Q: Has anybody developed a main character in Dramatica who has imaginary friends? I suppose my question would apply for one with multiple personalities as well. If so, did you treat the main character as one character with multiple players? Or, did you treat each personality/imaginary friend as a separate character? Has anyone analyzed A Beautiful Mind?
A: From a Dramatica perspective, characters are either defined by their functions (Objective Characters in the Overall Story throughline), or by their perspective (Subjective Characters in the Main Character throughline, the Impact Character throughline, and the MC/IC Relationship throughline).
The point of creating different characters is to show either different (objective) functions or different (subjective) perspectives.
These characters are then placed into players. Players may contain one or more characters, such as combining the protagonist and Main Character in a single player. Characters may be spread across multiple players, such as a character defined by a group of players (e.g. the antagonist as The Empire in Star Wars), or in a succession of players (e.g. the Impact Character in the ghosts in A Christmas Carol).
So the real question is: Are "imaginary friends" different characters in different players, or are they one character represented by multiple players?
In most cases, I think imaginary friends are separate objective characters in different players (e.g. A Beautiful Mind and Sybil). Occasionally, the imaginary "friend" may also house the Impact Character (e.g. Fight Club).
