Tag Archives: emotional arcs

All about character arcs!

This last weekend, I taught a class on character arcs at the LDStorymakers Writers’ Conference. I was really pleased with how it went!

Today I’m sharing the presentation itself as well as links to all the articles I referenced in my presentation. So, here we go!

The Presentation

via Prezi


I’ve left it so that you can zoom in/out on whatever you’d like. (Sorry, no sound effects 😉 .)

The References

A lot of the presentation came from my series on character arcs:

My character arcs series is also available as a free PDF! (More free writing guides.)

Other awesome references:

Alicia Rasley’s articles on character arcs:

Blog posts on Michael Hauge’s classes:

These are the articles I referenced directly, but I studied a lot of great information on character arcs. I’ll be sharing more about character arcs later this week on my newsletter—be sure to join for the latest news & writing resources!

With a brand new baby, attending a conference is always a challenge. My husband was wonderful enough to take care of her at home until after my presentations, and then I took her after that.

JR and baby at conf
Baby’s first writers’ conference! (She was 5.5 weeks.)

It’s always so good to hang out with “my people”: writers!

What do you think? What’s your favorite part of writers’ conferences? Were you at Storymakers? What was your favorite part?

Photo credits: Character arcs—Riccardo Romano

New PDF: Character Arcs!

This entry is part 10 of 11 in the series character arcs

Yep, I have character arcs on the brain. It happens every time I finish a book and think about how I can better align the internal journey and external plot climaxes. (I think I have it for this last one. Still have to hammer out the details.)

Since we revisited character arcs last week, it seemed like the perfect time to compile the PDF of the series, including last week’s post. Even though I didn’t look back at the original series as I was writing the new post, I was surprised at how well the new material meshed, expanding on some topics I mention in passing.

So if you’re having trouble figuring out how to found, form or finish your character’s emotional journey, check out the PDF version of Character Arcs!

More free PDF writing guides.

Photo by Riccardo Romano

Getting through emotions

This entry is part 10 of 14 in the series Emotion: it's tough

A version of this post was originally posted 17 November 2009 as part of the character arcs series.

Emotions are important in fiction and can be hard to get right. After highly emotional scenes, for me, the next most difficult type of emotion to convey is multiple emotions in a single scene. Although most passions are composed of multiple emotions, we typically don’t experience, say, love, ambivalence and annoyance all the same time. But sometimes we need our characters to.

Typically, these evolving emotions are easier to handle with constant stimuli/input to create these emotional reactions (as in a scene). It’s more of a challenge in a sequel: what comes after the scene—the emotional response. However, the sequel also has a structure that can help with this kind of character arc.

In Scene & Structure, Jack Bickham gives a structure for the sequel: 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