Character Arcs (Part One)

Characters are arguably the most important part of any work of fiction. A good character has depth—they live and breathe on the page. I’ve long said that I’ll forgive almost any plot hole as long as I’m invested in a character. Your reader becomes invested in your character when they want to know what’s going to happen to them, when they care if your character succeeds. 

Reader investment comes from your characters’ feelings, the way they react to situations, their internal narrative, or what they are thinking. Characters are most important because they are doing the emotional heavy lifting in your book. Because of this, the most important craft element of your manuscript is your character arc. 

Character arcs can be intentional, or they can develop naturally as you’re writing your book. Some people are exploratory writers, meaning they write without an outline. There’s nothing wrong with that—but even if you’re writing without a map, you should still have a general idea of where your character needs to go and how they’ll change in response to the events of the plot.

Types of Character Arcs

Character arcs can be positive, meaning the character starts in a bad place and becomes a better person through the course of the story. For example, you might start with a character who is insecure, or who holds distasteful views, or perhaps they hate dogs (spoiler alert—they will end up adopting a dog and loving it). This character will grow and change because of the events of your story, ultimately becoming a better person than they were. 

A negative character arc takes a character who (seemingly) starts out as a good person with good intentions who succumbs through the events of the plot to become greedy, ruthless, and paranoid.

A flat character arc means the character stays the same and the world revolves around them. Perhaps they start as a noble, honest superhero and remain a noble, honest superhero, but in the meantime, evil has been vanquished. The world has changed, but the character has not. 

Choosing a Character Arc

Decide what kind of character arcs you’re going to include in your novel before you delve too deeply into the writing. Individual character arcs are going to determine your characters' traits, their motivations, the goals they have throughout your work, and how you introduce them to your reader. Collectively, your characters' arcs will serve to create tension between characters and drive plot as they seek their separate goals.

Getting Started

Before you start writing, ask the following questions:

1. Who is this character before the events of my plot begin?
2. What are this character’s main beliefs, core values, world views?
3. Will these change throughout the book? If so, how?

Spend a few minutes answering these questions about your main character. Once you’ve determined who your character is and where you want them to go, you'll understand the kind of character arc you want to create. That’s the hard part. 

After that, it’s simply a matter of using your plot arc to determine the action necessary to get your main character from point A to point B.