My son brings home a project he did at school, and I get carried away analyzing it with complex narrative science.
Behold the "conflics[sic] and a theme" of the popular children's series, Warrior Cats:
Who needs four towers of Domain
, Concern
, Issue
and Problem
when you have this model of story? Like Chris and Melanie's original Writer's Blocks for Dramatica, this story "dice" my 10-year old son brought home from school dives deep into the thematics present within a story:
Brokenstar became leader and started training kits, putting elders out of camp, and trained with claws out.
Sounds like Brokenstar has a Main Character Throughline: Activity
when you take into account his issues about training "kits" with his claws out. Definitely a Do-er
--which creates significant personal issues for him.
And then we have his Obstacle Character
Yellowfang:
Brokenstar exiled Yellowfang because they blamed her for killing two kits, so she had to live in Thunderclan.
Looks like their Relationship Story Throughline
falls in Universe
. Or it could be Mind
. Or it could be that this Warrior Cats story isn't a complete story at all, which would explain why this is a 12-sided die and not 16 as you would expect with a quad-based Dramatica model.
But then again--maybe not--as evidenced by my son's wrap-up of the story's theme:
I think it would be "think twice before you act" because Brokenstar makes bad choices and that later leads to death.
A simple take on theme worthy of Lajos Egris and those who like A leads to B interpretations. Looks like I'm going to have that father/son talk about Knowledge
, Thought
, Ability
, and Desire
before he gets too far down the wrong path.
Regardless, it's pretty clear which son of mine will be taking over the family business.
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