The two Principal Characters are not always connected?
January 17, 2007
Trolling through the Dramatica archives, I came across something interesting in the Tip of the Month for January 2000:
It is not important whether it’s the steadfastness of one character that forces the change in the other, or the change in one that supports the steadfastness of the other.
Well that’s a new one for me. All these years I always assumed that it was the steadfastness of one character that inspired the other to change. In fact, I could have sworn I’ve heard Chris say it several times. I always thought they had to be intertwined. But according to this, its not as important as I had thought.
What is important is that the inverse relationship between the Main Charater’s Resolve and the Impact Character’s Resolve provides a key point of reference for an audience’s understanding of your story’s meaning.
So as long as you illustrate one changing and one staying the same, your story should still hold some meaning.
This brings up another interesting point I’ve found when writing with Dramatica. Sometimes it is best to just go with what the program tells you, no matter how strange it may seem at first. As you write, somewhere near the end of the 2nd act, you’ll start to feel your story sense tingle like crazy as previously disparate story elements start colliding into a deeper meaning.
It’s a great feeling.