CHARACTER ARC

Hollywood loves the character arc. Studios and producers want the main character of every script to be transformed by the process of the story.

Since the happy ending is wanted most often, it wouldn't do for the character to end up worse than he started. This means main characters must start out flawed—and work to remove that flaw during the course of the movie.

As a consequence, heroes always learn stuff. They learn to be more tolerant of others. They learn to love. They learn to enjoy life. They learn to take responsibility. They learn to trust.

And so on.

Whatever it is they learn to do, they have trouble with the concept at the beginning of the story. They're spoiled, broken creatures. They may not know how messed up they are at first, but they're about to find out.

Character and plot intertwine.

The hero has a flaw, and the adventure he's about to endure is just the medicine he needs to set him right.

If all is well designed, the hero's flaw puts the whole enterprise at risk—including innocent bystanders (and the love interest). He has to address his flaw to complete his mission and save the day.

In other words, the main action is designed by the author to attack the hero's flaw. The story forces his defect to take the stage, where it demands his immediate attention.

Plot and flaw are therefore bound together.

If you start your story development process with a flawed character, let the nature of the flaw create the details of your plot.

If you start with a plot situation, design a main character who would be hit the hardest by whatever monster you've set loose.

In the simon-pure arc design, the character flaw is the plot problem. That's formula.

In so far as you want to move away from formula, you need to slide the hero's flaw away from center stage. In this case, fixing the flaw doesn't literally conquer the main plot problem. Though it should definitely help.

(An interesting variation: fixing the character flaw leads directly to disaster on the plot level.)

In a more subtle story, the entire back and forth sequence of events—whether they ultimately lead to success or failure—has the effect of altering the main character's emotional or psychological makeup.

Here, the change (like other story elements in this subtle environment) is a lot more subdued. The flaw may not be entirely eradicated in the end, but it has at least been noticed by the main character. He may now start to address it. Baby steps.

It's hard for a character in a series (TV episodes or passel of novels) to change. It would mess with the very concept of the overall story.

In this case, it's the "guest character" who may participate in an emotional arc, coming out a changed person at the end. The week-to-week series characters stay the same, ready to encounter new situations and guest characters in the next episode. You always know where you stand with those guys.

It used to be television was based on the series. The Lone Ranger was always the Lone Ranger. Tonto would never abandon him in a tight situation. (Insert the Lone Ranger joke here: Tonto sides with the Indians.)

Nowadays, the series is more often a serial. Characters change. Even fundamental elements of the background change. Good guys become bad guys, and so forth. Night-time drama imitates day-time drama.

In the indie pub world, the pendulum is once more in motion, swinging back to the series. As I mentioned earlier on this blog, Mark Coker (founder of Smashwords) says the books that sell best on his site are full-length series novels (~75k) that can be read in any order. Series, not serial.

The danger with character arc comes when it is forcibly inserted into the story.

In the movie Liar Liar, a trial lawyer is forced to tell the truth for a whole day. This is funny because as we all know lawyers lie all the time. You could design this story with a real-world reason why the guy can't lie. Something to do with a big bet or something.

But the movie goes with a fantasy-world device: a child's birthday wish. The kid feels abandoned by his dad because the guy breaks promises to hang with him. The kid sees this broken promise as a lie, and so tries to stop his dad from lying.

That's a logical flaw. A broken promise (caused by job pressures) in not a lie. The kid should have wished for his dad to spend more time with him. But where's the fun in that? (Okay, there's a movie there, too, but not the one they made.)

The movie makers were required to have their main character learn something from the action that somehow changes him in a fundamental manner. This desire (or corporate mandate) warped the concept and weakened the movie, which ought to be about how the inability to lie messes up your life.

I guess the lesson is, if you can't be subtle in your character arc, at least be ruthlessly logical.

I'll leave you with this: Having flaws is one of the basic ways of defining character. Fixing those flaws destroys that character. Do you really want to do that?

CHARACTERS

Here's a few words about creating characters for your works of fiction.

It may be these words will be irrelevant to you. Perhaps in your case there are characters flowing from your fingertips without limit, all clamoring to take up space in your next oeuvre.

I'm writing for the rest of us.

There are a number of ways of coming up with a character:

You can grab one right out of the world. Just use somebody in your book you know from life. Your dad, your sister, your barber, your dope dealer.

But if you put your best friend in your book—and use his or her real name—you might get sued.

Actually, even if you change the name, the real person may recognize himself and object. They might claim you are holding them up to ridicule from the world.

