Shaping character arcs—the middle

This entry is part 4 of 11 in the series character arcs

So we’ve figured out what drives our characters, and where they’ll start and end their internal character journeys. So what happens in the middle? Obviously, if our characters start at one extreme (fear, loneliness, naivete) and go to the other (courage, love, wisdom), some pretty extreme things are going to have to happen in the middle. I mean, most of us don’t just wake up one day to have our deepest problems, flaws or hangups magically healed, right?

This reversal can stem from some level of autonomy—the character can recognize the problem and make a conscious choice to change—or we can force them to accept the change, give them no other possibilities than to try this new belief system/opportunity/way of life. But either way, to be believable, it’s got to be prompted by external events. As Alicia Rasley says:

Character-driven fiction is about internal change. Paradoxically, external action is usually needed to bring on this change. External action is the surest catalyst for both internal growth and reader interest. Sure, your protagonist could overcome his distaste for intimacy and his dread of family by going to a psychologist twice a week for ten years…. but who wants to read about that? Even psychologists, probably, would put down a novel about therapy sessions to pick up a novel about a woman who learns to trust by being blackmailed into joining a secret team to rescue the kidnapped clone of Thomas Edison.

To make sure that the external action is prompting your internal changes, Alicia suggests linking the external events and internal arc in stimulus-response units. She also points out that the change comes later—we see the character striving to maintain his worldview/attitude/whatever for most of the story. Until that reversal comes, the character isn’t ready for the change, and he’ll do what he can to avoid it. And those choices are going to backfire, hurt him somehow, perhaps breaking him down gradually, until he is put into a situation where he has no other choice or where he finally sees how stupid he was.

It’s also okay—advisable, even!—to not build the character arc every second. In fact, it’s more compelling to see him take two steps forward and one step back, resisting that change until he can’t anymore. And then at the end, show us how complete the change is by one last external action—have the character prove to us one last time that they really have changed.

What do you think? Where do you put the reversal in your works? How do you prompt it, and how do you prove to your readers that your character has changed?

Photo by Reuben Whitehouse

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3 thoughts on “Shaping character arcs—the middle”

  1. I love this blog and all of the useful info being gathered here. The advice “prompted by external events” is also great and I will definitely keep it in mind.

  2. I prefer that the reader begins to recognize the changes before my character acknowledges them so they tend to be pretty subtle. Maybe too subtle? There’s lots for me to consider in this post. Thanks.

  3. @Dice—Thanks! Glad to have you here!

    @Carol—I think that characters usually don’t realize that they’re doing something different until after they’ve done it (that’s when they do the one step back thing, reverting to their old ways), so it’s probably just fine to have the changes be very subtle in the middle of the story. Toward the end, however, I prefer to have a character make a conscious choice to change (even if s/he has no other options, they knowingly realize that this is something new and different).

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