Tag Archives: character arcs

Technique

Shaping character arcs—the middle

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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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Technique

Finding the character arc

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This entry is part 3 of 11 in the series character arcs

Of course, the method we talked about yesterday works great if you already know your plot and character (if you’re at the end of planning, in drafting or in revisions). But what if you don’t really know your characters well yet, or you’re trying to find a good internal conflict, or you still can’t figure out how the external events of the plot are going to affect them internally?

There should be one little thing you know about your character: what motivates her. Look at your character’s profession, hobbies, and journey in the story. What’s going to compel him to go on this journey with you? (Dragging him along when he has no reason to go on the story journey isn’t going to work well.) What are her core values—what does she prize above all else?

Let’s say our heroine’s core value is stability. She goes on the story journey because she is very specifically led to believe that this journey (let’s say winning huge cash prize in a reality game show) will give her life financial stability. So, at the beginning, she lacks stability in her life.

But if we dig deeper, it’s not just that she likes for things to be calm and stable. If her life is unstable, and all she wants is that equilibrium, she is afraid. The external journey may be her quest for cash, but the internal character arc will be her quest to allay her fears.

And what do you want to bet a cash prize won’t do it? You could tell a story about a woman who wants stability above all else, and then she gets it, but her internal conflict isn’t going to be very deep. Instead, if we realize that the desire for stability is a manifestation of underlying fear, we can use the events of the story to help her (or force her) to gain the courage she needs to press forward in an uncertain world (because, seriously, even a big cash prize won’t be enough to guarantee stability. Hello, economy. Hello, taxes. Hello, house fire.).

And we can do this starting with the external conflict. Say you have a character on a quest for a hidden treasure with, I don’t know, religious ties. He’s actually searching for the treasure to prove that it doesn’t exist and the adherents of this hokey religion are all wasting their lives.

There could be many internal journeys here. An obvious one is that he’s starting out in a position of doubt, and he could come to find faith. Or maybe he hates this hokey religion because of a bad experience with a member or the religion, so he’s trying to exact revenge—and then he can journey to finding justice (though probably not in the way he thinks).

And, like yesterday, these are only the beginning and ending of the character arc. To make it truly believable, we have to have some pretty major internal conflict in the middle of the story—some deep challenges for the character to learn and grow from.

What do you think? How have you linked character motivations to their arcs? Where do you start and end your character arcs?

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Technique

Starting and ending the character arc

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This entry is part 2 of 11 in the series character arcs

Character arcs are an important part of making any story satisfying. As we said yesterday, it’s as simple as making sure a character grows and changes throughout the course of the story. It’s important to remember that these changes, too, are most effective if they’re brought about by the external plot (more on that later).

Every character, and every character, has to start somewhere. We know that in the ordinary world, something is amiss—something is missing from the protagonist’s life. That doesn’t just mean a love interest or a murderer that needs to be brought to justice—there’s something deeper, on an emotional level, that the character needs.

That could be love or justice—or it could be forgiveness, healing, resolve, courage, wisdom, etc. (Alicia Rasley has a great list in her article “The Internal Journey.”) This is what they gain in the end— what the story events mean to the character.

This is another instance where knowing the end from the beginning really pays off—if you know what the character will end up with, you know set them up in the opposite place: if they need love, they start off lonely. If they need healing, they start off damaged; resolve, dissolute; courage, afraid; wisdom, naive.

This also works the other way around—if you have the flaw at the beginning, you can look for ways to “fix” it throughout the story events.

A major part of the “elixir” a hero returns with is this internal journey—the process of fixing what is wrong in his life. It’s what makes a book truly compelling, and something that we continue to contemplate beyond the basic events of the plot.

What do you think? How have you crafted your characters’ arcs? What are your favorite character arcs to read?

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Technique

Character arcs—what about ’em?

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This entry is part 1 of 11 in the series character arcs

This week, I’m looking to cover an oft-mentioned, seldom-explained part of storytelling: character arcs.

character arcs vsmallIt’s easy to get caught up on the plotting and planning of a new story’s events that we don’t think as much about the characters. I’ve made a habit of getting started on a story’s events and in the middle, stopping to really think about how the characters are going to grow and change (I do get to know them well that way, though—fewer surprises from there on out).

I don’t think there’s a wrong way to implement a character arc, whether you plan them from the beginning, figure them out along the way, or add it all in edits. But there’s no denying that a character must grow and change along the way for the story to truly appeal to readers.

What do you think? How would you define a character arc? When do you think about your character arcs—or do you plan them at all?

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