Evolution of the Story Mind

I think the evolutionary psychology view of art is one of those ideas that seems glaringly obvious once it is pointed out to you:

To take the next step to fiction would seem to give early humans a simulation machine, useful for war-gaming their options in survival choices. But Dutton refuses this adaptive explanation for fiction, advanced by Stephen Pinker and others, pointing out that our fictional library extends into realms far beyond anything humans would encounter. It is instead, he argues, an enhancement and extension of counterfactual reasoning - the ability to step beyond mere reproduction of facts in the imagination to hypothetical states of affairs.

Fiction, it has been argued, also serves as an efficient archive of cultural knowledge; Eric Havelock famously argued that for nonliterate peoples, epics like the "Iliad" constitute a kind of oral encyclopedia. Perhaps more than its tactical or archival capacities, however, fiction provides a unique platform for social and psychological reasoning. "The inner psychological experience of one's fellows, the shared emotional and intellectual world of the tribe," Dutton writes, is the final field upon which fiction plays - and perhaps its ultimate evolutionary raison d'etre as well.

You don't even have to dive very deeply into the evolutionary advantages of what in Dramatica they call the "story mind" to see that human beings are keen observers of other human beings and that the stories we tell are really arguments and descriptions of how we think, understand, behave, and solve problems. Because we are complex beings, story telling is a complex activity, not merely instrumental in telling us what something is or what we should do in certain situations, but exploring emotional terrain, the tragedy of death, the comedy of life, the possible, the improbable, and the fantastic.

And just like the human mind, it is even large enough and flexible enough to reflect upon its own creation, methods, and ends. It can tell a story about itself.

Approach v. Attitude

Dramatica has published its December Tip of the Month which is pretty useful to me because the story I'm working on has Approach and Attitude in the Main Character throughline. My MC is a guy who knows what he's doing (unique ability of approach) but he's kind of a jerk toward the impact character (IC flaw of attitude) so things tend to go from bad to worse. He's a change character, but the trick is to dramatize what a jackass he is in the beginning without making him unsympathetic. I'll probably need to make him funny.

How to get Lost

The Literacity blog smartly links story immersion, our ability to engage with a story and lose ourselves in the narrative, with the story's ability to have us empathize with its characters:

The question I'd like to raise is, as always, how can the author apply this to his work? Somewhere along the line, the audience/reader reaches a point where reality and fiction blur; in some sense or another, he or she becomes a part of the story. I would argue that this takes place through character-identification, which is really just a longer word for empathy. In that respect, at least, Carroll is on the mark: the reader must feel more than sympathy for the characters--he or she must feel empathy.

In Dramatica, this is built into the DNA of the storyform. The idea is that the main character is always the person we most identify with and it is through his or her eyes that we view the action. Dramatica also makes certain assumptions about gender and for better or worse they work like this:

Men tend to empathize with logical thinkers (i.e. masculine characters) and sympathize with holistic thinkers (feminine characters).

Women on the other hand tend to base their judgements on the story limit: empathizing with characters in situations where they explore all available options (optionlock) and sympathizing with characters in situations where they are up against a ticking clock (timelock).

Either way, the point is we engage with stories where we are able to empathize with the main character and his or her problem.

The Story Fanatic (and Dramatica expert) takes the argument a step forward:

It’s not enough, therefore, to simply have a “willful protagonist,” an antagonist, and a collection of escalating plot points. At best you’re only providing an audience with half an argument. You still need to give them that external singular perspective (often presented by the Impact Character) and that collective personal perspective (the relationship between the Main and Impact Character) that only two people can share.

If you don’t, the audience member of today will check out.

This where the theory gets tricky, but it is ultimately a very elegant explanation. In any story you have the main character who provides the audience with the subjective point of view and the objective story that contains all of the escalating plot points. But there are also two other perspectives to keep in mind: the impact character who represents the impersonal counter-point to the main character and the subjective storyline that provides the personal perspective on the events of the story. Story Fanatic has it like this:

There are four different points-of-view one can assume when examining a problem:

• The Third-Person Impersonal or “They” perspective
• The First-Person Personal or “I” perspective
• The First-Person Impersonal or “You” perspective
• The Third-Person Personal or “We” perspective

These match up nicely with the four major throughlines every great story should have:

• “They” perspective = The Overall Story Throughline
• “I” perspective = The Main Character Throughline
• “You” perspective = The Impact Character Throughline
• “We” perspective = The Subjective Story or Relationship Throughline

It's that "we" perspective that often goes missing in stories and it is the final piece of the puzzle. When a story has a fully developed subjective story, an engaging relationship, we (pun intended) are able to bridge the gap between the personal and the impersonal, the subjective and the objective, and become fully engaged in the story.

Immersion comes when the objective elements of the story are filtered through the personal view and give us something that allows us to make a genuine emotional connection with the material.

The Story Fanatic blog has lots of good examples of how this works.

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Listening to: Stereolab - Rainbo Conversation
via FoxyTunes

Bionic Impact

So Bionic Woman is a big hit, and I think I can guess why. Nostalgia? Maybe. The appealing actresses? OK, you got me there. The Battlestar Galactica crossover effect? Don't be a nerd.

No, I think the real success of the show is the introduction of the Katee Sackhoff character as the "original" and villainous bionic woman. I only saw one scene of the show during its premiere, the fight on the rooftop in the rain. It was awesome. Not only because Sarah Corvus makes for an excellent nemesis but because of the way she reflects the character of Jaime Sommers, mirrors her, pushes her, forces her to rethink what she's doing. She's not just the show's antagonist, but the impact character. Who better to provide Jaime with insight into and a cautionary tale of the world she's fallen into, than someone who has already lived it. Someone who is just like her.

This is not just a plot device but a way to get inside the main character, to see how she decides to behave based on her relationship with the Sarah Corvus character. How will it motivate her? How will it affect the decisions she makes? How will it change her? Will she embrace her in order to learn more about the show's big mysteries. Or reject her with a nasty, "you and I are nothing alike" (this was effectively done with the father-daughter relationship in early seasons of Alias, and later with the mother-daughter relationship).

I think this is the key to the show and its future success will depend on it. Hopefully Katee Sachoff won't be just an occasional guest star.

Dramatica Explains the Happiness Gap

The New York Times has an article on the growing happiness gap between men and women. Men are apparently happier. Who knew?

