Just when I thought I was out...

We've extended our thesis a little more to cover elements of story. We're not going to expound greatly at this juncture but in essence the extension follows the same hierarchical pattern as before where:

The Subtext of the Story is the Characters,

the Subtext of the Characters is the Situation,

the Subtext of the Situation is the Dialog,

the Subtext of the Dialog is the Emotion,

the Subtext of the Emotion is the Personality

and the Subtext of the Personality is the Soul.

As always this fits with my earlier Circular Argument - that everything in cinema is defined as circular, where no matter where you are on the circumference of the cinematic experience, whether it be character, story, structure, they all intersect along the path.

For instance Story will determine what type of Characters you need, but the Characters can influence the Story based on their Personality - or the Subtext of their Emotion (one personality responds differently to the ambush than another). At the same time the Character will determine the Story as different Characters will end up "on the run" for different reasons.

For example, the Accountant will probably not be in a seedy bar when they overhear "McGuffin plans" or pick up the wrong "bag."

From the opposite perspective the Soul you wish to reveal will affect each of the things on the pyramid. From Dictionary.com "Soul" means:

the principle of life, feeling, thought and action in humans, regarded as a distinct entity separate from the body.....

and

the emotional part of human nature, the seat of the feelings or sentiments

The definition of Story is:

a report or account of a matter or a statement of allegation

and

a narrative, either true or fictitious, in prose or verse, designed to interest, amuse or instruct the hearer or reader; tale

Looking at the definition one gets a sense of similarity in that we are in effect writing "a report or account of the emotional part of human nature."

Or Revealing the Soul.

The Circular argument extends to the relationships of the definitions applied to all of the "Steps" of the hierarchy and I think we'll get to those later. I've got some software code to write.