The part of character arcs that still worry me are the arcs that are contained in a single scene. I’m a fairly stable (read: boring) person, and my emotions bobble constantly. The thought that my MC should go from happy to sad (or whatever) in a consistant arc within the scene really doesn’t make much sense to me. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.

I think you nailed it pretty well. A character arc is how a character grows and changes during the course of the story.

For most of my future story ideas, I have the Inciting Incident and First Turning Point in mind, but then I have only the vaguest idea of an ending. I can’t come up with the later ideas until I know the characters better. Until I understand where they’re coming from, I don’t know for sure how they’ll react to the Turning Point. From there, I can see their arc and can fill in the rest of the scenes and turning points, etc.

Jami G.