Main Dramatic Pillar

The assignment is to write a “pillar article,” which, I’m told, is essentially a slightly longer blog entry with a more informative bent. So let’s get started by talking about one of the most important aspects that’s come to be associated with traditionally “good” fiction. Here goes:

In just about every good story you read, you’ll find at it’s center a character who has a goal. Together, these two things are the first line of defense against a scattered, chaotic mess on the page. With a character and her goal, we have focus, something to keep us grounded, and something to keep the reader turning pages. Whatever else happens, we want to know if Paula will get this job. Or whatever.

In some more professional circles they’ll call this the Main Dramatic Questions (they’ll even abbreviate that, so we have an MDQ). Yes or no. Will the protagonist accomplish this goal. That’s the story. Our, and the character’s, journey to the answer.

Yes, no, and even maybe are all acceptable answers. That ring was absolutely cast into the fires of Mt. Doom. No question. The grandmother from Flannery O’Conner’s “A Good Man is Hard to Find” did not survive, no. And, will the girl in Ernest Hemingway’s “Hills Like White Elephants” get that abortion? We have no idea! (Although, frankly, I’m inclined to believe she will, and they’ll part in tears regardless.)

Now, though, might be a good time to mention that absolutely no rule stands hard and fast for absolutely every scenario when it comes to fiction (and really any writing, for that matter). Take that last example. Even though Hemingway didn’t do away with the main question in his story, he did twist the telling so the story became about showing the reader what the question is instead of the answer. I guess we can’t all agree it worked, although I thought it worked quite well.

Sometimes the question the question is shrouded so thoroughly, you have to wonder if it’s there at all. Like in Raymond Carver’s “Cathedral” (you can find the full text here actually).  Will the narrator change how he thinks about the blind? Will he learn something? The answer in the end is as vague as the question, but the point is that it wasn’t missing entirely. It never is.

You will always have a character, and he (or she (or it) ) will always have a goal, internal or external, obvious or not. They’ll be there because without them you don’t have a story. You have an event or a scene or a thesis maybe. Someone has to do something if you want a story.

Remember to think about the Main Dramatic Question the next time your reading a book or watching a movie!