restrictions freedoms or my ignorance?

by Knight
(India)

Hi Glen,

While working on stories using Dramatica here is what I understood. MC is living his throughline with his own share of concerns issues etc, independent of the Overall story. Only if/when he participates in the overall story throughline (as archetypes or complex character etc) he would face the OS throughline story points/conflicts.

Same goes for the IC, he will face his share of problems/conflicts/story points only when he participates in the OS story as archetypes/ complex character etc.. Same with the relationship stories, when the characters from OS story participate in the SS story, they (their relationship) would have the conflict of SS story, otherwise they are happy being objective characters.

Now here is what bothers me the most, suppose I create a detective character with manipulation as his throughline. That means the other throughlines would be locked. So I go again to series number 2 with the same MC may be interchange the objective subjective throughlines. so series 2 done. Series 3 again, MC is manipulation. And I have only two throughline options. That means I have to change the main character, hence losing his essence for future, Because MC throughline means who MC is and what is he battling personally and if I assign a different MC, the POV of my original character is lost. enlighten me please.

Also I feel I might be completely wrong in my understanding of dramatica.
Please excuse grammatical errors/ expressions. I am not a native speaker of the language.

Thank you so much.
You all stay Blessed!!

Answer:

Okay, let me start by summarizing your question to make sure I follow. You are writing a series of stories about a detective character. This means they probably are all of a similar type, either murder mysteries, or thrillers, or possibly suspense tales.

I think you may be making the mistake of thinking the OS throughline must be different in each story, which is not true.

You're not, for example putting your detective in a mystery story, then a romance story, then a horror story etc. Correct?

Since all the stories about your character probably fall into the same genre, chances are the overall throughline for each will be the same. And this means that the relationship throughline will be the same as well, etc.

Generally, the main character in a series tends to deal with similar types of problems in each story. A detective may deal with a different murder in each story, but they will all be murders. If you put him into a different type of story, he will be a fish out of water.

So the main character throughline will likely be the same in each story. In addition, since this is a series, the main character will probably be steadfast, since if he were to change he might not feel like the same character from story to story.

The same is true for the impact character throughline. The detective may encounter different impact characters in different stories, but they may test the main character in similar ways.

Don't worry that this will make the stories too much alike. You can write an infinite number of stories with a single storyform. And just because two stories have the same OS throughline, they don't have to have the same concerns.

Plus, any of the four concerns within a domain can manifest in an infinite variety of ways. For instance, the concern of Gathering Information could mean discovering the identity of the murderer -- who is different in each story. Or it could mean gathering clues, which will be different in each story, etc.

I hope that clarifies matters.

Best of luck.