The surveys assessed men and women based on how unpleasant they found various tasks during the course of their day:

Not surprisingly, men and women often gave similar answers about what they liked to do (hanging out with friends) and didn’t like (paying bills). But there were also a number of activities that produced very different reactions from the two sexes — and one of them really stands out: Men apparently enjoy being with their parents, while women find time with their mom and dad to be slightly less pleasant than doing laundry.

There all sorts of ways to explain the gap: changes in societal norms, have-it-all-ism, second shift-ism, etc. These certainly have the look and feel of truth.

Now, in the deep-theory behind Dramatica, there are two way of solving problems and assessing one's progress: linear (moving from one step to the next to the next) and holistic (balancing many things simultaneously). According to the theory, linear thinkers are primarily (though not necessarily) male and holistic thinkers are primarily (though not necessarily) female.

So in the course of a day men are able to move from one task to the next, and their sense of satisfaction is based solely on the task at hand. If they have 10 things to do they focus on just one and ignore the other 9. This is where we get the stereotype of the man who happily sits watching TV while the leaves go unraked, the fence goes unpainted, and the kids go un-fed.

Women on the other hand move through their day trying to balance each of their 10 tasks within the overall fabric of their lives. If 1 thing is going poorly, it diminishes her satisfaction with the other 9 and vice versa. This is where we get the stereotype of the superwoman trying to be a success at everything simultaneously.

If one is asked to report their level happiness on isolated activities, what they are really being asked is how happy are they solving problems linearly. My feeling is that men will tend to report greater happiness because the survey plays into the problem-solving style they are more comfortable with. If the questions put more emphasis on their ability to balance work, life, and leisure, you might get a different response.

Discussion Topics for Future Blogs

A few ideas for upcoming blog posts:

1. SF is much better than fantasy, and will save Western Civilization besides
2. Fantasy is much better than SF, and will keep society from degenerating into an Orwellian nightmare besides
3. Taxonomies of SF/F/H
4. Anything with a Venn diagram in it
5. Convention reports
6. "Literary fiction" and how awful it and its exponents are

No, wait, sorry. Those are the nonfiction topics verbotten at Clarkesworld. With all due respect to anyone trying to put together a genre magazine, what purpose exactly do these guidelines serve? You're an online magazine, served by word-of-mouth via the blogs of like-minded fans. You exist to serve an audience that would otherwise be underserved in the mainstream. Why get caught up in a bunch of corporatist rules and regulations?

You don't know how good someone's Venn diagram might be. It might be the most eye-opening Venn Diagram on Fantasy taxonomy, the awfulness of Don DeLillo, and how the Martian Chronicles saved human civilization ever.

And as a writer: wake-up! Publishing's dead. If you want to get your work published you can do it on your blog. Or invent your own magazine, get a URL, and publish to your heart's content.

One thing reading publishing guidelines does for me is help to better clarify the prejudices, assumptions, fixed ideas, and biases of others. Not much help in getting published, but a lot of help in understanding the "Fixed Attitude" throughline in Dramatica.

Are You a Reader or a Writer?

One of the issues that we have as writers is aspiring to create experiences as mind-blowing and real as those we remember from reading great books and authors in the past. More often than not we analyze works not as writers but as fans. This makes it difficult to gain the perspective required to really understand what makes something work, and how we might do the same ourselves.

Chris Huntley has this bit of sage advice:

An early axiom determined in the development of the Dramatica theory was this: If you look for meaning in your story, you cannot predict how to put your story together. If you want to predict how to put your story together, you cannot know what your choices will mean. In other words, you can try to find meaning in a work OR you can predict how to put it together—but not at the same time from within the same context. Why? The short answer is that we use one as the given in order to evaluate the other. When looking for meaning, we assume a particular story structure. When looking for structure, we assume a particular meaning (author's intent). It's tied to the same reason we can see light as particles and waves, just not at the same time within a single context. One aspect defines the basis for the other. Story structure provides the basis for seeing meaning in the story. Meaning provides the basis for understanding and manipulating structure in a story.

In other words, meaning is tied to the audience's experience of the story while structure is tied to the author's perspective of the story. The audience perspective allows a synthesis of the underlying story elements to discover its "meaning." The author's perspective assumes a given meaning (author's intent) and allows manipulation of the arrangement of the story's structure and dynamics. Using the appropriate context is important.

I'm very intrigued by this relationship between meaning and structure, as well as the notion that structure and prediction are the same thing (it's all very scientific sounding). Understanding the structure of something, how it works, allows you to repeat the process and make predictions about the likely outcome. This is the writer's perspective.

On the other hand, the reader can't see the process. They can only look at the effects and speculate about what the author intended. More importantly, what a reader takes from a work is really their experience and enjoyment of the bells and whistles. It's all surface. The mechanics of the thing never really come into it. It is in fact a very different perspective from the author's, just as living in a house is very different from being the architect of the house.

Even deep analysis of theme, history, society, economics, etc. are just more rigorous forms of meaning making. It is only when we have a complete picture of the meaning of a work that we can begin to work toward understanding how that meaning was encoded into the story.

So the challenge is to look at examples and works we admire not from our natural perspective as fans and readers, but from the much more difficult perspective of the architect, the scientist, the writer; stay focused on all those moving parts and formulas that no one else can see.

The Rules of Horror (Be Careful Not To Break Them)

All right, so, back to the horror genre. Literacity via Dirty Writer invites us to again consider the rules of horror, using some fairly familiar movies as examples. The more I look at these examples and the more I look at the genre overall, the simpler things seem to get. In this post I'll try to outline the basic structure of a horror story using Dramatica terms and give my version of the overarching theme that drives horror fiction (yeah right, have your grain of salt at the ready).

For those unfamiliar, a Dramatica Storyform divides every story (horror or not) into four different Throughlines: The Overall Story (The objective perspective that We share), the Main Character (The I perspective that we identify with), the Impact Character (the You perspective that stands in the MC's way, and represents an opposing point-of-view), and the Subjective Story (The passionate Relationship between You, the Impact Character, and I, the Main Character, and the subjective perspective that pulls the story in one direction or another).

In Horror these perspective are pretty formulaic, and in truth the genre is really driven by special effects and increasing permissiveness. That is, more gore and violence. But anyway, here we go:

Overall Story

The Overall Story places all of the characters in an extreme or unusual Situation. Features of the situation often include physical or social isolation that cuts the characters off from easy escape or access to help. There is the sense that forces are closing in on the characters who are forced against their will to deal with the unpleasant events.

