Dramatica Term

a specific perspective or collection of dramatic elements that are embodied by a player

In Dramatica, there are two major divisions of Characters: the Main vs. Impact Characters and the Overall Characters. In the most frequently told kinds of stories, Main vs. Impact Characters are the smaller group, consisting of only the Main Character and the Impact Character. Both of these are concerned with providing the audience with a Main vs. Impact view of the story. There can be, and frequently are, many more Overall than Main vs. Impact Characters. An Overall Character is defined as a specific collection of dramatic Elements or characteristics that remains consistent for the entire story. There are sixty four elements in the Dramatica Structure which represent the building blocks of Characters. All sixty four elements must be used to fully develop the story's argument. To have meaning to an audience, the group of elements that makes up each Overall (Objective) character must present a consistent viewpoint (with regards to the story goal/problem) during the course of the story. In this way the relative attributes of each of these elemental approaches can be clearly explored during the course of the story. Sixty four elements may at first sound too limited to create interesting characters, but when you consider that the number of arrangements of the elements is multiplied by the way the might be grouped, the total number of characters that can be created is in the millions. The Overall Characters present the story to the audience and the Main vs. Impact Characters allow the audience to participate in the story. Because of this, Main vs. Impact Characters are unique in that they do double duty by having a special relationship with the audience and pulling their weight as Overall Characters as well. This is because they are concerned both with the Main Character's personal problem and also the Overall Story problem.