Building a Character Arc

Hi all! These past 8 months have been a busy time huh? I’m back and hoping to jumpstart this blog with a bit more organization. So let’s get started with our next guide!

We talk a lot about worldbuilding and plotting out stories, but there’s an important factor I haven’t seen much discussion around, and that is: character arcs.

We’ll be covering character building next week, as that will build off of this post. But building a character arc is just as important as knowing all the static facts about a character and how they react to the world you’ve built around them!

What is the character’s purpose?

We love to imagine our characters as people and real in our heads, but ultimately they are a tool to tell a story. So when building your character arc, you need to know what the purpose of this character is. How do they serve the story? How do they enhance the themes?

Characters can have tons of purposes, from the protagonist to the antagonist to cannon fodder. Characters can serve multiple purposes at one time, even. So what do you want your character to do for the story?

An example: in The Hunger Games, Gale Hawthorne serves a purpose far beyond just love interest #2. Gale helps propel the plotline in a number of ways. He spurs Katniss into action when he is whipped in the town square, he challenges Katniss’ worldviews both directly and indirectly by proposing ethical and complex questions that Katniss must later answer, and he’s symbolic of an answer to the main theme of the books. He isn’t relegated to just one of these purposes, but he does have to have one otherwise, he would be irrelevant words distracting from the actual story.

What changes within the character? What doesn’t?

Characters can be divided into two categories: static and dynamic. Static characters stay the same over the course of the story, whereas dynamic characters do not. So a good question to ask yourself when building a character arc is what, if anything, changes about the character over the course of the story?

One important factor to consider is the character’s attitude towards the world, the conflict, or the other characters. If that changes, how does it change? Why? What happens to cause that change? These questions can be applied to any number of factors you wish to include, like a character’s opinion of themselves or another concept, a character’s worldview, or a character’s feelings towards their circumstances.

If the character is a static character, why? Does it serve the story’s themes?

Is your character an active participant or reacting to plot events?

Naturally, a character reacts to events and responds to those reactions through action. But do those actions actually affect the plot? Does the plot happen to the character or does the character act and consequences follow?

These seem like plot building questions, and they are, but it’s critical to understanding your characters as well. Characters that always react to the plot and have little consequences for actual actions taken tend to be placed in the “reactive” category. While I can’t speak to every style and story structure, most traditional publishers and western audiences prefer active characters over reactive characters. They want the character to impact the plot, their actions have natural consequences that push the plot forward.

Reactive characters can absolutely be utilized to tell interesting and compelling stories, though, so don’t throw out the whole story if you find your character is more reactive than active.

Conclusion

So you’ve created the plot and the premise and you need to populate your world with characters! Remember these key points in building a character arc: purpose, change, and action. Hopefully this guide can help you get on the road towards creating a character arc that not only compels your reader, but enhances your themes and serves your story.

-- Indy

Character developement

- Create a detailed backstory: Develop a rich and layered backstory for your character, including their upbringing, past experiences, and significant events that have shaped them. This will provide a foundation for their personality and motivations.

- Define core traits: Identify a few core personality traits that define your character. Consider both positive and negative traits to make them more well-rounded and realistic.

- Give them strengths and weaknesses: No character is perfect. Give your character a mix of strengths and weaknesses to make them relatable and interesting. These flaws can create internal conflicts and opportunities for growth.

- Establish goals and motivations: Determine what drives your character. What are their goals, desires, or ambitions? Understanding their motivations will help shape their actions and decisions throughout the story.

- Create relationships: Develop meaningful relationships for your character with other characters in the story. This includes friends, family, romantic partners, and even adversaries. Consider how these relationships influence and shape your character's development.

- Show internal conflict: Explore the internal struggles and dilemmas your character faces. This could be conflicting emotions, difficult choices, or battling their own fears and insecurities. Internal conflict adds depth and complexity to their development.

- Allow for growth and change: Characters should evolve throughout the story. Consider a character arc that takes your character from a starting point to a transformed state by the end. Give them challenges and experiences that allow them to learn, grow, and change over time.

- Use dialogue effectively: Craft dialogue that reflects your character's unique voice, speech patterns, and personality traits. Dialogue can reveal their emotions, beliefs, and thought processes, providing insights into their character.

- Show, don't tell: Instead of explicitly telling readers about your character's traits, show them through their actions, choices, and interactions with others. This allows readers to form their own opinions and connections with the character.

