You’ve probably heard of character development and characterization, but there are a few more terms that you need to know when it comes to crafting the ultimate character, and one of those terms is the idea of a character arc. A character arc can really help pull the story forward and is a great way to help when creating a character that is really memorable, interesting, and engaging for readers. So, today’s post will cover how you can write an amazing character arc for your next story.
What is a Character Arc?
A character arc is basically referring to the idea of a character’s transformation and journey throughout a story. The character typically starts in one place and ends in another, having grown, learned, and possibly changed. Most character arcs in stories tend to show a character that goes from being flawed, weak, wrong, etc… to being a stronger, powerful, intelligent person. There are many different types of character arcs, and I’ll be covering three of the ones that you can identify the most in many stories.
Types of Character Arcs
A positive character arc is one where a character overcomes flaws, grows, and improves as a person. This character arc typically sees a character start out weak and with problems, or possibly wrong in many things. Throughout the journey, the character changes to become a better person in many aspects.
A negative character arc is one where a character basically does the reverse of the positive character arc. Rather than becoming good, they essentially deteriorate and become flawed, evil, bad, etc…
A flat arc is one where a character pretty much stays the same, but their consistency in character allows them to help influence the world around them. Most of the time, a flat character arc is used for flat characters rather than well-rounded characters. If you want to learn more about the difference between flat and round characters, check out this post.
Why Are Character Arcs Important?
The idea of a character arc is important for a multitude of reasons. Firstly, character arcs help to drive the plot of the story forward. They show how the development of this character pushes the story forward in a way that helps make the story more interesting.
A character arc is also great for enhancing the emotional engagement of the reader towards the story. Readers are more likely to enjoy a story where a character has a genuine change over the course of a story. In addition to this, the character arc helps to show the themes of the story and portray how the theme actually plays out over the course of the plot.
It’s also helpful to have a good character arc because it makes the character feel more real to your readers. As much as readers enjoy stories about fantasy and things that don’t exist in our real world, what a lot of readers want is a character that has relatability and can grow or struggle through problems. The character doesn’t need to be super realistic, but the way the character changes needs to be compelling.
How to Write an Amazing Character Arc
How Does the Character Start Out?
At the beginning, you want to determine what sort of arc your character will be going on. From there, you will be able to figure out how your character is actually going to start out as. The things you want to think about are pretty much anything you need to start working on developing your character in the first place.
You want to think about the character’s personality traits, the character’s beliefs and views on the world, as well as things like the flaws, weaknesses, strengths, and more. You want to also think about the character’s backstory, as well as how the character was shaped before the story begins.
For example, Blide Stevens in my book, Malware, starts out as a hacker named Malware who works a standard cybersecurity job in the day and spends his free time taking down traffickers, serial killers, and people he deems evil and immoral online.
Figure Out Where You Want to Go With the Character
Before you start getting the story written, you want to think about how you want the character to end up being. What is the end-goal of your story? Do you want the character to be better or worse? Do you want the character to change as a person or to remain relatively stagnant?
You want to think about how the character’s values and personality will be shifted to accommodate the changes from their experiences in the story. You also want to think about the flaws they will gain or lose.
Pretty much, what you want to ask yourself is this: What happens at the end of the story and how does your character change as a result of it?
What Motivates Your Character?
You want to consider the character’s motivations and what drives their actions throughout the story. This will help you fill in the information needed to get from the beginning of your story to the end of your story. You want to think about the goals that your character has as well as how these goals will adjust or change over time. You also want to think about why these goals exist in the first place and why these goals shape the character.
What is the Conflict for the Character?
One of the biggest things that shape any character in a story is the idea of conflict and challenge. Conflict helps to test a character’s resolve, personality, actions, and abilities. Challenges also have the ability to change a character and evolve their personality traits. Furthermore, conflict presents moments of growth that allow readers to observe how exactly the character will overcome the obstacles and what this will shape within the character’s personality.
It’s important to show readers growth, change, and the difference in the character throughout the story. Do challenges turn the character to a better point or to a worse point? How? Why? What in the character’s personality allowed for this change to occur and how will it shape their personality going forward?
