I noticed that some of the works analyzed have two storyforms. I’ve read that a romance novel can’t just be about characters, well, romancing. They have to have something to do to bring and keep them together, for instance maybe they’re fighting demons or have to solve a crime. Is it possible to keep all of that in one storyform (maybe crime solving is Overall and the two lovers are Main and Influence Characters) or is it better to have one storyform for the crime stuff and another for, say, a love triangle?
In my opinion, you can use just one storyform for that. As long as the Overall Story is something all-encompassing that involves everyone, then the Subjective Story can be the romance.
Love Triangle is a bit trickier, but I think if you have both as the influence character (or a hand-off), you may get away with it.
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Yup, when they say romances just can’t be romancing, they mean we need an Objective Throughline to ground us while the Subjective Throughlines get us into the romance.
As to love triangles, @jamjam1794, I actually started a thread about that a few months ago. What I came up with was that you can mask which character is the true love interest by complicating their Overall Character Traits. For example, if your true love is the Impact Character and represents Faith, then you give your other love interests Sidekick traits (like Order or Acceptance) and give your true love Skeptic traits (like Non-accurate or Oppose). But in any case, you can still fit all of them into one storyform if you want to.
I wonder, if the Story Goal of “When Harry Met Sally” is Innermost Desires with the explanation that all the Objective Characters are concerned with them having a romance, how did they get away with having an Overall Story about relationships? I haven’t seen it myself, but I read that it’s set against chance encounters and there are random couples talking about their own experiences.
Should the Story Goal of a romance have anything to do with Obtaining (a lover) or Innermost Desires (being loved)? It would seem hard to pull off if you need to have an Overall Story dealing with solving a crime or running a business.
From other Dramatica stuff, I read that it’s best to avoid making an Antagonist the Influence character. I’m not entirely sure what I’m doing with my own Overall Story, but I’ve read that one way to bring the leads together and clash is that they might start off working at cross-purposes, for instance being aligned with opposing factions of an issue/battle. I wonder if that might result in having an Antagonist who is also an Influence character.
Can you still call a character an Antagonist when discussing Dramatica if they’re Complex but working against the story goal?
Yes you can … though a Complex Character is not an Archetypal Character by definition. It really doesn’t make that much of a difference, as long as you know what you’re writing, that is all that matters. If he or she is an Antagonist that for some reason is also very Proactive or Accepting, I would still think of them in terms of Antagonist. But no, by definition a Complex Character cannot be considered an Archetypal Character.
The old adage was that if you collapsed the Antagonist and Influence Character into the same Player that it somehow made the narrative “small” or simple. The Dark Knight does this and was massively successful, both with audiences and from a narrative standpoint, so I do believe it can be done, it just depends on the execution.
The Story Goal of a Romance can be about Obtaining (getting a lover, or “bedding down” a lover to be more specific), Innermost Desires (feeling loved or quenching a longing), Changing One’s Nature (becoming more lovable or changing one’s relationship with others) or even the Future (marrying for the family fortune, marrying in order to have children). But it could also be about a better Understanding, or Being happy with the one you’re with, or being more Conscientious of your lover … in other words, it can be anything you want it to be.
There are no set rules when it comes to genre … it all depends on what you want to explore as an Author.
You should see the movie.
I think this is a good place to think about the word Concern. This will make more sense after you’ve seen it, but I would never categorize the movie as “people are concerned about having a romance.”
What they want is to be happy. And, since a concern is really just a problem seen from further away, it’s also just an inequity, and the inequity they are all dealing with is not being romantically or emotionally fulfilled. That’s the hole they need to fill.
If you’re understanding of the movie is that it’s a bunch of people going out looking for romance – and this is confusing you – you’ll be happily surprised to see that it isn’t really the way it unfolds.
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That’s good since it seems like a handy word for a character opposed to the story goal.
I wish Netflix Streaming didn’t have such an awful movie selection. 
Now that I think of it, I wonder if I can rent it on On-Demand…
I’m just dashing to work and haven’t read the posts, but the library might have the movie you are looking for.
Oh yeah! I didn’t think about that.