dramatica so powerful. It allows us to think differently and better about story.
But as I pointed out in the Eating Worms thread, this approach can also send us down the wrong path sometimes – it encourages us to think about characters as chess pieces and not as people. We may not even recognize that we are doing this, but when you go through and fill out a the StoryGuide and diligently think and decide upon your characters’ Symptom and Response, this is what you are doing. You have successfully designed a character, but you do not know them.
Three fourths of the Thematic Chart are Subjective. They are for characters, not for chess pieces.
Since I’ve started working with Dramatica, I have never heard a Dramatica user say “the character spoke to me” or “the character would not behave.” But I hear this all the time from writers who are not users of Dramatica. Generally, when I read their work, the characters stand out. They feel rounder. Their dialogue is much more interesting. Their plots suffer, but here’s the thing – we’ve got a lock on that. And we can knock them for having terrible plots – I used to – but that misses the relevant take-away: we need better characters!
For the past year, I’ve been delving into writing much more intuitively. And the result is that people react to my work much differently. They can tell when I have written something from a deeper place, and they say things like, “This character feels real.”
I’ve come around to believing that it is imperative for writers to be able to think about their stories from four different perspectives: they have to write what they want to write, the have to make it compelling, they have to make it a Grand Argument Story, and they have to know their characters like they are real people.
Dramatica does not typically attract people who instinctively know their characters as well as they know their friends. It’s a tactic we ignore, because we play to our strengths. But if we ignore this weakness and build up our strengths we’re going to end up with really good stories that mean a lot, but somehow don’t sing.
Bottom line: I’m going to be leading a workshop designed to awaken this part of us and get us discovering characters inside of us – not designing them.
If you are interested, send me a PM. Because we are spread all around the globe, I also need to know your time zones and when you are available.
I’ve already got people signed up, and I’m going to limit the class size, so if you are interested, don’t be shy.
The course will run 8 weeks for $200, it’ll start in mid-February.
And, of course, if you have questions – ask away.
Mike