Subjective Story

The Subjective perspective in a horror story is where we get into the juicy philosophical side of things. This is represented by the conflict in Fixed Attitudes between the Main Character and the Impact Character: between violence and passivity, the normal and the abnormal, the natural and the supernatural, the pure and the corrupt, pursuit and escape. This conflict is marked by the explicit transgression of order. In this aspect of the story we see that the laws and rules of every day individuals, of society, of nature, of God, or of the gods are violated, overturned, thrown into chaos, cast into doubt. The very nature of this relationship is one of inhuman criminality.

Main Character

The Main Character is the person the audience identifies with emotionally. This character is both a potential victim and the person who is most likely to survive to the end. He or she is characterized by their Psychological responses to the terrifying events. This usually is expressed by the degree to which they themselves believe in the extraordinary nature of events. They are either deeply skeptical or a true believer among skeptics. In the end, it is this character's intense fear and what they do with it (fight or flight) that makes us root for them.

Impact Character

The Impact Character is the Big Bad. A person or monster who has succumbed to evil or is an expression of some larger negative force. The point of this character is that they have already overstepped the boundaries of ordinary life. They are an angel of retribution, a doomed overreacher, a cautionary warning, or a vengeful spirit. The impact character in many ways is a tragic figure not suited to the world of the main character.

Examples

In a horror story, the Objective story and the Subjective story work together to create the overall sense of jeopardy. First, the situation is established that evil is near and there is a boundary not to be crossed. A character warns of the danger but no one listens. The rules are broken, terror is unleashed, and through the main character we witness the consequences. In other words:

1. Evil - The creature is waiting
   
2. Warning - I wouldn't go that way if I were you
   
3. Transgression - Crossing the threshold
   
4. Consequences - The running, and the screaming, and the death
   

The key is that one way or the other, the consequences are punishment for crimes real or imagined, commited by the characters present, or something that happened in the ancient past. This idea of punishment and retribution is why horror stories lend themselves so well to religious and political readings.

So, if we look at our examples:

Cujo

• OS - Mother and Son trapped in car, besieged by rabid dog.
• MC - Donna. We experience her fear, claustrophobia, and desperation.
  
• IC - Cujo: is he possessed, or just the tragic victim of a bat bite?
• SS - Donna is metaphorically punished for her failing marriage.
  

The Hills Have Eyes

• OS - A family, lost in the desert, attacked by cannibals or mutants or whatever.
• MC- Brenda? She's the mom, suffers a lot, and is one of the survivors.
  
• IC - The Outcast inbred Cannibal mutants, or whatever they are.
  
• SS - The traditional nuclear family is punished by a twisted version of itself. As near as we'll get to social commentary in this sort of thing.
  

Saw

• OS - Characters are trapped and tested by the games of a serial killer
• MC - Adam? He's the last victim.
• IC - Jigsaw Killer.
• SS - Jigsaw tortures his victims because they don't appreciate living, or something.
  

Dawn of the Dead

• OS - The world is overwhelmed by a zombie plague.
• MC - Peter/Francine?
• IC - Zombies!
• SS - Society is punished by its own dead and may be responsible for the radiation that started the zombie menace in the first place. The zombie problem is a useful metaphor for a whole host of social ills.

Jaws

• OS - A Great White Shark attacks holiday beach-goers.
• MC - Brody, the sheriff who tries to close the beach before it's too late
  
• IC - The Shark, nature's merciless killing machine
  
• SS - Don't go in the water! The townsfolk and vacationers are punished for their lazy and greedy disregard for nature and its dangers (?)

Hellraiser

• OS - An evil puzzle box connects the normal world to the demonic world of the Cenobites. Frank solves the puzzle and after his death, tries to use its power to resurrect himself (it's complicated).
  
• MC - Kirsty, who has to survive both Pinhead and Frank.
• IC - Frank who succumbs to the box's evil and Pinhead, the tragic anti-hero of the Cenobites.
• SS - The puzzle box is an evil temptation. Those who solve it are punished by the sado-masochistic demons who promise both pleasure and pain.
  

The Island of Dr. Moreau

I would consider this a science fiction story, but it still fits the model.

• OS - On the Island of Dr. Moreau animals are transformed into humanoid monsters.
  
• MC - Prendrick who is shipwrecked on the mysterious island.
• IC - Dr. Moreau and his creations. In many versions of the story, the creatures are pretty sympathetic.
  
• SS - Moreau commits crimes against God and nature by creating abominations who eventually turn on him and punish him for his crime.
  

Freaks

• OS - The circus world of Freaks.
• MC - The Freaks? We are sympathetic to them but I'm not sure we really are meant to identify with them.
  
• IC - Cleopatra and Hercules
• SS - Our sense of normality is inverted as the freaks are normal and the normal people are the villains. In the end Cleopatra is punished for her crimes against the Freaks by being made a freak herself.

Halloween

• OS - A deranged killer escapes from a mental hospital in spite of the warnings of his psychologist. He returns to the scene of his childhood crime to go on a new killing spree.
• MC - Laurie Strode, the archetypal last girl standing. She's also the "good" girl whose repressed impulses allow her to fight back in the end.
  
• IC - The Shape, a horrible monster in the form of a man. He may be driven by sadism and/or misogyny but it's not clear.
  
• SS - Once he escapes the mental institution, he punishes the teenagers of Haddonfield for their promiscuity and substance abuse.
  

One of the finest moments of the film comes at the end. After the Shape has disappeared, the camera searches for him. The everyday places and objects of suburbia are permanently corrupted and seem menacing even in the monster's absence.

Conclusion

Horror stories follow a pretty simple formula and often are embellishments on basic morality tales. In terms of plot and narrative they are pretty primitive, but in terms of psychological and emotional impact they can be quite potent.

Because of the simple nature of the story, the energy of the writer must go into creating fresh scenarios for the Overall Story, evermore wicked villains for the Impact Character, and more wildly transgressive themes and punishments for the Subjective Story. One of the more transgressive practices of movies since the 70s is to shift the story emphasis to the Impact character, making him the more sympathetic character at the expense of the Main character and the other victims.

This is unfortunate because the key to a good horror story is the psychology of the main character, and by proxy, the audience. The goal is to find some overlooked piece of human psychology, something in us that is conflicted or suppressed, some crutch we use to justify or rationalize our faults. Once you have that germ of an idea, extrapolate on it. Extend it to its logical, or illogical conclusion. Allow it to manifest itself, become real, get it out there in the world. Let it be about pleasure and pain and all those ugly desires that we don't like to think about (except that we always do think about them). Give yourself the freedom to go insane.

