How do turncoats and character reveals work within Dramatica?
Any experience, thoughts, or suggestions on using the Build Character screen for writing mystery/thrillers?
Specifically, I'm having trouble with the "apparent story" and the "true story" aspect of writing a mystery/thriller and assigning elements in the Build Character screen. Things seem to be one way during much of the story. As the detective investigates, the picture keeps changing, until at the end, day is revealed to be night, white is really black, and the true bad guy's identity is revealed.
So what should be encoded in Build Characters: the characters' apparent motives, methods, purposes, or their "ultimate, true" elements? A big problem is that those true elements aren't revealed until the end, making it hard to put them in the story earlier.
The best way you make a characters look like they're one thing but are really another is to build your characters with seemingly incompatible traits. The trick is to show the "public" traits but conceal the "private" traits until the reveal. By conceal I mean use misdirection so that the effects of the private traits are either misinterpreted or associated with someone other than that character. This often works when assigning traits from the different character trait levels (motivation, methodology, evaluation, purpose).
For example, let's say we have a character that is both oppose and proaction. He can publicly oppose things while privately (and unknown to the audience) act as a provocateur by setting things into motion proactively. Eventually the hidden trait is connected by others (and the audience) to its proper owner and that character's "true" (complete) nature is revealed.
