After all this talk about character arcs, I was browsing around on an interesting screenwriting blog, and found an article kind of arguing against character arcs. So are character arcs necessary? The answer, of course, is it depends—and it depends on several factors.

In plot-driven fiction, for example, the characters’ growth and change aren’t what the story is about. Dirk Pitt, James Bond, and Indiana Jones see little, if any, character growth in each episode of their stories (aside from the new Bond movies, maybe). While they are memorable characters, and we root for them to win, we don’t care if they have a life-altering experience to become better people. We’re cool with them staying the way they are. The story focuses on their adventures rather than their experiences.

However, in character-driven fiction, the character arc is central. Reading this kind of fiction enables us the live character’s experiences and feelings, and those are at least as important to the story as the actual actions.

It also depends on the genre. Mysteries tend to be more plot driven. Action stories are usually more plot driven. Romances, especially single-title length ones, are usually more character driven.

Another consideration is whether the book will lead into a series (and if so, how long). If this is going to be a serial character, how many different lessons can s/he learn? It’s possible, of course, to do a metaarc—one that takes the character on a journey from the beginning to the end of the series (Harry Potter?)—but it will probably require considerable planning.

What do you think? Can you think of successful characters who don’t arc? Do you write characters who don’t arc?

Yesterday, we talked about character arcs within scenes, and we mentioned that there are two different ways to handle them. The first kind uses scene structure to bring about the change. The second kind of change, however, doesn’t rely on scene structure because it doesn’t happen in a scene—it happens in a sequel. The Sequel is what comes after the scene—the emotional response. However, it also has a structure that can help with this kind of character arc.

Bickham’s structure for the sequel is Emotion – Thought – Decision – Action (which leads to another scene). The Emotion is the initial response to the events of the scene and its Disaster. When the character moves past the initial emotion, they think through the events, their response and their options in the Thought phase. This ultimately leads to a Decision, which takes the character to another Action.

Not all the steps of the sequel are necessary. In fact, the sequel itself might not be necessary—depends on the pacing and whether the emotional reaction constitutes a change. But when the character is going through a major change, we can spend a little more time here. And this is where we motivate the next action.

When an emotional change in the sequel follows the full steps of the sequence, we know that there’s a logical progression of the events of the sequel. By moving through these steps, we can lead the characters and the readers through the steps of the change and create a compelling, convincing change.

For example, if we need our character to go from shocked after the last disaster to furious in the sequel, we start with that initial emotional response—the shock. We don’t have to spend a long time exploring the shock, especially if that’s the kind of reaction you’d expect in light of the disaster. Once we create a vivid picture of the shock (and that’s a toughie, since it’s characterized by the absence of feeling, really), we can give the character a minute to get her bearings again.

Once she’s had some time to recover, she’s ready for the Thought phase. Here we can explore exactly why she’s so surprised—because, say, this revelation is something that the hero could have told her. It’s something she would understand and would have even made her happy, if he had just told her, and he knew that—but he’s chosen to lie to her about it the whole time they’ve known one another.

And that can lead us to the Decision. The Decision can be about the coming Action and set up the next scene—or it can be a further decision about the emotional response. You know what? He should have told her. How dare he not? And if he could lie about that, what else about their relationship was a lie?

And now she’s mad.

What do you think? How have you handled drastic emotional changes in sequels?

Photo by Dan Foy

So far, we’ve looked at character arcs on a macro level—characters changing over the course of a story. At the beginning of the series, however, Deb pointed out that characters can also have arcs within a single scene, where they go from one emotion to another, possibly opposite, emotion.

Character emotions are always delicate things. It’s so easy as a writer to push the emotions a little harder than we should, so that they end up unnatural—especially in a delicate transition. Now, of course it’s always possible to use the events of the scene to create a very natural change in a character’s emotion—but it’s not the only way.

Jack Bickham delves into both kinds of changes in his book Scene & Structure. The first kind of change relies on external actions and scene structure. The basic structure of any scene, Bickham says, is Goal – Conflict – Disaster.

The Goal is the POV character’s goal at the start of the scene, for just that scene. (For a story and characters that feel purposeful and driven, have the character state the goal near the beginning of the scene.) The Conflict is what happens as the character pursues the Goal and meets resistance—dialogue, movement, pursuit, etc.

The Conflict builds to the climax of the scene—the Disaster, when the character’s goal is frustrated. Naturally, when the character is frustrated, s/he will have an emotional reaction—for example, she might go from hopeful or determined at the beginning of the scene to discouraged at the end.