That way, once you've shown your audience the path of destruction and warned them of the door they weren't supposed to open. Once you've made it clear that this is their last chance to turn back before it's too late -- then, you can really unleash the scares. Bring the whole thing down like a ton of bricks. Punish the sinful and exact vengeance on the unwary. For every transgression, an apocalypse. Make sure they learn, because if you don't force them to gaze into the abyss, they'll never really see the monsters gazing back.

Just keep telling yourself, it's only a story. And maybe in the end, you'll be all right. Anyway, that's my two cents.

Night at the Museum Is Better Than You Think

Night at the Museum is a much funnier and more entertaining movie than I expected it to be, and probably more than it deserves. First it has a great premise (and the premise is probably what sold me to begin with): the exhibits in New York Natural History museum come to life at night. Awesome. The kid in me is already thrilled. Add in the fact that the screenplay is written by alums of The State and Reno 911, and I'm thinking this could be interesting (it also has the same Director of Photography from Hellboy and Pan's Labyrinth, so it looks really good).

But on the other hand you have Ben Stiller who is pretty hit and miss with his movies, an overly sentimental storyline involving a father and son, a Rotten Tomatoes ranking of 44%, and I become a little more concerned about my DVD choice.

Luckily my 8 year old daughter and I laughed through the whole thing so it really doesn't matter. But I had to ask myself, why did it work for me, and not for the critics? Why did I enjoy this more than a lot of other more highly rated films? For those who think I just have bad taste, you can stop reading now.

What was Good

Like Rexxy the dinosaur, the basic story has good bones (in Dramatica terms). In a lot of reviews I read, the critics complained about the lack of plot or the incoherent story. This is just a dead give away that they have no idea what plot or story means, but that's a complaint for another time. In the case of Museum, we have a very solid base to work from:

• Overall story: Chaos in the Museum
• Main Character story: Larry, the Ordinary Guy
• Impact Character story: Teddy Roosevelt, the lovesick adventurer
  
• Relationship story: Becoming a hero

So regardless of the slapstick comedy and the Ben Stiller improvs, the movie has a backbone. This what also allows for some of the more imaginative sequences like the puppy-dog dinosaur, the lilliputian cowboys and Romans, the Easter Island head (gum-gum, dum-dum), or Attila the Hun in need of a hug.

You can also tell that there was probably more to the story then they had room to tell: about the Egyptian tablet, the Security Guard's masterplan, financial troubles at the museum, and the stolen property subplot that would have gotten Larry in trouble. But again, because the four throughlines are so well defined, none of those details need to be explored. Each storyline finds its own satisfying resolution and the overall story ends on the right note when the future is secured for all concerned.

So What Bugs People?

So why the 44%? I have two reasons and they're both related to the Dramatica notion of story reception. The first issue is that the story limit is poorly defined (I'm sure StoryFanatic would be the first to point this out.) Is there an Option limit or a Time limit? On the one hand, the story takes place over three nights, so Larry has three chances to get things right. On the other hand, we're constantly being reminded of the time limit set by the fact that everything needs to go back to normal by dawn. Because, of the three nights, the story feel repetitive: the character's dilemma (chaos in the museum) should be solved regardless of time, or the clock should not be reset over and over.

The second issue is that Larry is a holistic thinker. He doesn't think in linear terms (like the other Security Guards) and he isn't able to follow the instruction manual's 1, 2, 3, 4. Even when he tries to learn about the museum exhibits, he treats each character individually in pursuit of overall balance. Like Stiller the actor, Larry is intuitive and improvisational. This makes for a funny character, but ultimately one who is more sympathetic than empathetic to a largely male audience. If we combine this with the timelock problem, we tend to see the characters as flat and one-dimensional. Not because they are, but because the nature of the situation and the problem solving style keeps the audience on the outside of the situation (this all comes from Dramatica).

I think this is probably true of most comedic characters. From Chaplin's Tramp to Mr. Bean, most characters are intuitive do-ers and the comedy arises from their lack of skill in or their unconventional approaches to everyday situations. More often than not we laugh at not with and that perhaps is the best way to distinguish between sympathy and empathy.

And Yet It Is Fun

Luckily kids don't seem to care about story reception. Funny is funny, and when it comes to plot, my kid was yelling at the TV the whole time about what she thought should or shouldn't happen. When it comes down to the happy ending (Success/Good in Dramatica terms), well how else should a movie end? It's a family movie after all, with some subversive comedy courtesy of Stiller and Owen Wilson that makes it fun for grown ups too.

Lost in the Labyrinth of the Faun

Guillermo del Toro has an incredible talent for making almost great movies. Which is to say movies that are almost great, movies that feel like they're going to be great, but somehow fall short (the Hellboy movie suffers from the same affliction). Indeed, for most of Pan's Labyrinth I felt like I was watching a new classic; a movie to put on the shelf and watch again and again.

Unfortunately as beautifully designed as the sets and costumes were, as amazing as the performances are, and as incredibly realized and brought to life as the movie is by the effects team, it doesn't add up to anything more than a mish-mash of ideas. There's the systematic brutality of war vs. the uncontrolled violence of fairy tales; fascist obedience vs. the rebellion of the imagination; childhood idealism vs. adult cynicism; life and death; the arbitrariness of reality vs. the rules-making of stories; etc. etc. etc.

del Toro know his stuff and he talks a good game (in the DVD extras), and the images he has created for the film, including the giant frog, the pale man, and the faun itself are visually arresting, as are the horrific scenes of violence, and the monstrous face of the Captain after a particularly gruesome scene. He knows enough to talk about rules of three, and to site Bruno Bettelheim as an influence. It was also clever to design the faun as a green man or druidic oak king figure and therefore tie him to the more primordial and dark aspects of the Pan archetype.

In the story of Fascist Spain, I was interested by the design of the Captain's house with it's low, sweeping roof-line, surrounded by endless forest, and whose doors are guarded by enormous iron locks. In this fairy tale setting, the Captain becomes an analog for every evil king. He has captured the Queen and hopes to usurp her throne by replacing the true heir (Ofelia) with his own son (the baby brother who must be saved). In the end, he is transformed into a monster by the horrific wound on his face and he is destroyed, without a son to follow him or even the solace of a story to remember him.

Except that the fascist storyline never really parallels the fantasy world. There is is no allegory. The Captain and the world he represents are too insular, too self-regarding: representatives of the banality of evil and the everyday institutional violence of fearful governments besieged by rebellion and terror. When the captain kills the farmer and his son, he blames his lieutenants for their lack of bureaucratic thoroughness.

