The Methodologies, Purposes, and Evaluations of the Archetypes

questions
#1

It’s quite easy to get a hang of how the Motivation Elements relate to the Archetypes: there’s really nothing too obscure about why the Skeptic disbelieves and opposes, or why the Reason is logical and controlled. But how the archetypal pattern works in the other three character dimensions is a lot more difficult to get a good grasp of.

I don’t know if it’s because the theory book so thoroughly explains the archetypes through their motivations without touching the other dimensions, or if characters’ motivations tend to be the dimension writers usually develop the most, but somehow I’ve been conditioned with this bias that the Motivation set is more special than the others, which bugs me a lot cause I know it would be hugely beneficial to understand the Archetypes without such biases. I think having a more developed picture of the Archetypes would open up a lot of doors in creating complex characters, for example: “hmm… I’ll swap the Skeptic’s Evaluation elements with the Sidekick’s in order to have an effect X.”

It’s relatively easy to give characters individual Elements from here and there, but I feel like some in-depth understanding is missing without knowing how the chosen Elements relate to their Archetypes; it easily starts to feel like a mess, especially with screenplay as the medium – there’s hardly enough time to tell a complete story using only Archetypes. Picking Elements haphazardly is a whole another layer of headaches.

So, would it actually be possible to somehow “explain” why, for example, Reason “Trusts a Theory” in order to get a better picture of Reason as an Archetype? I think the theory book itself mentions something about a thorough analysis of all the dimensions being outside of the book’s reach, which I understand. But would it still be possible to explore the other dimensions in a form of a discussion without it turning into a thousand page analysis? Or to put it another way: could the chapter about archetypes just as well have been written from the point of view of Evaluations, Purposes, or Methodologies?

“Luke Skywalker’s Methodology is to do only what is absolutely Certain while being Proactive.”

3 Likes
#2

You might find this thread useful. Early in Dramatica’s life, there were unfinished attempts to create more suitable archetypes for purposes, evaluations, and methodologies.

Material discussed in the thread.

3 Likes
#3

I originally asked this same type of question in one of the threads linked to above. I read the recommened material and made an excel spreadsheet with other archtypes. I will try to upload a picture. Hopefully it will be helpful. im going to revisit it soon and try to make the terms listed more user friendly for myself.

#4

Archetypes Grouped Together Across From Each Other. Color Coded By Family.

Archtypes_Across.jpg950×840 981 KB

3 Likes
#5

Archetypes Grouped By Conflict. Archetype Families Color Coded. With Explanation of Elements.

Archtypes_Conflicts.jpg1230×794 906 KB

3 Likes
#6

Archetypes Grouped By Conflict. Archetype Families Color Coded.

Archtypes_Conflicts_Simple.jpg1366×590 556 KB

3 Likes
#7

The first one lists the archetypes across. Basically they are color coded by how they go together. The other charts show the areas of conflict. There might be some errors that some of the members want to point out but hopefully these are helpful as a starting place with other archetypes.

2 Likes
#8

I got the other archetypes from Melanies ‘Lost Theory Book’ Available on amazon. I just tried to put it in a quick reference chart but you should definitely check out her book. Its free if you have kindle unlimited I believe. Its short and uses characters of star wars for all the other archetypes that they don’t cover in the originally theory book.

2 Likes
#9

Wow! Thank you both a million times. Will go through all of this

#10

I’m confused: in the lost theory book, why are the eight “simple characters” first split horizontally in Motivation, but then vertically in Evaluation?

#11

Probably has to do with how things flip and rotate as you move through quads. Those charts are cool, thanks for posting them!

#12

How do things flip and rotate?

#13

There is a whole theory behind it, but for now I would just use them as cool points of inspiration from which to write your story.

