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Dramatica Tip of the Month
May 2007

Special Skill or Unique Ability?

Q: Maybe I’m misunderstanding To Kill A Mockingbird, but it seems to me the main story is the town’s response to the charge of rape. I see Atticus (Protagonist but not Main Character) as having Unique Abilities/Flaws able to impact Overall Story Goal, but I don’t see that Scout (as Main Character) does. She observes the Overall Story (OK, she defuses the mob, but that doesn’t impact the Goal) and lives within the Subjective Story. Am I making sense? Your thoughts?

A: The Main Character Unique Ability and Critical Flaw put the Main Character in a place where his or her function in the Overall Story may enable the protagonist to accomplish the goal.  The Main Character ends up providing the Overall Story whatever is needed which then allows the protagonist to make it all work out.

Unfortunately, To Kill A Mockingbird has an Outcome of Failure, so the Main Character's Unique Ability is undermined by the Main Character's Critical Flaw. 

Atticus is the protagonist.  He may or may not be well suited to achieve the story goal, but in To Kill A Mockingbird what ever he has isn't enough.  The Story Goal is to free an innocent black man, Jim Robinson, wrongly accused of raping a white woman.  Jim Robinson is killed while "trying to escape."  Therefore, the story goal is not met = Failure.

Don't confuse the idea of someone having special  skills (such as Indiana Jones' bullwhip or Atticus' brilliant mind) with Dramatica's concept of Main Character Unique Ability.  Both may exist in a story, but only the Main Character Unique Ability is tied to the storyform and therefore is part of the story's meaning.

If Scout's unique ability (as seen in defusing the mob outside the jail) was there to defuse the mob that killed Jim Robinson, she may have in fact put her unique ability to good use.  As a failure story, however, it was not meant to be.