Motivation and Objective Story Characters

Dramatica Theory
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Google “character elements dramatica” and check out the images. First one to show up is from story mind. That’s the image I was referring to. It’s the image I used as a template in Illustrator.

YES! I would love to discuss these and also try to imagine some examples to illustrate them to see how well we grasp the concepts.

I find it helps to define the elements using their dynamic pairs, so…

KNOWLEDGE VS THOUGHT: As I understand it, a knowledge character will assume something simply because that’s the way it’s always been. Something like, “The earth is flat. If it wasn’t, we’d fall off.” Whereas the thought character would say, “Yeah, but look at the way the shadows move during the day. Why is it that if I sail off over the ocean, the city watch tower gradually disappears under the horizon? I wonder why…”

EXPECTATION VS DETERMINATION: Again, as I understand it, the expectation character would say, “Johnny eats too much chocolate. If he doesn’t stop, he’s gonna have pimples all over his face.” Whereas the determination character would say, “Wow, Johnny eats a lot of chocolate. Maybe it’s because his girlfriend dumped him. Why don’t I set him up with my sister…”

The thing that I have a hard time with is figuring out HOW TO connect the elements in Purpose to the purpose my characters have. It’s always kind of touchy feely vague to me. For example, the book gives the “I want to be the president.” That’s a purpose. “Because when I was a kid, I didn’t have any control over my life.” That’s a motivation. What I don’t understand is, how do I connect “president” and “powerlessness” to the purpose and motivation elements?

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So for Knowledge vs. Thought, it’s kind of similar to “resting on one’s laurels” versus “working up new things to know?” Is it kind of like Ability vs. Desire in that regard?

Would you say that for Expectation vs. Determination, the idea of “Using Causes to predict Effects” vs. “Using Effects to guess Causes” makes sense? That’s kind of how I’ve been rationalizing it. I suppose from there, Determination uses these determined Causes to try and instigate new Effects, right?

I… don’t really like that example. I mean, yeah, it uses the words how we think about them, but to be honest, I’ve never really been a fan of the words, anyway. :stuck_out_tongue: When I think about the Purpose, I think about what matters to them. Which is more important: the world around them, or just themselves? The way things actually are, or just how they appear? When I think of Motivation, though, I think about how the character acts. Do they prefer to Pursue what they want, or do they try to Avoid conflict? Do they Support others or Oppose them? When you combine them, it might make more sense. You can Pursue because you are Aware, or you can Avoid because you’re Self-Aware. You can Support people’s Perceptions, or you can Oppose them to force Actuality. Or Pursue Actuality and Avoid Perception or Support greater Awareness and Oppose to create Self-Awareness. Or… you know what, there are a lot of combinations. XD

Since Motivation is the one we talk about the most, that’s the one I usually think of as the Role the character plays. The Uncontrolled one, the Hinderer, the Conscience. The Purpose, on the other hand, is their Ideal. So you have the character who believes in Change, or fights for Inequity, or sees a Projection as most valuable. Remember, the Change character isn’t necessarily capable of changing anything. It’s only by how they actually attempt to bring about Change which reveals their Motivation. (Or Role, as I said previously.) They can Avoid fixing things, confident that Change will come that way, or maybe they try Tempting people to make the Change they want.

Is that a little clearer, maybe? For the example of the President, it’s not terribly clear what their Purpose or Motivation is. Why do they want to become President? To create Order? To fulfill a Speculation they’ve had? Because they have the Ability? That’s the Purpose in a purely narrative mindset. The Motivation is probably Pursue, since they’re Pursuing a goal. He is motivated by his Pursuing to reach his Purpose of Order or Speculation or Ability. His Motivation is his need to Pursue.

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All of the diagonal elements are opposites. They’re all HOT VS COLD, if that’s what you mean.

Sorry, that flies over my head. Abstract words like cause and effect are too complicated for me, I need to keep it concrete. Expectation is, “That guy drives too fast, so he’s going to kill somebody.” Determination is, “Why does that guy drive so fast?”

In other words: The Determine guy says, “Try to determine the reason behind something, instead of expecting something to happen.” Meanwhile, the Expectation guy says, “Stop wasting your time trying to determine why he does something when you already know what’s going to happen. Who cares why?!”

Isn’t that motivation though? Isn’t motivation the heart of the reason why someone does something?

For example: I want to learn Dramatica (my purpose) because I want to be a better writer because I want to earn a living writing because I hate my day job and I think being a writer would be cool. So my motivation is pursuit, I want a better job and consider, being a writer beats my current day job licking stamps (I’ve weighed both jobs and writer trumps day job). That’s what matters to me.

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Let’s go look at the definitions in the Dramatica program. Motivation is defined as “the force that drives a character in a particular direction,” whereas Purpose is defined as “desired and intended result.” It even specifically says, “Purpose and Motivation are frequently confused. Whereas Motivation is the drive that the character must fulfill or satisfy, Purpose is the specific item that will satiate that drive.”

Think about the 16 Motivations: Consider, Reconsider, Pursue, Avoid, and so on. It’s not what they want, it’s the lens by which they imagine what they want will be achieved. I mean, “Motivation” is such a bad word for it, or at least I don’t think of it like that. I see it more like the Approach. What you want (what your Purpose is) is to fulfill a Desire of being a writer, but what approach will you take to get it? Will you Pursue things that will make you better, or will taking Control make you better? You don’t want to pursue; pursuing doesn’t matter to you. What matters is your Desire, and Pursuit is the way you will reach it. Then you judge your progress with your Means of Evaluation (say, Accurate) and act out your Motivation through your Methodology (say, Possibilities).