Meanwhile the frog king and the pale man seem to have no analogs in the main story either. They belong completely to the fantasy world of childhood fears and anxieties. More importantly, the Faun does not turn out to be evil as I suspected he might, but he is merely a servant doing his duty to the rules of the fairy world. He tests Ofelia not to push her along the path of maturity or to help her face the reality of her situation (which del Toro knows ought to be the "use" of this particular "enchantment"), but to draw her deeper into her delusional world of fantasy and escapism, and ultimately the death wish of transcendence.

And that's the real problem with the movie. Ofelia's quest and struggle does not make her stronger, it only allows her and the audience to accept the senselessness of her murder. She's in a better place, and the faun was there not only to lead her to her death, but to teach her the pointlessness of living. After all she's not a mortal, she's a princess of the underworld; a goth suicide girl.

This also highlights the limited perspective we get when our main character is a child. She is someone who can't see beyond her own self, her own situation, her own fears and desires. She is incapable of heroism because she is incapable, unlike Mercedes the servant, of actively engaging in the world and understanding its true dangers.

And it is Mercedes, in the end, who is the protagonist of the story (which gives the movie an interesting symmetry with the structure of To Kill a Mockingbird where Scout is the main character, her father is the protagonist, and Boo like the Faun is the spooky impact character). She is the one who has the bravery and the inner resolve to pursue her goals, face up to reality, fight for what she wants (literally with a pairing knife!), and provides the rebels with their final victory.

I think we are intended to see Mercedes and Ofelia as two sides of the same person, and here we have a missed opportunity. If Mercedes had been Ofelia's impact character, the you and I are alike person, the movie would have tied together the two storylines into a unified whole. What's missing is a scene or two to show that Mercedes knows about the magic kingdom, that she understands what Ofelia is going through and can help her complete her quest and grow up. If the two were linked, we would have seen more clearly the meaning of innocence and sacrifice in the ending: that Ofelia in her world was able to achieve her personal goal by refusing to sacrifice innocent blood (her baby brother's), while Mercedes in her goal to assist the rebels in the woods does sacrifice innocent blood. Yes, the captain and his men are destroyed, but in order to do so Ofelia was unprotected and ultimately sacrificed. This gives resonance not only to the fairy story but to the real world situation the very grown up ability to regret the unthinkable costs of war and revolution.

But in the end, Mercedes and Ofelia occupy separate worlds, and Ofelia's welcome into the underworld seems like a cheap cop-out next to the reality of war. What we get is a movie that is more violent than Reservoir Dogs, that features scenes of brutality and torture, and that in the end gives us a senseless scene of child murder justified by pseudo-history and cgi theatrics. It's a story for children that no child can watch, and a story for adults with no deeper meaning or greater understanding of the human cost of war. The story, as told, has no justification, and the movie is ultimately a very beautiful and thought-provoking failure.

The Missing Impact of Luna Lovegood

J. Hull at the recently re-named Story Fanatic has a great analysis of the Order of the Phoenix movie (as well as a defense of these sorts of analyses). I think he hits the nail on the head.

The problem with the movie, and it may also be in the book, is the lack of an impact character who is pushing Harry or showing him an alternative path. There are characters that support and oppose Harry but no one that shows him a mirror of himself. This is made even more frustrating because early on the movie version introduces an interesting new character, and then never uses her:

When we first are introduced to Luna Lovegood (Evanna Lynch) we learn that she and Harry Potter share a common past — they both have witnessed death first hand. As a result of such a tragedy the two of them can see creatures that no one else can. This is a perfect setup for an Impact Character/Main Character relationship, something the Dramatica theory of story jokingly refers to as the “You and I are quite alike moment.”

The "you and I are alike" moment is the key. And like the writer, I thought Luna's unusual relationship with the invisible creatures would be a decisive plot point in the end. Instead it was all but forgotten as the group flew to London for the big show down.

As J.Hull acknowledges, this characterization of Luna Lovegood is different from the role she plays in the novel, but had the screenwriter developed her character along these lines, it would have made for a much more satisfying movie.

Ratatouille Discussion

There's a good article and discussion on the movie Ratatouille at the Daily Dramatica blog (and I'm not just saying that because of my obnoxious comments). The basic premise of the discussion is that the movie feels to long because it cheats on its story limit:

Ratatouille begins with a Timelock. The story centers on the world famous Gusteau’s restaurant located in the heart of Paris. Gusteau, now deceased, established in his will that 2 years after his passing, if no rightful heir could be found, the restaurant would be passed on to the Head Chef - in this case, Skinner (brilliantly voiced by Ian Holm). The 2 year deadline is the Timelock; once that deadline has passed the restaurant will fall into Skinner’s hands. Several times throughout the first half of the film we are reminded of this Story Limit (what most refer to as “the ticking clock”). This constant reminder builds up an expectation in us: once that limit has been reached, the story has to end.

But the time limit is reached midway through the movie leaving the audience to wonder what's going on. My response is that there's really an option limit centered around the storyline of restoring Gusteau's back to its glory days of Five stars. This solves some problems but uncovers others.

Ultimately, I think the movie is so richly told that the story defies a simple story structure analysis and forces you to really dig into each throughline and work out all of the dynamics as though it was its own story. This may be violating all sorts of dramatica laws but I think it's interesting to think about.

For instance, the MC storyline is itself is almost a standalone story with Remy's desire to be a chef, his special gift, his life with his brother and father, the conflict between rat life and human life, and the ghost of Gusteau egging him on to pursue his dreams.

Then, the IC storyline contains the story of Linguini, his new job at the restaurant, conflicts with Skinner and the kitchen staff, the truth that Gusteau is his father, the timelocked limit that turns ownership of the restaurant over to him, AND the romance with Colette.

And all that's assuming that I'm correctly understanding the difference between what the OS storyline is about and what the other throughlines are about.

The great thing about a really good movie is that it gives you lots of things to chew on. It also gives you lots of ideas of how you can organize your own work.

Writing Like A Klingon

J. Hull has a funny article on the problem of writing from the Klingon point-of-view:

One of the fundamentals of Klingon language is the concept that there is no verb “to be.” No is, est, ist, etre, esta, etc. In Klingon, nothing is; everything does.

If you’re a fan of Star Trek, or even if you’ve happened to catch one of the movies, you’ve probably noticed that these guys are very externally oriented. No matter what situation or what potentially hostile alien entity they run into, they’re always the ones to suggest “shoot first and ask questions later.”

