What even is a Character Arc? Why is a Character Arc important? How do I create a Character Arc that doesn't suck or feel forced?
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Jul '18last reply
Jul '18- 4
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A character arc is when a character undergoes some type of (generally) personality transformation over the course of the story. If you don't want a character to always be the same person, behave the same ways, have the same morals, etc, a character arc would be appropriate to write.
It would probably be more important for a main character, or a character whom you want to show as being changed or influenced by circumstances and events within the story. It's often used to "better" protagonists or allow them to organically learn a lesson, although character arcs can go in a negative direction as well. It makes for a more interesting and realistic characters, particularly one that doesn't repeat the same mistakes time and time again, and also helps prevent a character from being stiff or boring.
I'd think that whether or not a character arc feels forced depends on both your writing technique and on the character themself. Think about how your character would and wouldn't react to certain situations, and what types of situations would get them to (or force them to) rethink their own behaviors and viewpoints.
This type of change is usually gradual, and the most important part would probably be to ensure that, while there may be a gradual personality/etc change going on internally, the character should still react according to what you've already established about them.
(hey, totally keep making these threads, bc i wanna ask these questions too, but have you got any books on writing? it might be that youll find lots of great answers to all your questions in some good writing books, and imagine everyone here has one they wanna recc. i think theres some threads for that...)
i dont have much to say on character arc, it just made me think of the just write2 youtube channel which made me think of the anatomy of story by john truby, which made me think of ^. the just write youtube channel has a lot of videos on character arc that you could find interesting.
A character arc would be what give a story a sense of time passing. Its much more effective and less clunky than repeated mentions of things changing. Especially because not much time has to pass at all for a character to change.
if anything a character arc is a story in and of itself because so many other things can be tied to it.
As if your question of how to write a good one, there are lots of ways to go about it. The simplest one is to take some of your characters strongest traits and exaggerate them. Then as the events of the story happen those same traits get hammered and forged into something else. Like for instance an extrovert being obnoxious and constantly intruding on peoples personal space learning the consequences of those actions and toning themselves down. A door mat slowly growing a back bone.
You could also have a character making a drastic personality change following a windfall or a tragedy and slowly returning to normal. A good person becoming a stuck up twat after striking it rich and becoming a good person again. someone who is determined and ambitious becoiming despondent after losing their faamily and picking themselves back up.
Or maybe you can involve other characters. and let the interactions change them over time. A good romance story is just two characters who change for better or worse after they meet their significant other. Finding a baby on their door step and adopting it would force a slob to clean up their act or become more of an asshole by not taking care of the baby.
It doesnt have to be positive either, you could also take a happy and up beat person, put them through trial after trial after trial until they emerge bitter and spiteful.
And the bonus for you the writer is the moment in the middle or the end of the story where your characters reminisce and get all nostalgic about how they used to be.
A character arc is simply the meaningful and permanent change a character undergoes through a story. Not all characters have or need an arc but typically the protagonists ought to because there's only so much you can do with a character who never changes their...well character.
That said I feel it important to define character so this change makes sense and is meaningful.
There is a difference between Character and Characterization.
Characterization is all those external and psychological qualities of an individual. Anything that you can describe about a person is their characterization.
Character is the decisions a person makes when under meaningful pressure.
Meaningful pressure happens when you present the character with a proper dilemma. That is not a decision between what the individual perceives as right and wrong because who among us wants to make a consciously wrong choice (and if we do don't we try to justify it into a right decision in our minds). So a choice between right and wrong is no choice at all.
Rather you want to build the structure of the story such that the character has to choose between two incomparably GOOD things and choosing one means forfeiting the other. OR they have to choose between two BAD things and make a decision of what they consider the lesser of two evils.
It's in the choice that make under the pressure of a dilemma that shows their Character.
(Consider the phrase " oh they have good character." what does that mean?)
So to create a character arc that doesn't feel forced, you must present to the character one dilemma after another and make them choose. Their choices will reveal their character to you. Then you present another dilemma perhaps caused by their past action and the sum of all that has them making another choice.
You follow this during the first draft and you may find the character making different choices and this their inner Character has begun to change. That change is the character arc. By the time you reach the climax you may see they are a different character than they were at the start because the choice they make NOW is not the choice they would have made at the start of the story.
Hope this helps.
I've been making a number of threads on Storycraft and I think the next one will be on this very subject but it will have the benefit of my notes. Lol I just woke up.
If you'd like to see the first of them : https://forums.tapas.io/t/the-art-of-story-what-makes-a-story/25486 it's got links to the other two~