So you could try this: Take a real person, then change him in some significant way. And change the name, of course.

(A woman used her best friend as a character, but changed her into some sort of a bitch [she really wasn't a bitch]. The writer got sued—successfully, I'm pretty sure.)

If you're taking from real people, its safer to mix and match a number of traits. And keep your lawyer handy.

Safer yet: write under a pseudonym and never hint to anyone you're publishing stuff.

Because even if you make it all up, folks will find themselves in your work and get mad (followed by litigious). Thomas Wolfe claimed all the characters in Look Homeward, Angel were fictional, along with the events. Still, the folks in his home town saw themselves in his work and bristled. They even remembered events Wolfe claimed he made up out of whole cloth.

(They hated his guts for awhile, but reconciled shortly before the end of his short life.)

Sometimes you come up with an interesting character and cast about for a place to use them. Character is action, they say (Aristotle said it first, no doubt). Your characters just naturally ache to perform, to act out their traits, to make themselves real.

One way to develop a plot around a character is to ask yourself what his most vulnerable area is—then attack it in the story. If he's shy, make him give a speech before a large audience. If she can't swim, toss her in the ocean and watch the fun begin.

Books on writing suggest you write a detailed biography of your characters. What they look like, what they wear, what they drive, how they live, what they were like in high school, and so forth.

The books say "write it down." What they mean, of course, is "make it up." And then write it down.

(Of course you don't have to make it up if you're writing about real people, like some high school idiot who really did barf down the back of a chick's dress.)

The novelist E. M. Forster (in Aspects of the Novel) says readers find characters "real" when the author knows everything about them—though it may not all be revealed in the novel.

In his lectures about the people in novels, Forster suggests a mixture of flat and round characters is acceptable for most books. Flat characters have but one trait, which is easily described in a single sentence. Flat characters border on "types."

Forster would have you save the round characters for the main guys. They have multiple traits and cannot be summed up in a single sentence. The test of a round character is that they can surprise the reader in a convincing way. In other words, round characters have hidden content that may come out under pressure, like pearls hidden in a tube of tooth paste.

(By the way, Aspects of the Novel is well worth a look. But it's not so much a book about how to write a novel as it is a book about how to read one.)

Like I say, some writers begin with characters and contrive something for them to do—a way of revealing that character. Modern novels rarely explain their characters explicitly; readers have to build them up on their own from a list of their actions. (Dialogue is action, as are revealed thoughts.)

Other writers conceive of situations (a new way to murder someone, a new place to do it, etc.) and engineer characters to play the rolls required by the situation.

This method does not prevent you from creating round characters to act in your dramas. You just have to put on your "people making" hat. And be prepared to let those three-dimensional characters distort your precious plot. Might do you some good. (Or do the book some good, at least; you may be seething with rage the whole time.)

If you're constructing your characters from a junk yard of random parts, consider this: Astrology may be a load of crap, but a lot of people think they can guess your sign by your exhibited traits.

This would suggest the cluster of traits provided by astrology books for a given sign is widely considered to be credible. You might therefore be able to use these descriptions to reinforce the internal logic of your made-up characters or to help fill out their 3-D forms.

There's also information in astrology books (widely believed, apparently) detailing which signs are compatible with one another. Who should couple with whom, and who should be avoided at all costs. Could be useful for getting your characters in and out of trouble.

(I'm not suggesting you tell the reader what astrological signs your characters have—though I suppose you could.)

If you know a lot of real people very well, you could also use clusters of their traits as a guide. But here's the danger in that. Fiction is fiction, and you must stand guard when you allow the real world to roam your made-up territory.

Whether you're creating characters or constructing plots, reality is no excuse. That "it really did happen just that way" is irrelevant. Reality pulls no weight here. Inner consistency should be your watch word. A person or occurrence needs to be plausible in the context of the world you've created.

And maybe just a little surprising.

MORE PLOT THOUGHTS

Last time I talked about plot, using as an example the conundrum story of the fox, the duck, and the bag of grain. Now I want to get more general.

When Alexander Dumas fils decided to try his hand at playwriting, he asked if his dad had any advice. The old man did: "First act clear, last act short, all acts interesting."

The traditional three-act structure of stage drama can easily be adapted to the writing of stories and novels. Generally: Act One is the setup (location, period, characters, their goals); Act Two is filled with complications (answering the question: why can't the main character achieve his goal immediately); Act Three is the resolution (the MC succeeds or fails, and the consequences thereof).

