How To Construct A Character Arc Your Readers Will Love

Writing Craft

Apr 7

If you looked at the previous posts on story structure, you could tell much of that content talked about how what happened at those major turning points in the story challenged the protagonist to change internally.

This is because PLOT/STRUCTURE and CHARACTER are intimately linked. You can’t have one without the other. Story structure isn’t a bunch of arbitrary plot points. It’s a sequence of events with a specific mission: to affect an inner change within the character, their world, or both.

We refer to this internal change as a character arc.

What is a character arc?

Simply put, a character arc represents the transformative inner-personal journey of the protagonist. Other characters can also have an arc, but we’ll focus on the main character for simplicity.

What a character arc looks like in a nutshell:

The protagonist begins the story with motivations based on flawed beliefs and worldviews and ends the story with a new set of motivations, beliefs, and worldviews because of the lessons they learned through the conflict presented by the plot. This change can be positive or negative depending on the type of story you’re telling. More on that in a minute.

Character Arc and Theme

A character arc is also a reflection of your story’s theme–-the message or point your story is making.

Types of Character Arcs

The fundamental question a character arc asks is how and in what way will your protagonist change from their baseline?

There are three basic possibilities, and we will examine each with examples in future blog posts, but here are the broad strokes.

Positive Change - a person goes from unfulfilled and in denial to fulfilled and awakened.
Negative Change - a person goes unfulfilled to more unfulfilled or worse and deeper into denial
Static or Flat- a person has no significant interpersonal change. This character already has everything they need inside them to face and conquer the story’s obstacles–though it won’t be easy.

Ingredients for a Character Arc.

If we are tracking change, we must have a baseline to measure against. The baseline here is your character’s internal makeup: How they think and feel and what they believe and value at the story’s start, given their situation. These things govern their wants and motivations and what they deny themselves.

The False Belief: This represents your character’s inner battle (though they rarely realize it’s a problem). It is the core message/operating system your character grew to believe and depend on to survive in their world. The false belief is rooted in a wounding event from their early life, usually childhood or adolescence, and it doesn’t serve them. It keeps them from being fulfilled and whole. They, however, believe that it protects them from the pain of experiencing the wound again and resist change. Example: Shrek’s false belief is that he is unloveable and it’s better to be alone. This likely stems from years of persecution for being an ogre.
The External Want: This represents the goal of the character’s external motivations founded by their misguided belief system. Example: Shrek’s external want is solitude, represented in the story as his swamp.
The Need or Longing: Your character’s unconscious desire represents what they need to learn to turn away from their false belief and become whole. Think of it as the inverse of their false belief. Example: Shrek needs to learn he is worthy of love and friendship.
The Truth: The truth is the global or thematic representation of the character’s need or longing. It’s the big lesson or message you can apply universally to the human experience. The truth is the story’s theme. Example: The theme of Shrek is that love is worth the risk of rejection.

From these ingredients, we get our starting points: the wound/false belief and the external want—which may stay the same or change during the story—and a final destination: who your character will become because of their journey.

Which character arc is right for your story?

It is such a good question. One that doesn’t have a hard, fast answer, but consider your theme and genre for guidance. Themes of hope and inspiration lend themselves to positive arcs, while cautionary tales and tragedies align better with negative arcs. Thrillers, Crime, Action, and Adventure work well with heroic arcs (positive and flat). Romance should have a positive arc because how can you give a happily-ever-after (HEA) or a happily-for-now (HFN) if people don’t change for the better?

Look at your favorite books and see if you can identify the thematic journey of the protagonist.

What did the plot teach them about themselves and the world that differed from their baseline? Was this change positive or negative?

Did they change at all?

Where in the story do you feel the character began to change? (Hint: break out your story structure PDF and look for the major turning points–the Choice to Jump Into Act II, also known as The First Plot Point, the Midpoint, The All Is Lost, Dark Night Of the Soul, and the Climax).

Next time, we will dive into the different positive arcs of change and how to write them. Yup, there is more than one!

Takeaways for shaping character arcs

A character arc represents the total interpersonal change a character experiences because of the plot (events/conflict).
Character arc, plot, and structure cannot be developed independently.
The story’s theme will influence the main character’s arc and vice versa.
Know your character’s starting beliefs and values and think about how your plot events will challenge them to change.
There are three basic character arcs: Positive, Negative, or Static/Flat.
Look at your story’s theme and genre to get a feel for the type of arc that is right for your book.
Practice identifying the type of character arcs in the books you read. Pay attention to the major turning points in the story and how the character behaves before and after each of them.

Remember, without transformation, there is no story. Whatever happens between page one and the end must cause some sort of change; otherwise, why bother? Why read if the situation will only stay the same?

Want more on Story Structure? Download the chart below!