One thing I learned the hard way about writing novels is that if you don’t intentionally lead your character through a transformation, the story will fall flat. All great novels involve transformation! To better ensure that my characters change over the course of the novel—emotionally, intellectually, etc.—I started creating character arcs.
That’s what this blog is all about.
Psst! If you prefer video to written content, here you go:
What is a character arc?
You’ve probably heard of a story arc, which shows how a novel develops from start to finish. Everyone’s got their own way of doing this, but story arcs commonly call out the inciting incident at the end of the first act, pinch points (or pivot points), the climax, and so on.
The character arc is a similar concept. It illustrates how a specific character develops over the span of a novel.
Historically, I’ve hated working on character arcs because my brain has a hard time isolating characters in this way.
What I mean is I’ve always preferred to look at the plot and the story arc, and then within that, look at characters as one piece of the puzzle.
I’ve finally learned that there are two problems with this—for me, at least.
Where I was lacking in my plotting/outlining
The first problem is what I described in the beginning: If you are not paying enough attention to character arcs, then you run the risk of having characters who don’t change at all. They end the story as the same people they began the story as, which is bad (and boring).
The second problem I’ve run into is that with my previous approach, I ended up with a plot that I crammed characters into just to make it fit, whereas I should’ve developed these characters and then allowed them to show me what they wanted and needed to do within the plot.
This comes down to having a plot-driven story vs a character-driven story.
This isn’t to say that plot-driven stories are bad, but think of it like this.
Think of the books that have most left an impact on you. I bet it’s the characters you remember. When I think of the ACOTAR series, the first immediate thought I have is… Cassian. (Oh, Cassian.)
And then Mor.
Then Feyre.
Nesta!
The plot was great, but it was nothing without the characters.
In fact, I think you could’ve put those characters in any number of situations, and they would’ve made for a good story because they were good characters.
Maybe this is why so many literary agents ask for character-driven stories.
Creating character arcs for my main and supporting characters
So, as forced as it felt, I created arcs, just on a piece of paper, for my main and supporting characters.
What I did here was I created “bookends” (that’s what I call them), and I asked myself, “Where does this character start and where do they end?”
And I mean this in several different ways. In the beginning:
- What are they thinking?
- How do they feel?
- What do they believe?
- What do they want?
And then I ask all the same questions for the end of the novel.
You could even split this into acts, and focus on one act at a time. What do they believe in the beginning of Act 2 vs the end of Act 2? That’s what I ended up doing because I struggle a lot with the second act.
Personally, for the character arc, while I called out the plot points, that wasn’t enough. Rather, I looked at what happened to that character through the story, and, importantly, how they reacted to it.
How did that plot point make them feel? How did it change them?
Alright, then what?
The character arc alone wouldn’t have been enough for me, because I knew immediately that I would take the arc and try to cram it into the plot to make it all fit. That doesn’t work. It’s disjointed.
Weaving character arcs together
What I did next was look at the character arcs in relation to each other.
Consider my female and male protagonists. My fantasy has an enemies (ish)-to-lovers, slow-burn type of romance. So my male and female main characters have a big job to do. They have to go from hating each other to really, really liking each other.
I know that this isn’t something I will naturally make happen. Maybe some authors can. I will not. So when I’m doing their character arcs alongside the story arc, I’m thinking of how can I pace their development so that the change is gradual but impactful. What needs to happen plot-wise to allow for those moments?
When I plot that out, I can see in writing that bit by bit, they’re hating each other less, warming up to each other more, and moving toward liking each other.
Start big, then get granular
A lot of the novel writing process can feel overwhelming to me if I’m not careful, and that includes building character arcs.
What works best for me is starting from a very high level and then slowly zeroing in on the details, getting more and more granular. That’s why I start with bookends. Then, I’ll add the climax. I’ll add a couple of pivot points. And then, I keep working on what happens in between the points I’ve already identified until I have a very detailed, heavily built-out plot.
I know some authors worry that approaching a novel in this way sucks the creativity out of it and makes it very formulaic.
There are two things I’d say to that. The first is that there’s nothing wrong with formulaic. The second is that every single step of this process that I’ve shared still requires creativity.
It’s just that instead of coming up with these ideas on the fly as I’m writing, which does not work for me, I come up with them in advance.
And even then, once I’m writing, there’s still going to be more to the plot than what I outlined in advance, and there’s the dialogue.
I’ve plotted almost every novel I’ve ever written in advance, and at no point during any of those novels did I feel bored or creatively suffocated.
In fact, taking this approach allows me to be more creative because I do so much of the heavy lifting in advance. Once I sit down to write, the words are much more likely to just flow, uninterrupted.
Writing a book is hard, period. Writing this book has been very challenging but I think part of that is because I’m aware, more than I was in the past, of what goes into a good book.
At any given point in your novel, you have to be thinking about how you are raising the stakes, increasing tension, moving the characters forward in their arcs, making their motivation clear, having them work toward a goal, and so on.
There are so many moving parts, and that’s why it’s so hard.
Breaking novels down into arcs has helped me a ton! I hope it helps you too.