When Dumas pere said "first act clear," he meant exactly that: a reader should come out of it with a clear understanding of who the main characters are, where they want to go, and that they're on their way. Leave no doubt. (Doubt may be something the MC experiences at some point toward the end of Act Two.)

At the end of Act One we're off! We're in motion! We're at the beginning of what is tantalizingly called "rising action."

The complications of Act Two represent more rising action. Each obstacle should be bigger and nastier and harder to overcome than the one before. Rising action. The man faces three assassins at once. Then: five!

If your MC defeats five major fighters all coming at him at once in a rabid pack, but is later confronted by two mediocre fighters causing a minor sweat, you have a problem. Falling action.

Falling action is a signal to the reader (or audience) that things are winding up (or winding down), that the story is chugging into the station.

On the other hand, maybe it's like this. Your guy defeats five, then barely defeats two, the MC disastrously running out of steam. That could indicate something bad is happening to his powers—which is another, perhaps more insidious complication. And that's okay.

But the overall threat level should be going up all the way to the climax, where it maxes out, demanding the utmost effort from the MC.

Don't have your guy defeat the most powerful evil character, only to face the guy's lame sidekick. Unless it's meant to be a joke, the sidekick slapped down without effort. Or as an indication of the hero's newly developed talents. (Having the sidekick slaughter the MC and run off with his chick—with her eager consent—is a joke played on the reader.)

The senior Dumas wants the last act to be the shortest because it deals with but one major event: the climax. The lead-up to that event is all in Acts One and Two. And once the climax is concluded, the goal is met (or lost) and it's time to quit the stage.

Sometimes there is room for a denouement ("unraveling") to indicate how the world is now different after the success (or defeat) of the MC.

Plot structure is most explicit in books on screenplay writing. Here's the version from Michael Hauge:

Act One covers 25% of the total movie (script pages or film minutes, either way). There are two stages of Act One, the "setup" and the "new situation." Setup gives you the main characters and their place in the world. Hint at a defect or a yearning for change. The New Situation grows out of a turning point called Opportunity, which is to occur at the ten percent point. Something has happened in the world. The MC responds to the New Situation by launching himself into Act Two.

Or not.

In Joseph Campbell's book The Hero With A Thousand Faces, the "opportunity" is the Call to Adventure. The hero may respond in the negative: Refusal of the Call. There the action ends. The quest is over. The Wizard has said: "Go thou to the Belly of the Beast and retrieve the Golden McGuffin!" And the hero says: "Yeah, that doesn't sound like something I'd ever do." End of story.

Screenwriters often include the Refusal as if it were a part of the official process. Rocky is offered a chance to fight the champ, and refuses. But he changes his mind. In Campbell, there is no changing minds. The Call has been refused, the Quest est fini.
If, in a movie, the hero refuses the call, that can't be the end, because there's another hour and a half to fill. Something else has to change, forcing the hero onto the preferred path. Luke says no to Ben Kenobi, then finds his aunt and uncle have been slaughtered. Now it's off to Mos Eisley.

In Hauge's view, Act Two occupies half the script pages (or movie time) and is broken in two by a turning point called the Point of No Return. The first half is labeled Progress, the second Complications and Higher Stakes. It ends with another turning point called a Major Setback.

If you're writing a tragedy, however, the second act ends with a Major Victory. Followed in Act Three by Ultimate Defeat. Major victories spur flawed characters to attempt the impossible (for him), leading inevitably to doom.

Hauge says Act Three has two phases: Final Push and Aftermath. Separating the two is the Climax. (The final push becomes the climax.) Rising action has reached its pinnacle, an event that takes place somewhere between 90 and 99% of total time (or total script pages), depending on how much aftermath is needed to make things clear.

Novels tend to have more complications and set-backs for the hero, but the pattern is the same: short take-off, long bumpy flight with engines afire, ending with a sudden crash-landing (which is usually found to be a triumph for the MC).

There may be a subplot, usually involving secondary characters. Sometimes the subplot invites the audience to compare and contrast its elements with those of the main plot, leading to some notion of theme.

Parallel plots are more common in novels than in movies, because they take up a lot of room and involve multiple sets of "main" characters. Hollywood likes to keep things simple: one MC on the hero path, with a recognizable "character arc" changing the MC for the better. It's not about a situation, see? It's about a person who is dealing with a situation.

If you need another take on plotting, the Internet is packed tight with advice. Go get it!

Then get back to work writing!