"there are several words meaning “to fight” or “to clash against”, each having a different degree of intensity. There is a plethora of words relating to warfare and weaponry and also a great variety of curses (cursing is considered a fine art in Klingon culture). "

While you could see Klingons struggling to come up with new ideas or envisioning some new plan that could help them, changing their nature or pretending to be something they are not seems impossibly foreign to their natures. This isn’t to say that you couldn’t write a Be-er Klingon into a story — in fact, it might actually be interesting to see. But when you’re raised in a world that says “The window smashed Worf” instead of “Worf smashed the window,” chances are you’re going to prefer to solve things externally.

So don’t be a Klingon when it comes to writing movies. Klingons make awful screenwriters. Well, not completely awful. I’m sure their plays are viscerally exciting, but every story would have the same kind of externally motivated Main Character. There would be no Casablanca, no Romeo and Juliet, no Unforgiven, and no Hamlet. A culture without these kinds of stories is just sad.

You can't write if you have no interior life or the ability to understand the hearts and minds of other people. Of course that doesn't stop hollywood from churning out one empty headed action movie after another. And I'm pretty sure Klingons did write 300.

Author 2.0

An article at the Times about software for writers. And a good response from J. Hull at Daily Dramatica.

I just wish these sorts of tools did not need to be defended so vigorously, but the Times writer sort of misses the point of why the tools are useful and also what it is they actually do. First they are useful for the same reason that notebooks, and post-it notes, and white boards, and bulletin boards, and sketch pads and every other tool you might use to brainstorm ideas are useful: they get your ideas out of your head and into the world. As any writer knows once you start the process, your ideas immediately begin to reshape themselves, connect and disconnect to and from other things in surprising ways. It is all part of the process. So if you can do that on your computer, why not?

Secondly, this sort of software does not guide you toward ever more reductive outcomes until you have some pre-fabricated "choose your own adventure story" at the end. If only! I'd have a lot more finished stories if it did. The real issue is that the software often gives you more story notes than you know what to do with, and opens up a whole nightmare of where your plotting is weak, your ideas incomplete, and your characters one-dimensional. It actually makes you work harder.

Two Dramatica-centric points:

First, I very rarely use the actual software (though I have it), and prefer to write things out in my notebooks the old fashioned way. I do however use the Dramatica theory books to help me sort things out and keep my thoughts structured and organized.

Second, when I do use the software I do not like the question tool, and usually go straight for the Story Engine so I can get a good look at how all the pieces are fitting together (or how they are failing to fit together).

Meaning and Prediction

I was wondering what the Dramatica guides had to say about catharsis in stories, and it turns out the theory doesn't have much to say at all. From Chris Huntley's perspective, most story processes are either Post-Aristotelian or based on Campbell's Hero's Journey, or both. He argues that Dramatica is something different altogether:

An early axiom determined in the development of the Dramatica theory was this: If you look for Meaning, you cannot Predict. If you look for Prediction, you cannot find meaning. In other words, you can try to find meaning in a work OR you can predict how to put it together—but not at the same time from within the same context. Why? The short answer is that we use one as the given in order to evaluate the other. When looking for meaning, we assume a particular story structure. When looking for structure, we assume a particular meaning (author's intent). It's tied to the same reason we can see light as particles and waves, just not at the same time within a single context. One aspect defines the basis for the others. Story structure provides the basis for seeing meaning in the story. Meaning provides the basis for understanding and manipulating structure in a story.

In other words, meaning is tied to the audience's experience of the story while structure is tied to the author's perspective of the story. The audience perspective allows a synthesis of the underlying story elements to discover its "meaning." The author's perspective assumes a given meaning (author's intent) to manipulate the arrangement of the story's structure and dynamics. It's all a matter of context.

For example, Robert McKee approaches story from the audience's perspective whereas Dramatica approaches it from the author's perspective. McKee speaks of author and audience but always with an eye on the story's meaning—a view only available to someone looking at story from the inside. This view is great for understanding audience reception but limited when trying to fix story structure problems. In this regard McKee is in the same boat as Syd Field, Christopher Vogler, Michael Hauge, Lajos Egri and probably most all other story mages.

One major difference between Dramatica and more traditional story theories seems to be this:

• Dramatica works with story from the objective author's view that allows writers to clearly manipulate elements of a story's structure. From this author's perspective, it is difficult to find the meaning of specific author's choices.
  
• Many other story theories work with story from the subjective audience's view that allows writers to see the meaning of flow and elements of the story. From this audience's perspective, it is difficult to predict which story elements are essential and how they should go together.

So when we talk about genre and aesthetics, we're really looking at story meaning from the audience perspective. We're trying to write as readers rather than as writers. As a result we lose our predictive edge. To understand the essence of a story, what differentiates it from others, and how, as a writer, we can bring something unique to the table. Most story processes, including Aristotles's Poetics are really descriptions of art and not genuine instruction manuals.

From the writer's perspective, the challenge is to look at your work like a recipe, or a code block. You know what you want the outcome to be, a cake or an application, so now you have to look at what elements you'll need to include to achieve that effect. To borrow from business-speak, it's beginning with the end in mind in order to predict a result. If I do this, my story will come out like that. If I include these genre elements, my story will come out like Close Encounters. If I change this, this, and that, it will be more like Signs.

The challenge is to think about story elements as though they were DNA, and predict the effect of mutations on this animal or that.

Horror Character Archetypes

Transmogrifying the Dramatica Character archetypes:

• Protagonist - The Victim and Hero
• Antagonist - The Big Bad and Manifestation of Pure Evil
  
• Guardian - The Protector of Secrets and Thresholds
• Contagonist - The Seducer of Innocence and Moral Transgressor
• Reason - The Scientist and Magician
• Emotion - The Madman and Shape-changer
  
• Sidekick - The Minion and the Cultist
• Skeptic - The Voice of Warning and Foreshadowing

Character archetypes in the Buffy the Vampire Slayer tv show:

• Protagonist - Buffy
• Antagonist - The Master
• Guardian - Giles
• Contagonist - Angel
• Reason - Willow
• Emotion - Oz
• Sidekick - Xander
• Skeptic - Cordelia
  

Dramatica Disclaimer

I've been yappin' a lot about Dramatica lately, but I think I should make it clear that I'm not affiliated with Dramatica, its businesses, or its authors. These are just my own opinions and interpretations based on my own experience with the theory and its tools and have nothing to do with the Dramatica theory of story. Now on with the blogging.

The Revisitation: A Tale of Horror

Sometimes it's good to give your ideas a chance to develop and evolve. Other times it's good to have some one give you a little push. I'm definitely not trying to steal anyone's thunder, just sort of riffing off of some interesting ideas.

