Creating character Arcs

A character arc is a character’s journey through a story. A character begins the story as one

person, changes or grows through the story and ends a different person. Character arcs make the story more interesting for the reader. This is important since most stories revolve around characters that face challenges or changes in their lives. Remember—you want your reader to connect with your character, and character arcs help accomplish this.

Types of Character Arcs

Positive: When your character has a happy ending.

Negative: When there is no happy ending and your character ends up worse than they started.

Circular: When your character goes on an emotional journey but still hasn’t changed.

Flat: This is when your character doesn’t overcome their flaw or issue but has a favorable outcome anyway.

How to write character arcs

There are dozens of tips on how to write character arcs. Some helpful, some not so much. But the bottom line to creating character arcs include these essentials:

1.Know your character

Who is this person? Where were they born? Do they hate spiders? Do they have acid reflux? Why don’t they have a job? If you don’t know your character, you can’t allow them to have issues and develop from those issues.

2.Determine your character’s goal

What do they want? Where do they want it? You have to figure this part out.

1.Work through your character’s flaws

Channel your inner therapist here. Is your character ashamed because he never attended college? Does he hate spiders because he was bitten by one as a kid? Maybe this is a fear they aren’t necessarily aware of yet. That’s also for you to decide.

1.Increase the stakes

Once we know your character’s flaws and issues, let us see how their flaws manifest and then, BAM, increase the stakes. Make things more complicated, scarier, more confusing. And that’s how to create character arcs. Remember, character arcs are just one way to bring your characters to life for your readers. And they only work if your character is believable and your readers understand their motivations. If you want more tips on character arcs, download my free writing guide.

Write on,

Tamika