- Continuously refine and develop: Characters are not static entities. As you write, remain open to new ideas and opportunities for character development. Allow your characters to surprise you and evolve beyond your initial plans.

The next time you're building a character profile, ask yourself these questions to dig a little deeper into your character's inner workings.

Happy writing!

WEIRDLY SPECIFIC BUT HELPFUL CHARACTER BUILDING QUESTIONS

How To Develop Your Characters

1) Reveal your character slowly. If you info-dump too much about your protagonist straight away, there is no more wonder surrounding them. By slowly unraveling details about a character, the reader can understand them more fully and see their growth happen in real-time. When your character begins to open up naturally as the story progresses, they’ll reveal things about themselves through their actions or dialogue.

2) All protagonists should have a goal. When a character sets out to complete their goal, that is when the story is born as well as their character arc. The obstacles they have to overcome and the setbacks they face develop them as the story progresses. When you give your character a goal and make it hard for them to reach it, they begin to figure things out and grow as a person.

3) Create obstacles. And then more obstacles. The more conflict that you shove in your protagonist’s face, the more active they have to be in the story. It’s by actively making choices that someone begins to transform. Give your protagonist physical obstacles to overcome but also internal ones like doubt, regret, anger, confusion, lust, etc. 

4) Let them Fail. Overwhelm your character, push them to their limits, kick them when they’re low, make them feel like their heart will never heal… and then help them overcome the hardship. (Or not, if your story consists of a negative character arc). Regardless, failure is an important part of any story because no one is perfect and readers love seeing a protagonist overcome the impossible. Have your protagonist fail continuously throughout the story… big failures, little failures, half-failures… it all builds character.

5) Enhance their growth by having static characters in the story. Protagonists are typically dynamic characters which means they change throughout the story. It can be smart to contrast a dynamic character with a minor static/flat character who remains the same throughout the story. If two characters come from the same starting point but only one changes, the audience can see the growth that has really happened to them.

6) Give your character a past that they can overcome. A backstory, an origin, a past. We all start somewhere. The way we grew up undoubtedly shaped us into who we are today and it’s no different for a character. Whether your character comes from a backstory of hardships or privilege, you must know the reasons behind who they are at the start of your story. Then, you can start developing them… making them into a better or worse person.

For example, maybe your protagonist has a deathly fear of cars because of being in an accident as a child. Put them and a love interest in a car together or have them take walks by a highway late at night. Perhaps he even shows her what a car looks like under the hood and helps her to understand the safety features. This all develops your character into growing past their fear, which we understand because of their past.

7) Give your character’s flaws that are real. I don’t mean little flaws like being bad a math or extremely clumsy. While these are all aspects that are okay to give a character, your protagonist needs a more deep and intense obstacle to overcome. A werewolf who can’t control their anger and transforms sporadically. A cheerleader who shakes so badly from presentation anxiety that she risks dropping a teammate. These traits are realistic and relatable to the audience and can be overcome as the character develops, learns, and grows throughout the story.

Instagram: coffeebeanwriting

Types of intelligence for your OCs

What kind of intelligence does your character posses? Based on theory of multiple intelligences, these are some ideas what kind of smarts your characters might posses that aren’t the typical academic or street smarts. 

1. Visual-spatial (space smart)

These people are good at visualizing things, seeing in 3D, being able to imagine how things look even out of sight from the information they have about it. They are good with directions, maps, charts and pictures. Eye for drawing, patterns and puzzles. 

Especially useful for: architects, engineers, artists, pilots

2. Linguistic-verbal (word smart)

The ability to use words well, when writing and speaking. Typical strenghts are telling stories, memorizing information, love for reading, skill with words, debating and persuasive skills, adept at explaining complicated subjects. Also tend to be great at languages. 

Especially useful for: writers, journalists, lawyers, teachers, public speakers

3. Logical (reasoning smart)

Not necessarily but possibly mathematical, these people are great at reasoning, pattern recognition and logical analysis. Enjoyment for abstract thinking and ideas, excellent problem-solving skills and logical argumentation are other common traits. Pattersn, categories, relationships. 

Especially useful for: mathematicians, accountants, scientists, and detectives.

4. Bodily-kinesthetic (body smart)

Great hand-eye cordination, physical movement, often skilled at sports, dancing and creating things with their hands. Learn and remember rather by doing than listening or reading. Sense of timing and mind-body union excellent. 

