They are not different, and we don't need more information. The central dramatic argument of the script is also referred to as the "theme." Aristotle used the word "unity" to describe this concept as well.
I know this, because I'm pretty much the only person in the world who says "central dramatic argument" for theme, so it's basically a phrase I invented, and what I meant when I invented it is THEME.
The reason I started saying "central dramatic argument" is precisely to help guide people toward the essence of good dramatic theme (which is to say, an assertion that can be argued) and away from the essence of bad dramatic theme (a neutral concept like "brotherhood" or "mortality").
I didn't say I was the first person to chain those three words together.
I said that I am PRETTY MUCH the only person-- as far as I know-- other than people that have read the dumb crap I write about screenwriting-- that uses that phrase to describe the theme of a movie.
I said "pretty much" on the assumption that there might be an obscure book on theater from 1955, and one of fourteen billion screenwriting books as well, that might happen to also use that phrase once.
I was just looking if someone, somewhere, had defined "central dramatic argument" differently than "theme", before I read your reply, and found both books. Then read your reply and thought it was funny that those books used the same expression too. Maybe I should have added an emoticone:
I'm deleting that post because it's horrible to let good convos get trolled into oblivion. DELETE CRAIG! AND IGNORE!
ETA:
I do think that some of the conversations are awesome. And when you get a bunch of working writers, up and coming writers, and hungry writers engaged in earnest, the end result is better than a lot of what you'd get at a top film school. The dialogue swings from personal methodology to broad creative philosophy to obscure topics in one thread.
I do think that some of the conversations are awesome. And when you get a bunch of working writers, up and coming writers, and hungry writers engaged in earnest, the end result is better than a lot of what you'd get at a top film school. The dialogue swings from personal methodology to broad creative philosophy to obscure topics in one thread.
I agree. A lot of the time, that's exactly how things work here.
A related phrase:
Thematic change. To explain the change the protag (or another character) goes through from being one type of person at the start of the story to a different type of person at the end.
"I am the story itself; its source, its voice, its music."
- Clive Barker, Galilee
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