"...you haven't seen enough movies. All of life's riddles are answered in the movies."

Of course, that's a line from perhaps the only great scene in Lawrence Kasdan's overwrought, but watchable Grand Canyon. The character delivering the line is "Davis", a Hollywood Slash-film producer, played by Steve Martin. He's just explained to his friend Mack (Kevin Kline) that Mack is looking for too much complexity in things. The real order of the world is under your nose, he says. Naturally, that Davis, playing a purposefully shallow character in a sometimes implausible film, uses a truly great cariacature movie, Preston Sturges' Sullivan's Travels as his example of life being a circular journey towards simplicity and authenticity only ices the irony cake.

That scene with Martin and Kline jibes with an email discussion about archetype and it's immersive, intuitive qualities with a regular reader. Here's a snippet:

...storytelling and archetypal characters, whether individuals or symbolic [imagery] are the only real ways we learn anything and *keep* it. And people want to learn, insatiably. They just hate to be "taught". Stories derive their depth and power from concision and simplicity while colluding with the hearers own mental library. We check out characters listeners already have and give them previously unknown depth. What makes them so powerful as communicators when we do this is they are the listeners' own "people", therefore they are trustworthy.

The above examples remind that it took me a while to learn that character within a brand--its compelling, impelling force--requires the heavy participation and cooperation of a perceiver's mind. And that the goal is unfiltered authenticity. And that the reward for achieving this is suspension of disbelief. Another word for this is trust. Two more, special favorites of brand managers, are loyalty and share.

Given the sway of suits, and the sea of management, it was often a self-directed struggle without a sanctioned lexicon. As shrimpling creatives, we railed against linear thinking, but of course, "that's what creatives do." We talked about "character" and plausibility and keeping the asymmetry that proved humanity. Then, when we figured we'd pushed our luck far enough, we acceeded, made the logo as big as the client's foot, and went and had a beer.

Well, the lexicon, the Pattern Language, has been with us forever. These guys teach about putting it on celluloid:

Dramatica Storybook: Chap 8

Rules for Building Characters?

The question now becomes, "Is there a definitive set of rules that govern how characteristics may or may not be combined without violating the analogy of the Story Mind?" Let's find out.

A Character Cannot Serve Two Masters

The first thing we notice when examining the Motivation Characters is that there is never an instance where a Character contains both characteristics in a Dynamic Pair. This makes common sense: "One cannot serve two masters." Essentially, how can you be AGAINST something at the same time you are FOR it? So, our first rule of combining characteristics is: Characters should never represent more than one characteristic in a Dynamic Pair....

Dramatica Storybook: Chap 9

What's the Purpose?

When authors describe their characters, they are often asked to state a characters' motivations. A common reply might be, "The character Jane wants to be president." Often that is accepted as a valid motivation. In fact, becoming president is Jane's Purpose, not her motivation. Her motivation may be that she felt no control over her life as a child. Or she might be motivated by a love of the natural world, hoping to instigate a national conservation plan. She might be motivated by a desire for an equal rights amendment.

Just knowing what her purpose is does not tell us anything about what Jane is driven by but only what she is driven toward. Any of the stated motivations would be sufficient to explain Jane's purpose of becoming president. Conversely, if Jane's motivation were the first example - a lack of control over her life as a child - several different purposes might satisfy that motivation. She might become a school teacher, a drill sergeant, or a religious leader. Clearly, motivations do not specifically dictate purposes, nor are purposes indicative of any particular motivations....

Storytelling. Branding. Same thing in my view. The point is to suggest believable, ultimately Happy Trails, not to mandate cloying, unnatural happy endings.