Action & Decision Elements of Character Archetypes

Each of the Eight Archetypal Characters contains one characteristic pertaining to actions and another characteristic pertaining to decisions.

PROTAGONIST

Action Characteristic: Pursues the goal. The traditional Protagonist is the driver of the story: the one who forces the action.
Decision Characteristic: Urges the other characters to consider the necessity of achieving the goal.

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ANTAGONIST

Action Characteristic: The Antagonist physically tries to prevent or avoid the successful achievement of the goal by the Protagonist.
Decision Characteristic: The Antagonist urges the other characters to reconsider the attempt to achieve the goal.

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GUARDIAN

Action Characteristic: The Guardian is a helper who aids the efforts to achieve the story goal.
Decision Characteristic: It represents conscience in the mind, based upon the Author’s view of morality.

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CONTAGONIST

Action Characteristic: The Contagonist hinders the efforts to achieve the story goal.
Decision Characteristic: It represents temptation to take the wrong course or approach.

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REASON

Action Characteristic: This character is very calm or controlled in its actions.
Decision Characteristic: It makes its decisions on the basis of logic, never letting emotion get in the way of a rational course.

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EMOTION

Action Characteristic: The Emotional character is frenzied or uncontrolled in its actions.
Decision Characteristic: It responds with its feelings with disregard for practicality.

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SIDEKICK

Action Characteristic: The Sidekick supports, playing a kind of cheering section.
Decision Characteristic: It is almost gullible in the extent of its faith — in the goal, in the Protagonist, in success, etc.

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SKEPTIC

Action Characteristic: The Skeptic opposes — everything.
Decision Characteristic: It disbelieves everything, doubting courses of action, sincerity, truth — whatever.

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Split Archetypes in Quads

Having split them in two, we can see that each of the Archetypal Characters has an attitude or Decision characteristic and an approach or Action characteristic. When we arrange both characteristics under each of the eight Archetypes in our Driver and Passenger Quad format, we get a graphic feel for the Archetypal Objective Characters and the Elements they represent.

Driver Quad

Passenger Quad

In Dramatica, we refer to these 16 characteristics as the Motivation Elements because they describe what drives the Archetypal Characters.

From the Dramatica Theory Book