For starters my notion that four was better than three comes from Dramatica and the Dramatica theory of story which uses quads to describe story structure in increasing levels of detail. Here are the top levels:

• Situation (Universe) - an external state; commonly seen as a situation.
  
• Activity (Physics) - an external process; commonly seen as an activity.
  
• Fixed Attitude (Mind) - an internal state; commonly seen as a fixed attitude or bias.
  
• Manipulation (Psychology) - an internal process; commonly seen as a manner of thinking or manipulation.

At this level the theory is talking about elements that could be found in any kind of story: Non-fiction, Comedy, Drama, or Entertainment. Some genres like comedy or drama are seen as being intrinsic to the theory, and can be elaborated on:

• Situation Comedy - TV Sitcoms (I Love Lucy)
  
• Action Comedy - Slapstick (Three Stooges)
  
• Comedy of Fixed Attitudes - Comedy of Manners (Oscar Wilde)
  
• Comedy of Manipulations - Comedy of Errors (Twelfth Night)
  

There are a total of 16 genres created through these combinations. The genres that we generally think of as Genre fiction are lumped together as stylistic variations under Entertainment:

• Entertaining Situations - Horror, Science Fiction, Fantasy, Musicals, Disaster Movies
  
• Entertaining Actions - Action Adventure, Suspense
  
• Entertaining Fixed Attitudes - High Concept
  
• Entertaining Manipulations - Mysteries, Thrillers

Beyond that, Armando Saldana-Mora in his book on screenwriting has refined these Dramatica categories so that the genres are defined a little more loosely:

• Genres Set In a Situation: Horror, Disaster, Road/Buddy, Police, Prison
• Genres Set In Activities: Action/Adventure (Westerns, Sci-Fi, Fantasy, War, Spy), Road, Buddy, Crime (Detective Stories, Suspense, Thrillers), Romantic Comedies, Social Dramas (Modern Epics, Domestic Dramas), Personal Dramas (Punitive Plots, Testing Plots)
• Genres Set in Fixed Attitudes: Social Dramas (Classroom, Courtroom, Psycho Dramas, Business Dramas, Holocaust Dramas), Love Stories, Erotica
• Genres Set in Manipulations and Manners of Thinking: Mysteries and Whodunits, Personal Dramas (Education Plot, Disillusionment Plot, Redemption Plot), Coming of Age Stories
  

So these make a little more common sense. For instance you can see where a Romance novel is a better example for an Entertainment of Fixed Attitudes (Obsessions), than the poorly defined "High Concept" (entertainment based on an inventive idea). I've also wondered if meta-fiction or experimental stories could also be included there, but that's a discussion for another day.

Back to Horror. In Saldano-Mora's scheme, Horror is limited to a terrifying situation or environment:

In Supernatural Horror (THE HAUNTING), the environment has no logical explanation. In an Uncanny Story (ALIEN), the situation is logical but still holds the characters in shocking circumstances. And in a Hybrid Super-Uncanny Horror (THE SHINING), the situation's nature is never clear.

Variants include the Gothic Story (FROM HELL), where the dark circumstances only beset the Main Character... And the Black Comedy (ONCE BITTEN) -- where only one character steps into the not-so-scary situation like a fish out of water...

That's OK, but the sub-genres seem arbitrarily chosen and the examples are a little off. There are probably better examples of an Uncanny Story than the movie Alien, and I wouldn't consider From Hell to be a Gothic Story. Black Comedy can mean many things to many people.

More importantly, they sort of skirt past the issue of what is "terrifying". What is the "horror" of Horror, what is the DNA of what scares us? So, inspired by Literacity, I've undertaken my own scheme based around the more standard Dramatica model.

In Dramatica every story has a set of well defined story points including, the Story Goal (the problem the protagonist is trying to solve), Requirements (what the protagonist needs to solve the problem), and Consequences (what will happen if the protagonist fails to solve the problem). There are also Forewarnings, Dividends, Costs, Prerequisites, and Preconditions but these are less important to the story overall.

To me, what distinguishes genres like Fantasy and Science Fiction from Horror is the emphasis they place on these story points. In Lord of the Rings, the goal is to destroy the ring before Sauron can take control of Middle-Earth. In Star Wars, the goal is to destroy the death star before it can destroy the rebellion. Both of these stories end in success. Evil is defeated and everyone is happy. Horror, on the other hand, focuses much more on the consequences of failing to reach a goal: corruption, mayhem, decadence, and madness. Damage to body and soul. There are other ways to fail in a genre story, but with horror the consequences are graphic, visceral, shocking, and irreversible.

By these terms I mean:

• Corruption of the environment or the body through supernatural transformation.
• Chaotic activities and mayhem.
• Decadent ideas based on morbid attitudes and obsessions.
• Psychological terror based on a character's descent into madness or based on the mind games of another.
  

Here's my original set with modifications:

• Failure of the environment (Situation)
  corruption (haunted houses, weird mutations zombie movies)
• Failure of action (Activity)
  violation (slasher films, torture) mayhem (Monster movies, Slasher Movies)
• Failure of the mind (Fixed Ideas Attitudes)
  decadence (morbid desires attitudes and obsessions; Phantom of the Opera Marquis de Sade, Gothic Literature)
• Failure of psychology (Manipulations)
  madness (psychological horror; think Poe and Lovecraft)

I think the two tricky ones are Fixed Attitudes and Manipulations, or Decadence and Madness. In my mind, one is cool and the other hot, one rational the other irrational, one philosophical and the other passionate.

A fixed attitude is a prejudice or bias that defines how one sees the world. It is a static point of view that can harden into obsession. In horror, this can be expressed through decadent attitudes about the world where normative morality is inverted or twisted: pain is pleasure, ugliness is beauty, evil is good. In Gothic stories, tombs and ruins are romanticized and characters obsess over dead lovers. Love and death are conflated.

In psychological horror on the other hand we have stories based on madness, mystery, and manipulations. Our manner of thinking becomes problematic leading us into errors in judgment and mis-identifications. We also make ourselves vulnerable to the mind games, misrepresentations and misleading desires of others. In Poe for example, the narrator of the "Tell-Tale Heart" is driven to confess his crimes by the non-existent heart beat, while in "The Cask of Amontillado," Fortunato is lured to his doom through the manipulativeness of the narrator. In Silence of the Lambs, Hannibal Lecter is made terrifying through his ability to manipulate others.

Psychological horror can also extend to the way the author tries to manipulate the audience through twists and turns and shocks. This could possibly include everything from The Sixth Sense to Giallo thrillers.

