Let’s say the MC obtains his goal, but the horrible thing he hoped to avoid when reaching his goal happens anyway.
Would this be:
Outcome: Success
Judgment: Bad
??
Success/failure pertains to the Overall story goal, which may or may not be overlapped with the MC goal.
If the MC is the Protagonist of the OS, then yes, the situation you described would be a success/bad story.
If the MC is NOT the protagonist of the OS, then whether the story is success or failure would depend on a number of factors.
Let’s say you have an MC who’s a young man trying to secure a future for himself as the head of a local crime family. He helps get the current head of the crime family assassinated (OS goal of Obtaining), creating a power vacuum that enables him to become the new leader of the crime family. But he finds that actually, the future he’s secured for himself is one of constant fear of retribution. Thus, the MC obtained his own goal, as well as the OS goal, but found himself miserable as a result of these two separate successes.
Take another MC who’s a witch who wants to retrieve her lost spellbook so that no one can ever brew her elixer of eternal life ever again (MC goal:obtaining). Our intrepid hero is a young girl trying to find a way to save her mother (OS goal: future) who’s dying of an unknown illness with the help of a magic spellbook she found in a mysterious bookshop in the city. The girl is the protagonist of the OS, trying to secure a neverending future for her mother, while the MC is the antagonist, attempting to prevent this goal from being achieved. In the end, the witch achieves her initial goal of obtaining the spellboook and destroying it before the girl can complete the spell. As a result, the girl’s mother dies, and the witch feels horrible. This would be failure/bad, even though the MC goal was achieved.
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Thank you, @Audz! (Love the examples).
Yes, my MC is also the Protagonist.
Though the MC protagonist obtains success in obtaining his personal goal, thinking it would stop the bomb, the bomb was scheduled to go off regardless. This leaves him with a sense of betrayal.
It’s a dystopian novel 
What was his goal that he thought would stop the bomb? And why wouldn’t his goal have just been to stop the bomb?
His goal is twofold - clear his name and thereby stop the bomb.
He clears his name but it doesn’t stop the bomb (the bomb situation is out of his direct control).
Im curious how clearing ones name might stop a bomb from going off. I’m also wondering, and I may be wrong, if the bomb going off might be part of the Cost or Consequence of clearing his name.
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Is everyone in the story somehow involved in clearing the MC character’s name (for it, against it, somehow caught up in it)? Or is stopping the bomb the common thread?
In the end, how does the MC feel about his choices and actions? Is there regret or angst? Or is it more, “it’s too bad that terrible thing happened, but I still did the right thing”.
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All characters are touched or affected by his ruined reputation, and some are directly involved to varying degrees. Stopping the bomb becomes a secondary goal to everyone once they realise what the consequences of him not clearing his name is.
The MC is pleased with his actions, in that in his own mind he proved his innocence.
Unfortunately, they are all doomed anyway.
For the purposes of writing, it is probably helpful to think of your character the way you talk about him. But for the purposes of this forum, it is probably helpful to say “As the MC (Situation), Greg must clear his name in order to ascend to the Presidency (Future), and as the Protagonist (OS Physics) the Presumed Terrorist Leader, must stop a bomb (obtaining) to save the country from falling into anarchy.”
This just helps us all get square.
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Sounds like a Judgment of good.
If clearing the MC/Protagonists name means letting a bomb go off, then I still think that sounds like the price that must be paid (Cost) on the way to the goal of clearing his name.
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Thanks for pointing that out. I didn’t realise the Protagonist role is reflecting the OS, whereas MC is its own throughline.
So many layers I’ve yet to discover, no doubt.
This distinction is pretty crucial to the theory. This is how on one throughline comments on the other.
You know that feeling in your own life, when you feel like you don’t have the experience to deal with something at work? Like, “When I’m grumpy, I curl up with a hot cocoa; but I can’t suggest we do that at work when everyone is in a pissy mood.” That’s your own life splitting into two throughlines that comment on each other, and it’s that tension stories are looking to build.
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Crucial is a precise word…and the differentiation of the MC and Protag in relation to the MC and OS throughlines respectively is a very important point, I agree.
So, I looked through the PDF again to see where or why I missed this point and then, voila…
“(As a side note, the entire exploration of the Subjective Story is an independent job of the Main Character. For purposes of describing the Archetypal Protagonist, therefore, we will be considering only its role in the Objective Story Throughline as just another player on the field [albeit a crucial one]).
So, for our current needs, the Archetypal Protagonist can be considered the chief proponent and principal driver of the effort to achieve the story’s goal.”
Perhaps such crucial points need to be bold within the text, rather than tucked away within a side note within brackets!
In addition, by what is written here, I understand the role of the protagonist to be one of all characters expressing the OS, but specifically expressing the story goal.
What I find frustrating is that the academic theory is getting woven with the practical application making for quite muddied information.
