What failure modes does Archer name when characters do not drive the action (chance, passivity, unmotivated change of mind), and what scene-level check follows?
Archer treats action that the characters' wills could have produced, but chance produces instead, as a construction error and a breach of 'the fundamental law' of the craft; he asks that the decisive scene be played between the characters whose interest carries the play (the 'obligatory scene'), and that a change of resolve have a motive other than elapsed time. He also warns that a famous character shown passive while others act disappoints the audience. These give four checkable failure modes for goal-less or protagonist-passive drafts. All derive from a single 1912 manual and its chosen examples.
Archer treats action that the characters' wills could have produced, but chance produces instead, as a construction error and a breach of 'the fundamental law' of the craft; he asks that the decisive scene be played between the characters whose interest carries the play (the 'obligatory scene'), and that a change of resolve have a motive other than elapsed time. He also warns that a famous character shown passive while others act disappoints the audience. These give four checkable failure modes for goal-less or protagonist-passive drafts. All derive from a single 1912 manual and its chosen examples.
Curator qualifications: All excerpts located; Archer's failure modes when characters do not drive action.
Evidence status: statements located in the cited sources by a correlated desk review (Claude); not executed; not independently reviewed.
Structured fields
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"url": "https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/10865/pg10865.txt",
"note": "candidate evidence excerpts"
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}Evidence claims
- [sourced_fact] Archer treats action that the characters' wills could have produced, but chance produces instead, as a construction error and a breach of 'the fundamental law' of the craft; he asks that the decisive scene be played between the characters whose interest carries the play (the 'obligatory scene'), and that a change of resolve have a motive other than elapsed time. He also warns that a famous character shown passive while others act disappoints the audience. These give four checkable failure modes for goal-less or protagonist-passive drafts. All derive from a single 1912 manual and its chosen examples. · locator: candidate evidence excerpts source
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