Find the Transformation Points
Characters may have consistent personalities for some time until they are not only faced with just a simple challenge, but a challenge that can quite literally get them to question themselves, their beliefs, and their ideals. The idea of the points of transformation are basically key moments in the plot of your story where the characters will undergo significant changes as a result of these moments.
You need to basically show how these moments impact the plot of your story, but also the arc of your character. How do these moments push the character towards the ending point of your arc? How does the character’s response to these challenges affect their overall personality and how does it twist them to good or bad?
Make Sure You Add Subtle, Gradual Change
The transformation of the character is a very important part of the character arc process but you need to ensure that you’re not rushing into the change and that it’s believable. By this, you basically need to show gradual change and avoid super sudden changes that wouldn’t make sense for a typical person. There may be subtle behavior changes that push a character to make a change, but it needs to be traceable and understandable.
Blend the Arc and the Plot
The character arc in your story should be essentially blended with the plot, as the plot of your story should influence the character arc in the first place and the arc should show how the plot actually develops. You want to show how the plot of your story impacts the character and how this character responds and changes, which in turn shows the overall plot of the story.
For example, in Star Wars, Anakin Skywalker goes through a negative character arc where he becomes Darth Vader. His decisions, his actions, and the choices he makes all lead to him becoming Vader, which directly ties into the plot as we see him go down the path of the dark side and become a Sith Lord.
Things to Keep in Mind…
There’s a few things that are important to understand aside from just writing a character arc that you need to know about.
Firstly, you want to make sure that you have a good understanding and awareness of your character, as well as what makes that character what it is. You want to create a character profile, work on the details, and understand who this character is as if he was a real person.
For me, I try to always write a character backstory out as if it were a short story. That way, when I go to write about Joel from Book 2 of my series, I understand who Joel is, how Joel thinks, acts, and feels, and what Joel believes. This helps me when I’m writing about him, and having a character profile with his information keeps a quick summary on hand for myself to reference.
Aside from key points, you also want to think about the subplots of your story. Subplots are basically smaller storylines that exist within your main storyline. If you want to learn how to create subplots, you can check out this post where I talk about plotting a story. Aside from that, a subplot can help add opportunities to flesh the character arc out, making it easier to write your story.
You also want to enhance the character arc by showing things like interactions with other characters, as well as relationships and more. For instance, maybe part of your character’s arc is that he falls in love with the woman who started out as his enemy (enemies to lovers, my favorite). Maybe the character arc is coming to terms with a new family he’s found. Whatever it may be, you want to think about how the interactions of other characters influence the main character.
Watch Out for These!
There’s a few things that you need to make sure that you’re not doing when it comes to character arcs. One of those major things has to be inconsistent character behavior, and sudden changes in personality. Unless there’s a reasonable explanation for something like this, such as the onset of a mental illness, then you’ll confuse the reader. Readers are expecting your character to think, act, and feel in a certain way and it wouldn’t make much sense if the character suddenly changes without a real reason.
Next, you want to make sure that there’s conflict in your story. Not having conflict will make the character arc feel a bit off. The character needs to change, and like most people in real life, the confrontation of conflict helps to change a person quite a bit.
Additionally, you want to make sure that you’re not forcing the arc in an unnatural way. You don’t want to make the character suddenly turn good at the end of the story if it doesn’t reflect the character’s actions in the story or the changes the character undergoes.
Finally, you don’t want to neglect the secondary characters just to work on the main character. You can have secondary characters that remain stagnant, but some of the ones that are closer to the main character should probably have arcs of their own too. You don’t need to have intensive arcs, but they should be identifiable enough.
The idea of a character arc is a great way to show readers how a character goes from A to B and the things that happen along the way that drag them to point B after being at point A. Additionally, it helps to showcase a smooth change in the character and how the conflicts and challenges faced by said character impact them in the long run.
Before you head on out, be sure to check out my series, The Fallen Age Saga, and don’t forget to sign up for my newsletter to get updates on my latest WIPs, book releases, posts and more!