So to answer your question, no, Motivation has nothing to do with why you do something. Purpose is why you do something. Motivation is just what gets you there.

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Please be patient, it’s going to take a day or two for me to wrap my head around this and be able to come up with some examples that work for me.

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I apologize. I didn’t mean to sound impatient. It is very confusing, and I don’t blame you! How I meant to sound was less “geez, why won’t you learn” and more “willing to try anything,” if that makes sense.

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Motivation to Jerome would be the need to have a career he loves doing. His Purpose would be to become a professional writer. His Methodology would be writing and learning Dramatica and his Means of Evaluation would be coming to these message boards and also feedback on his writing oh, and also, selling his work of course!

If it sells he can bet he’s doing just fine.

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Not at all, it’s just every time I come back to Dramatica, I feel like I have to jump through hoops with all the abstract mumbo jumbo just to get from A to B. I understand a lot of that comes down to impatience on my part, but still feel like a lot of the ideas being conveyed could do with, among other things, some simple examples.

Examples like this one right here…

Thank you, Daniel. THAT I understand. Simple words and straight to the point. Please allow me the pleasure of digesting that.

Motivation is the basic thing a person wants, the reason behind everything. In my case, it’s “to have a career he loves doing.”

The purpose is the thing that will satisfy that motivation. It could be a number of things. I could become a fireman, or a hit man for the mob. Instead, I chose to “become a professional writer.”

Methodology is what a person does in order to achieve the purpose. In my case, “writing and learning Dramatica.”

Evaluation is gauging progress and satisfaction. The more progress I make, the happier I’m going to be. So for me, that comes down to, “coming to these message boards and also feedback on his writing oh, and also, selling his work of course!”

Oh, yeah. You bet’cha.

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Lol, I guess I’m the exact opposite, then. :stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes: I can’t follow the definition of Motivation through examples that don’t adhere rigidly to the terminology in the book. Like, a Motivation of “to have a career he loves doing.” What does that mean? Do you mean like Pursuing a career he loves doing, or needing Faith in himself as he’s in the career, or Helping people through his career in writing? Or a Purpose of “Become a professional writer.” Why? To have Ability? Because of your Self-Aware focus? It doesn’t mean anything outside of the language of Dramatica.

To me, it’s kinda like saying, “My story’s about love.” Okay, but what about love? Attraction? Dream? Commitment? Instinct? To me, having a Motivation of “having a career he loves doing” doesn’t mean anything, since it doesn’t say how you intend to actually get a career you love doing. Same with having a purpose of “becoming a professional writer.” That’s not a Purpose; that’s a Goal. (Specifically, Psychology/Being.) …Now that I think about it, “having a career he loves doing” is kind of like a Prerequisite (Activity/Obtaining). That might be the confusion. Do you see the difference between Goal and Purpose?

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I avoided drilling into the Elements because it can actually be whatever you want them to be. You can color the Motivation of having “a career he loves doing” as nearly any Element that you want (in the Motivation quad), as you have just done. Pursuit, Faith, Help, those all work. The simplistic example was used to describe the nature of each dimension which Jerome picked up on quite easily. The book uses a character who wants to become President to describe the 4 dimensions almost exactly how I described becoming a writer to Jerome.

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Yeah, I just needed to embed it with my own personal experience. I guess I’m obtuse like that. :unamused:

So a good approach to this would be to first figure out what the motivation and purpose for each character is, how s/he goes about getting there (methodology) and how they go about evaluating their progress / satisfaction. Once that’s done for all of the characters in a story, figure out which elements best describes each character’s M.M.E.P., trying to avoid overlaps and making sure to use as many of the elements as possible.

Hm… This writing business sure is a lot of work. Maybe I should’ve followed in my uncle’s footsteps and become a hit man for the mob. Like they say, it’s never too late.

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As far as the back and forth about motivation and purpose … remember what context you’re looking at these in. For the most part this is within context of the Overall Story. Personally I always try to figure out their motivations/purposes/methodologies/evaluations in context of the actual Overall Story Goal (and the Domain). Dramatica doesn’t see these characters as living, breathing people – just pawns in a giant chess set (at least from the Overall Story Perspective).

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This statement is both true and false, depending on the context in which you use it.

TRUE
The statement is true if you define “why you do something” as the backstory that brought you to the point of being motivated. Backstory involves a process (a story, really) that brings you to the point where you may be sensitized to stimulus (inequity), but does not indicate why.

FALSE
The statement is false if you define “why you do something” as the reason you respond to a stimulus, though it is more accurate to say that motivation, in the Dramatica-sense, indicates WHAT drives you than why, so it is not entirely false.

The difference between the two contexts is scope. Within the historical scope of motivation, a motivation element does not describe the process by which characters become sensitized to respond to particular stimulus. Within the immediate scope of a particular story, motivation indicates the nature of the inequity that stimulates a drive to respond in an effort to resolve the inequity.

When used to build Objective Characters, the motivation elements are expressed by and/or through the characters, and should not be seen as THEIR motivations, per se, but representations of the motivations that may be responsible for the Overall Story throughline’s problems.

So, a Knowledge character might say something like, “Well if we knew more about it, we might be able to figure out what it’s going to do next.” Whereas a Thought character might say, “If we think about it some more we might be able to find a way out of this mess.” (OK, so not the best storytelling but I hope you get the gist of what I’m attempting to illustrate.)

Bottom line: Motivations and Purposes, in the context of Dramatica elements, describe what drives a character (motivation) and what a character hopes to achieve (purpose).

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