#14

I’ve seen strange flipping and rotating in many places. For example, in the Plot Sequence report, instead of going upper row from left to right, then lower row from left to right, in some acts the sequences are arranged seemingly randomly, breaking the pattern of left to right. In a story of mine, the third act of Memory is explored in terms of Security, Threat, Fantasy, and Fact. Is this the result of the same deep-theory flipping, and is understanding it withing the reach of mere mortals? (I’ve stopped believing Melanie and Chris are mortals a long time ago)

#15

The difficulty with color coding the archetypes the way they have been done above is that in THIS version of the archetypes (from Melanie’s lost theory book), there are FOUR sets of eight archetypes, which do NOT line up against one another.

In the ‘normal’ sense of the archetypes, a protagonist is built from Consider, Pursue, Certainty, Proaction, Proven, Effect, Knowledge, and Actuality. The above charts do not reflect that model. The above charts represent the concept that an ‘archetype’ label exists in a single quadrant (e.g. Motivations, Methodologies, Evaluations, OR Purposes).

The advantage of viewing archetypes in that manner is that you may have different combinations to gain additional understandings. In my opinion, these other three archetypes groupings are not useful as ARCHETYPES so much as they are useful as stereotypes – groupings of elements that appear to have an affinity and fall under familiar or useful labels.

I recommend against attempting to find patterns of meaning in the patterns of these ‘lost’ archetypes because they do not share a consistent frame of reference from one ‘layer’ to the next (in contrast to the original structural archetypes).

3 Likes
#16

Stereotypes, Cliches. I definitely agree. I tried to make it clearer in this chart that each archetype stands alone (new version). Now I didn’t make this as something to follow as much as to take the considerable amount of story material you and Melanie developed and chunk it as study material and to make it easier to remember. I understand each archetype 8 Motivation Archetypes 8 Methodology Archetypes 8 Evaluation Archetypes 8 Purpose Archetypes. = 32 archetypes.

8 Stereotypes (Groupings only made for study - I understand you wouldn’t want to actually have a character like that - they would be beyond wooden)
32 Archetypes
64 Elements

Also as far as the conflict grid. I made it a while back and didn’t understand that overall story character element quads shifted depending on whether OS story was Activity, Situation, Manipulations, Purpose. So those aren’t entirely accurate as to what would be a companion pair.

Other thing I would like to do is go back to my Mac Version of Dramatica and update the element definitions as the elements in the character builders tab puts the elements in context as to how that element would effect a character.

I’ve been listening to A LOT of dramatica movie podcast breakdowns which are great by the way. LOVE THEM when doing dishes and other drudgery. What I’m hoping to really nail and improve is comprehension to where if you gave me any element, type, concern I could tell you exactly what they mean in context of dramatica from memory and of course understand that definition. Dramatica I feel, even while I’m just starting to understand the theory, I have HUGE blind spots as to terminology where I’m constantly fumbling over definitions. Its almost as if I’m trying to speak spanish and have to look up Spanish words in a dictionary, constantly instead of just talking. This is just reference material.

<img src="/uploads/default/original/1X/cdff91ff21293530f76cc325fd8caf33bbec0bbe.jpg" width=“292” height="5

#17

Those blind spots never go away. They’ll shift and move–as you understand one section more, part of another will fall away. I think those blind spots also correspond to your own personal blind spots too, so as you grow and develop they will shift accordingly.

Taking time to absorb the definitions is the most important thing anyone can do when first starting out with Dramatica.

1 Like
#18

Hi,
I’m new to Dramatica, currently reading its Fourth Edition, 2001.
I was looking for the Archetypes mapping onto the Purposes and Evaluations, which isn’t provided in that version, and Google landed me on this page.
Now when I try to reconcile the Archetypical Methods of the 2001 Edition with the charts above, I just get lost… (the 2001 Archetypes being Prota, Anta, Guard, Conta, Reason, Emo, Skeptic and Sidekick)

I am discovering that Dramatica is fairly complex (and that normally doesn’t discourage me), but how is it that a theory can change so much regarding such fundamental elements ? And which version should I then use ?

Please forgive my ignorance and thanks for your enlightening replies

#19

The other archetypes mentioned in Melanie’s posts are “unofficial” and still un-vetted shorthand ways to organize the character elements.

2 Likes