Secrets of Writing: Character Arc

This is a often misunderstood concept that’s very important to the success of your story.
Many books on screen-writing hold this to be an essential component of story telling. Unfortunately, they fall into the trap of seeing this concept in a simplistic, dogmatic way.

Character Arc refers to the Hero’s learning curve in a story. A Hero starts off with certain attitudes and beliefs and by the end of the story they come away with new insights and direction in life. The Hero may also grow and mature through the course of their adventure, becoming a better or worse person than when they started. They can become more wise, more knowledgeable.

Some people have theorized that the secret to characterization is to first figure out what you want your character to learn, then start them off at the exact opposite of that conclusion. This isn’t a bad theory since it also plays hand in hand with the premise concept. But we all know there is more to characterization than that.

It’s far too simple to have a character go from bad to good in a story. We all know that people fall back on old habits easily. Someone may clean up their act today, but come Sunday they’re back to drinking sterno. Your story has to convince us that the character has truly seen the light, if that’s what your goal is.

Unfortunately, it’s extremely trite to take a character who has views in direct opposition to your own and make them take your side by the end. People don’t like having morality or political opinions shoved down their throats. Especially if they disagree with them. And Audience’s can tell when the writer is setting up a character to make some moral point that match’s the writer’s views.

You can pull this off if you make the counter premise extremely compelling. To do this you need to understand the other side of the argument well and realize all the good points the other side makes. By working through all the arguments of the counter premise in your story, you can then establish in a sound, reasonable way, the foundation for your version of the truth.

But character arc isn’t limited to political or social issues. A character can learn to be sober. They can learn to be better fishermen. Better mathematicians. You can make the goal of the character arc anything you want. In the film ROCKY, the character had to go from insecure and unfocused to determined and confident. That was his arc. The arc relates to the various levels of conflict you’re dealing with. You take the character from one value to another.

One of the worse mistakes writers make when dealing with character arc is having the character explain at the end what they’ve learned. This should be self evident. It should be demonstrated. Having a character mouth platitudes is not only preachy, it’s insincere.

As we discussed earlier, anyone can say they’ve learned something. It’s like saying “I’m sorry”. It’s just words. It doesn’t mean there is any truth in it. We need to see the arc demonstrated clearly and the Audience should know, for certain, that this character has learned what they had to learn, without being told.

Truth is something we need to see in practice. It’s the old Missouri principle. Seeing is believing.  Demonstrate in a clear and powerful way that your character is seeing and acting differently, and that they are doing so because they learned to do so.

Whatever you do, don’t just have them say it. No one will believe them. Too many of us know the meaning of codependent from experience. We know how hard it is for people to change.

Villains can arc, but don’t always need to. If you do a story where the Villain starts off good, but becomes evil by the end of the story, that’s his arc. But you need to establish strong reasons for this arc to make his journey believable. This can be done using story values, which is a subject we’ll discuss next.

Major supporting characters should arc in relation to the hero. This gives the story dimension. But the supporting characters arcs don’t need to be as grand as the heroes. And their arcs should have something to do with the events in the story.

The focus of the character arc is always going to be the Hero. His arc is the main point of the story, in most cases. Stories are about change. The hero needs to change in some way. Obviously, in a monthly comic book, you can’t affect an arc every storyline. So you should consider making the main character secondary and arcing someone else. Or you should create stakes that imply a change for the Hero’s life that implies an arc of some kind, even if he doesn’t change.

Whatever you do, don’t arc a Hero away from the things that make him work as a hero. You don’t want Batman to become a happy, well adjusted person. You don’t want Superman to become a vengeful maniac. Character’s should remain true to themselves. You just want to arc them in a way that validates the premise, but doesn’t invalidate them as a workable hero. 

REMEMBER: Show, don’t Tell. The character arc must be demonstrated clearly.

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