So external events can obviously help to bring about a micro character arc. But there’s another way to show emotional change within a scene that we’ll look at tomorrow.

What do you think? How have you handled drastic emotional changes in scenes?

Photo by Tony Case

You create compelling villains the same way you create compelling protagonists: make them real, make them rounded, give them a compelling story goal and believable flaws and weaknesses.

So how do we know how our characters think? Maybe you completed the character freewrite or interview exercises last week. Maybe you’ve filled out extensive character questionnaires. Maybe you only have a sketchy mental picture of a new character. No matter how well you know your character, you can help to make sure her thoughts—her voice, her feelings—come through in your writing in what she notices, how she talks/thinks about it and how she feels about it.

What they notice

My friend Annette posted the other day about “lenses.” She tells how on a visit to New York with her mother and sisters, they were each drawn to attractions that appealed to their personal interests—things that the rest of the family didn’t even notice.

Personal interests for your characters might arise from simply the need to “round them out” and make them more full, or they can influence the plot (she hates baseball? Fantastic—he’s a semi-pro shortstop.). When you’re just starting to design a character, even one simple interest can help to create deeper characterization.

Does your character have a passion for painting? Collect baseball cards and rare comics? Live for the dance? If not, why not? Everyone has something he loves&hobbies, interests, even their occupation. The architect might admire the layout of the museum while her dabbling-in-interior-decorating sister is more focused on the color scheme. Their wannabe-artist father, of course, is there for the art, while their hobby-egyptologist mother wants to hurry up and get to the mummies.

Our personal interests often filter what we see around us. The father in the above family might be the only one who really notices the paintings, but he barely glances at the dessicated bodies. These interests also influence our perceptions of those things that we do manage to notice.

Character vocabulary

A character’s personal interests, hobbies and especially profession not only filter what they notice, but the words they use to describe it—from the scenery to the events to the other people in the story.

I, for example, can’t tell a sloop from a schooner. But someone who spends every weekend on his sailboat is going to have a full vocabulary for not just every type of ship, but the masts, the rigging, the knots, the . . . other stuff.

Let’s say that character identifies himself, essentially, as a sailor, despite his day job in sales (*snicker*). When he meets a beautiful woman, is he going to think of her using the vocabulary of fashion? He might like the cut of her jib (that’s a sailing term trying to be a play on “fashion” and “cut,” not an innuendo), but unless she’s wearing a spinnaker (another sailing term—a sail. Very Little Mermaid.), I doubt he cares much about her dress.

Instead, he might use more . . . you know, “nautical” terms—the vocabulary of his passion. At this point, I’ve made it fairly obvious that I know nothing about sailing, but for lack of anything better, he might describe how she moves through the clumps of people like a cutter slicing through the waves. She could have eyes the color of the sea, hair the same shade as the burnished mahogany fittings of his cabin. (Okay, this dude is really starting to wax poetic for a guy, but maybe the sea does that to some people.)

The more parallels our character can draw to the things around him and his passions, the more likely he is to like those things.

Character attitudes

The character’s attitude toward the things and people around him is another important aspect of his character—and his voice. Perhaps most importantly, character attitudes are a strong characterization tool. When we see how someone feels about the world around him, we really get to know him. If he recoils at a church and quotes Karl Marx to himself (“Religion is the opiate of the masses.”), we know him more deeply than if the author just told us that “Jimmy hated religion.”

Again, his interests, hobbies and profession can influence this heavily. Our sailor friend might think a man whose only maritime experience was on a ferry to be a troglodyte. Put your character working in an urban environment. Freeway tunnels are the epitome of all that’s wrong with the city—they’re closed in, suffocating, dark, crowded, and most of all, nothing like the freedom of sailing, the open ocean, the wind in your face.

On the other hand, he loves taking his lunch on the observation deck of his building—when the wind is right, you get a breeze from the sea. He has an immediate affinity for people who strike him as sailors. And your Nautica bathroom decor? Well, you decide—he could either love the touch of sailing in your home, or he could think you’re a total poseur.

The slob might not even see the pile of clean (or are they dirty?) socks on the floor, simply walking past. But her neat-freak roommate is sure to notice—and she sees whether they’re clean, dirty, or a mix of the two—and then what does she think of her slovenly roommate? (Hello, Odd Couple!) If the neat-freak is a housekeeper or maybe a professional organizer, does she have a specific term for someone like her roomie?

What other ways can we incorporate and convey our characters’ voices?

Photo credits: 3D glasses—Harry Fodor; Sailboat—Horton Group; Anchor print—mckenna71