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?