It’s like picking out gold nuggets lodged in the bed of a muddy gushing river.
Welcome to the Dramatica theory of story! We suspect you’ll be staying quite awhile
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Just responding to the initial post, and mainly for my own clarity when it comes to the theory, I tend to think of the OS thread and the MC thread as completely separate even though clearly there can be, and should be, appropriate interaction (MC unique ability). The MC doesn’t have a goal per se but more of a concern (which I completely understand can be seen as a “goal”). Again, for clarity sake, it can get in the way of processing the theory. MC also has a problem/solution dynamic. With this, by the end of the story, we’re asking ourselves as writers, “How does the MC feel about their own personal issues?” Not so much about anything going on in OS thread (that’s what the success/failure is addressing). Yes, MC participated in the OS thread but not as the MC. In the OS they were a player and their role was static. As a MC, something else was going on - a subjective reality wholly personal and specific to that MC/perspective. Therefore, whatever happened as an OS goal isn’t the contextual question to ask. The judgment is about the subjective “feeling” expressed through the MC that we want the audience to get a sense of. That’s my take on it and distinguishing and contextualizing the question is something I constantly have to ask myself so it doesn’t get muddled, as we do want complexity and interconnectedness in our story (weaving)… we also want to have clarity when it comes to the structure of our argument.
You’re on the right track. It’s worth acknowledging, however, that the MC CAN have a goal of his own; in fact, all the throughlines can have goals. The software is not currently built to reflect the full breadth of what the theory allows for:
http://dramatica.com/questions/can-you-clarify-the-difference-between-the-goal-and-the-concern
You are on the right track when it comes to thinking of the throughlines as being completely independent from a theoretical POV, but from the subjective storytelling POV, they might be quite overlapped. This is more likely if the MC is also the protagonist of the OS (for example, a protagonist wants to win a trophy with his sports team (OS Concern: Obtaining), thereby fulfilling his childhood dream of becoming champions of the league (MC Concern: the Subconscious). While those two concerns are distinct from a theoretical POV, in practice, if you were to write that story, you would find that the MC’s concern blends with the OS concern, especially from his POV. Whether you consider him as Protagonist or MC, he wants the same thing: that trophy.
On the other hand, take a different MC who’s the protagonist of the OS, trying to win a trophy with his sports team (OS concern: obtaining) who also wants to win the heart of his true love (MC concern: subconscious) who plays for the other team! In this instance, the MC goal and OS goal are going to seem distinct from BOTH the objective POV and the subjective POV. Both of these stories are equally structurally sound, with distinct and separate MC and OS goals and concerns. But your experience of writing one story vs the other would probably be pretty different, even if the stories are structurally identical.
This is the difficulty with creating stories. We must be architects and bricklayers, though it’s damn near impossible to be both at once. Instead, we must learn to swing back and forth between the objective and subjective views of a story while we work (or analyze, for that matter), depending on which is called for. The objective POV is great, but it tends to break down when we put it in practice (i.e. when we start actually writing). We need to also see how the structure looks from the POV of the MC if we ever hope to convey his experience in a powerful, plausible way.
The original question proposes a scenario in which the MC achieves his goal, but finds that he has not escaped whatever “horrible thing he hoped to avoid” by achieving it. These terms are vague. Depending on how the MC throughline overlaps with the OS throughline, as well as what exactly is meant by “horrible thing,” the situation might be a Success/Bad story, or it might not. Depending on what role the MC plays in the OS, it might make more sense to consider the MC concern and OS concern as blending together while working from the MC POV. Hence why I said the two goals might be overlapped with one another. Theoretically, they remain distinct, even if in practice, they become intermingled when we consider what the MC wants.
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In the Story Engine, Judgment is listed as an OS Plot Dynamic. My understanding is that it does reflect the OS, but that the MC’s feelings are often used as a shorthand for how everyone in the OS feels.
Think about the end of Star Wars: A New Hope. Everyone is celebrating and getting medals, not just Luke. I’d think that was an example of a Judgment of Good on their successful rebellion against the empire. Most movies can’t end with everyone getting medals, though, so the MC/Protagonist can stand in for everyone. I use Protagonist because that archetype is the ‘main mover’ in the story and an OS function, but I suppose-without having given it any other thought-that an MC of a different OS role could still fill in as well.
I’d think any scenario where the MC goal and OS goal look significantly connected or blended as @Audz described, or any narrative where the MC played an appropriately significant role in the OS, probably allows for the MC to look at the resolve of their personal problems (“I got the love interest_and_ helped my team win the trophy”) as a Judgment on the OS Goal.
Very good point (OS plot Dyn.). Thank you. I’ll plug that in and reconsider some things.
Just read the article:
" the “goal” of the most emphasized throughline may appear to be the “Story Goal.”
Oh… Well, the emphasis indeed. And considering the concerns are all of the same type allows for this overlap and sophistication. Thank you… I’m learning…
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