The important thing to remember is that each of these categories focuses on consequence and failure where other genres strive for solving the problem and reaching the goal. Here's another snapshot:

• Success story of environment: Science Fiction and Fantasy
• Failure story of environment: Supernatural Horror

• Success story of action: Action Adventure, Suspense
  
• Failure story of action: Monster Movies, Slasher Movies
  

• Success story of fixed attitude: Romance
• Failure story of fixed attitude: Gothic

• Success story of manipulations: Mystery, Thriller
  
• Failure story of manipulations: Psychological Horror, Giallo
  

In other words, horror stories are hybrid genre stories in which the physical and mental traumas of failure are placed front and center.

Having gotten this far, I now see a lot of parallels between Horror and Drama. In Drama you have both the modern and the classical definitions of tragedy and failure. So what's the difference between Horror fiction and Tragedy? Perhaps Drama can be defined by personal flaws and failings that lead to one's downfall, while Horror represents the impersonal and the alien? Something to think about for the next revisitation.

The Horror, The Horror

Interesting article that attempts to define the horror genre and its many sub-genres. It makes some good points but I think it falls short of really putting together a complete theory of horror. I also don't understand the whole tree metaphor but that may just be me. Here's the gist:

The "roots" of our subconscious memory soak up the myriad predicaments of life: loss of a job, a broken leg, the end of a relationship. The trunk is, to put it simply, loss of control: our failed attempts to reconcile these frustrations and doubts into a reasonable approximation of an ordered universe. Then they branch out into various terrors, and though we still classify them by type, they all boil down to one theme: loss of control. Like great Yggdrasil, this three has three primary branches:

• loss of control of self
  death by unnatural means, mutation of one's body
• loss of control of environment
  resurrection of the dead, animation of the inanimate
• loss of control of place in society
  visions that no one will believe, rejection by family group

I would have been with him all the way if he hadn't stopped at three. Basically what we have is three of the four Dramatica quads and a handful of sometimes related genres:

• loss of control of self (manipulation/activity)
  death by unnatural means (suspense), mutation of one's body (science fiction)
  
• loss of control of environment (situation)
  resurrection of the dead (fantasy), animation of the inanimate (fantasy)
  
• loss of control of place in society (fixed ideas)
  visions that no one will believe (thriller), rejection by family group (bias drama)
  

What we have then is really a muddle of ideas from other genres. In horror though the emphasis is placed more on outcome (failure/bad) and emphasis (the consequence of failure) in the subjective storyline rather than achieving the goal in the overall story. In this case:

• Failure of action (Activity)
  violation (slasher films, torture)
• Failure of the mind (Fixed Ideas)
  decadence (morbid desires and obsessions; Phantom of the Opera)
• Failure of the environment (Situation)
  corruption (haunted houses, zombie movies)
• Failure of psychology (Manipulations)
  madness (psychological horror; think Poe and Lovecraft)
  

The key is that order and control are rarely restored. And even if they are, it's a very thin success/bad story: the horror lingers or has the ability to return.

On a secondary note, in Dramatica the Main Character (MC) is always a potential victim and the Impact Character (IC) is the monster, the killer, the unseen evil force. So the bulk of the action takes place in the subjective storyline with a thin objective story to bookend the scares and supply extra victims. The problem with a lot of modern horror movies is that the villain, the IC, tends to dominate and becomes the de-facto hero (Hannibal, Freddy), or that the only throughline we get is the violently subjective storyline (where the drama of consequences is played out), leaving the other throughlines all but forgotten (Hostel). When this happens the movie becomes an assault by the filmmaker (IC) on the audience (MC).

All in all a very interesting subject well worth exploring.

The Illusionist

I rewatched the movie The Illusionist, having previously seen it on my flight home from Edinburgh. As anyone who's watched the monitors on a flight knows, the programming is really more of distraction than something you can really pay attention to.

The first time I saw it, I missed out on Eisenheim's backstory and so didn't immediately understand his history with the duchess. Especially the part where as a teenager he promises to help her run away and disappear. A dead giveaway.

I was also distracted enough not to see a twist coming (not just the particular twist of the movie - but a twist of any kind), and so by the end my face had that same astonished smile that Paul Giamatti's Chief Inspector wears as he realizes what's happened.

On second viewing, the movie holds up beautifully and lays out its intentions from the very start so that you can watch it at that Sixth Sense meta-level where the story still plays even though you know the secret. If I have a complaint, it's that the movie never even attempts to explain the ghosts and how he makes them move through crowds in real-time. But that's not actually important to the story.

In Dramatica terms, The Illusionist pulls off a nifty story telling trick by placing the bulk of the narrative and our attention on the Impact Character (Eisenheim) and Subjective storyline ("Don't make me arrest you"). The Overall Story is about the Crown Prince and his political machinations with the Main Character role being filled by the Chief Inspector who is in charge of keeping the population under control and the prince happy. On a personal level he is torn between his ambitions (loyalty to the prince) and his sense of right and wrong (the prince is a baaad man).

Why do I say that the Chief Inspector is the MC and not Eisenheim? Because it is through his eyes that we see Eisenheim. It is he who tells us the Illusionist's history and story and it is he who finally comes to realize what's happening at the end. When the audience is meant to be astonished by Eisenheim, we see the Inspector in the audience being astonished. As Eisenheim gets himself into deeper and deeper trouble with the Prince, it is the Chief Inspector's reactions that show us how much trouble. In true Dramatica fashion we see that through his interest in the Orange Tree illusion we get the "we two are alike" moment that sets up the MC/IC opposition.

Ultimately, it is a failure/good story. A failure because the Chief Inspector fails to solve the problem of the Illusionist for the Prince: the prince loses his life and the Chief Inspector his job. But it is good because the Chief Inspector admires the Illusionist and is able to solve his own personal issues by doing what's right instead of what's politically useful. In this way I believe the CI is a steadfast character. Someone who always intends to do the right thing but first must be compelled to start by the situation he finds himself in.

Although the Impact Character dominates the story, he is really just the engine that motivates the people around him. This allows him to be a compelling character while still preserving the mystery of his illusions.

Here's my Dramatica summary:

• Overall Story: Activity of Obtaining - The Crown Prince wants to be Emperor
• Main Character: Fixed Attitude of Innermost Desires - The Chief Inspector
  
• Impact Character: Situation of the Future - Eisenheim - Love and Magic
  
• Subjective Story: Manipulation of Changing One's Nature - The Illusionist's Rebellion aka "Don't Make Me Arrest You"