Taking character arcs deeper
Last week, I started talking about character arcs: the ways a character grows and changes throughout a story. That first post covered the goals your main character pursues and how those interact with the central conflict and plot of the story.
This week’s post focuses on what people usually think of when talking about character arcs: the ways the character grows personally, especially in terms of their strengths and weaknesses, beliefs, and behaviors. While some characters may never learn and grow in certain areas, a stagnant character will often fall flat—a good, dynamic main character won’t stay where they started because they’ll never get where they need to be if they do.
Strengths and weaknesses
If you’ve written a realistic main character, they are going to have personal strengths and weaknesses. Those strengths might be talents, abilities, and things they’re generally good at, or it might be their inner character traits and virtues. In the same way, your character is going to have weaknesses—these could be the things they’re not good at or otherwise struggle to do, or it might be inner character flaws, fears, and vices.
All of these things will exist at the start of the story, and in most cases, they will be changing as the story progresses. Maybe your character starts out good at something and is forced to get better at it—or maybe they’re in a situation where their strengths aren’t even relevant and they need to rely on other skills.
When it comes to their weaknesses, you have a big opportunity to tie their personal growth into the stakes of the story. For example, maybe the only thing standing between your character and achieving their goals is their fear or pride, making them both the protagonist and antagonist—the main conflict is internal. Alternately, maybe there’s a big external obstacle in their way, and the only way they’re going to get past it is by learning and growing beyond their weaknesses to achieve things they couldn’t before.
Questions to ask about your main character’s strengths and weaknesses:
- What are your MC’s internal and external strengths at the start of the story?
- What are your MC’s internal and external weaknesses at the start of the story?
- In what ways must the MC grow in their strengths or overcome their weaknesses in order to resolve the conflict and reach their goals? In other words, where do they need to end up?
Impacting beliefs and behaviors
In the last post, I touched briefly on how a character’s growth during a story might change their beliefs enough to change their goals. But what is it that changes their beliefs, and how does that translate into behavior?
Many times, people’s weaknesses come from beliefs they have about the world: maybe they act selfishly because they believe they must always put themselves first, or maybe they manipulate and gaslight others because they’re afraid something terrible will happen if they’re not in control of everything around them. In other situations, maybe they refuse to use their strengths because they assume those strengths aren’t relevant or that something bad will happen if they do.
Then, something in the story happens to change their mind. Maybe they risk losing a vital friendship because of how they’re treating others, or maybe they see the world working in a way they didn’t believe before that it could. Other times, at the climax of the story, the only way through is the path they never thought they’d be able or willing to take. Whatever experiences they have in the story, check to see how those experiences strengthen or negate their beliefs, and then watch as they start to act differently as they see the world differently. It happens in real life, and it can happen in your story too!
Questions to ask about your main character’s beliefs and behaviors:
- What beliefs and values does your MC start out with that are good, and how do those things drive them to improve or do good?
- What beliefs and values does your MC have that are wrong, and how do they learn that they are mistaken?
- When your character’s beliefs change, what specific things must change in their behavior?
Creating setbacks, not stagnancy
One sticking point I often see when working with authors through developmental edits is illogical pacing or progression of a character from the start to the end of the story. There are two things you don’t want to do: first, you don’t want to leave all the growth for one specific moment, with nothing changing until you suddenly need them to be different so now they are. That will come across as overly convenient and forced rather than natural to your character’s situation. Second, you don’t want to show scene after scene where they’re going through the exact same struggle over and over again without actually moving forward. This makes it feel like a yo-yo rather than progress: one minute they’ve learned something, and the next there has been no change at all, even the change we saw earlier.
Instead of creating a situation where the status quo never changes until the convenient moment, think of your character’s journey toward growth as a series of steps where they’re moving forward but sometimes stumble or have setbacks. Maybe your character decides to start telling the truth but panics and lies at one point when they’re afraid of the consequences of honesty. Or maybe they’ve improved drastically in a skill they need but find a situation where it’s not enough yet—like someone who is becoming a competent fighter but encounters an enemy who is even stronger than they expected.
In other words, your character should be growing stronger over time as the story gives them opportunity, but their obstacles and temptations should also be growing alongside them, continuing to cause tension and forcing them to grow even stronger to reach where they need to be.
Putting it all together
Last week, I talked about your character’s evolving goals and how they are impacted by the plot. This week, I talked about their strengths and weaknesses and how their beliefs and values impact their behavior. When you put it together, you will have a character whose starting beliefs and values leave them predisposed to certain strengths and weaknesses and prompt them to have specific goals. After that, it’s a matter of cause and effect: the things that happen will shift your character’s view of the world as well as their goals. That, in turn, will change how they act and force them to grow and change in terms of their strengths and weaknesses. Their actions will impact what happens in the plot, and the cycle will start all over again. It’s all interconnected!
Next week, we’ll have one last post on side characters and how their character arcs will impact the story for your main character. It may be a lot of moving pieces, but when you start to see how everything that happens is based on the beliefs and choices of someone somewhere, it will become more natural to flesh out a compelling character-based story. Can’t wait to see you then!