Good morning everyone:
First of all: this is dealing with character arcs as a Pantser, not as a plotter. With all due respect to any plotters dropping by, please try to see it from our point of view if you choose to comment.
Onward:
I've been seeing a lot about character arcs lately so I thought I'd pop that up as a topic for us free fallers.
As some of you know (this is getting old) for 12 years I was a staff writer for a SAG/AFTRA (union) audio drama company here in the States. I wrote primarily for the flagship series which was a private detective in the 1950's and 60's although did venture into the 1940's. He was an ex-cop with a gambling habit and had had ties to the mafia but by the time I started writing for the series I left those issues to the boss/creator of the series.
Anyway, this was one of those instances where the character himself rarely had an arc but was the catalyst for arcs with the people around him. Also, there were times where the story was just a good adventure and if there was an arc you really had to hunt for it.
As to my writing outside of that, I honestly never give a thought to a character arc. This is probably because I tend to think of myself as writing an adventure story as opposed to something on the side of angst and coming of age or anything like that. This is not to say my characters don't have one. I've been told they do but the arc come naturally, like they do in real life. Very rarely a big "Eureka" moment.
I see from comments on other threads that people plan out the arcs and sometimes even an arc within different chapters.
Obviously the arc across a story I totally grasp but an arc chapter to chapter leaves me a little bug eyed.
I've had huge discussions with writing friends before about character arcs so play nice.
Reminder... this is dealing with character arcs as a Pantser, not as a plotter. With all due respect to any plotters dropping by, please try to see it from our point of view if you choose to comment.
Write hard, write true.