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Dramatica
Dictionary
J
Journey -- [Type]
-- Sequential markers of a story's progress that indicate the shift
from one concern to another as each throughline proceeds, Act by Act.
Judgment -- [Plot
Dynamic] -- The author's assessment of whether or not the Main Character
has resolved his personal problem -- The notion that the good guys win
and the bad guys lose is not always true. In stories, as in life, we often
see very bad people doing very well for themselves (if not for others).
And even more often we see very good people striking out. If we only judged
things by success and failure, it wouldn't matter if the outcome was good
or bad as long as it was accomplished. The choice of Good or Bad places
the author's moralistic judgment on the value of the Main Character's
success or failure in resolving his personal problems. It is an opportunity
not only to address good guys that win and bad guys that fail, as well
as good guys that fail and the bad guys that win, but to comment on the
success or failure of their growth as human beings.
Justification --
The process by which we establish and maintain givens -- All understanding
comes from determining connections between processes and results, causes
and effects. All anticipation comes from accepting these connections as
unchanging and absolute. In this manner we are able to respond to new
situations based on our experience and to plan for the future based on
our expectations. But our knowledge of our world and ourselves is incomplete.
We are constantly learning and redefining our understanding and our anticipation.
Sometimes we have built up such a complex hierarchy of experience and
expectation that it becomes easier (more efficient) to formulate or accept
what might seem an unlikely and complex explanation than to redefine the
entire base of our knowledge. After all, the enormity of our experience
carries a lot of weight compared to a single incident that does not conform
to our conclusions. Unfortunately, once conflicting information is explained
away by presupposing an unseen force it is not integrated into the base
of our experience and nothing has been learned from it. The new and potentially
valuable information has bounced off the mental process of Justification,
having no impact and leaving no mark. This is how preconceptions, prejudices,
and blind spots are created. It is also how we learn, for only by accepting
some things as givens can we build complex understandings on those foundations.
Justification also creates the motivation to change things rather than
accept them, but in so doing also creates a blind spot that keeps us from
seeing a solution in ourselves in situations where it would be better
to accept. Because we cannot know if a point of view should be held onto
or given up and reexamined, we have no way of being certain that we are
approaching a problem correctly. But either way, we will not question
our Justification, only the propriety of applying it to a particular instance.
In the case of a Main Character who must remain steadfast, he needs to
hold onto his Justifications long enough to succeed with them. But in
the case of a Main Character who must change, he needs to give up his
Justifications and reexamine his basic understanding. Stories explore
the relationship of the inequity between the way things are and the way
the Main Character sees them or would have them be. Then it can be evaluated
by the audience as to whether or not the decision to remain steadfast
or change was the proper one. So Justification is neither good nor bad.
It simply describes a mind set that holds personal experience as absolute
knowledge, which is sometimes just what is needed to solve the problem
and other times is actually the cause of the problem.
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