Especially useful for: dancers, sculptors, actors, athletes, surgeons, crafts people, soldiers, police officers

5. Musical (sound smart)

Sensitive listeners. Thinking in patterns, recognizing rhythms, notes and melodies, good at remembering tunes, these people often enjoy singing or playing instruments. Often show great understanding of musical structure and know quickly when they hear someone going off-key. 

Especially useful for: musical teachers, composers, musicians, 

6. Interpersonal (people smart)

These people are very good at understanding and interacting with others. From verbal to non-verbal communication, they are proficient at assessing motivations, moods and desires of others and seeing things from multiple perspectives. Great communicators, create positive relationships with others easily and solve group dynamics and group conflicts well. Also enjoy discussions, debates and teamwork. 

Especially useful for: psychologists, counselors, salespeople, politicians, philosophers, teachers, managers, team leaders

7. Intrapersonal (self smart)

The opposite of interpersonal smarts is the intrapersonal intelligence, where people are very in tune with themselves and their feelings. They are honest with themselves, enjoy self-reflection, analysing theories and ideals, love daydreaming, and show great self-awareness and assessment of their own strenghts and weaknesses. 

Especially useful for: writers, philosophers, theorits, scientists

Bonus types: 

8. Creative (ideas smart) 

People that show exceptional curiousity, get inspired by little things around them and connect ideas and concepts in an unsual way. It’s a more feeling-based, spontaneous type of intelligence that gets less recognition, but brings immense benefits in all fields. 

Especially useful for: artists, marketers, scientists, concept artists, 

10. Abstract (concept smart)

Drawn to abstract ideas, these people enjoy deep discussions, don’t like to settle on one truth and ask questions that have no easy or no answer at all. Connecting, conceptualizing, analysing, listening and putting things together, they are great at seeing things from a distance, seeing the whole and not just the pieces. 

Especially useful for: scientists, philosophers, researchers, theorists, designers, analysts

Writing advice masterlist

how to write relatable characters

writing relatable characters may seem like an easy task, especially when you’re constructing your protagonist. but what if you want to make your antagonist likeable? what if you want people to hate your protagonist but still root for them? all of this and more requires that your characters be relatable. they need to feel real, so how do you do that? here’s how:

- flaws: this is probably obvious. everyone has flaws, so we should give our characters flaws, too. this applies even if your character is non-human; they cannot escape the personification that we as writers or readers project onto them. we are humans reading, so we expect to see human qualities everywhere we look. if you’re having trouble of identifying your character’s flaws, here are some prompts for ways to think about flaws beyond a list:

- quirks: these are what make your character unique or special, and no, i don’t mean purple eyes or unique physical traits. i mean: what makes your character authentically themselves? what traits define them that few others have? some ways to think about this are:

- values: these come from life experiences: where we were raised, our family and friends, our community, religious affiliations, etc. i suggest identifying eight to ten values that define your character and then narrowing that list down to five values that mark their core or essence. think about how these values influence their choices, decisions, and ultimately, the plot of the novel. here are some more prompts to think about values:

- stakes: what is at risk for your character? what is motivating them? stakes don’t need to be over the top or life or death; they can be as simple as maintaining a relationship or reaching a goal. unless there’s an outside influence (ie. percy’s mother being kidnapped in The Lightning Thief), most stakes—especially those relatable—tie back to values. even those influenced by outside factors can tie back to values: the only reason percy is motivated to get his mother back is because he cares for her and she is the one person who has always advocated for him and cared for him. he values family and riordan uses his family to motivate him and incite the plot. generally, there will be one overarching stake for your character, but throughout your novel, there should be several smaller stakes. these may not service the plot but should elaborate on your character nonetheless. some ways to think about stakes include:

- connection: even if your character is an introvert, they will still be connected to someone, something, or even an idea. we, as humans, look to certain people, pets, objects, and ideas to maintain our sense of reality whether we realize it or not. if your character prides themselves in having no attachments, think about the ideas or themes that mark the cornerstones of their reality. most human beings strive for some form of connection, so here are more prompts for thinking about your characters and connection:

a good rule of thumb is to treat a character as a human, not a plot device. there is a time or place in which a character must act as a plot device, but if you’re wanting your readers to be compelled by your narration and the characters within them, you should strive to write your characters as human (aka as relatable). one of the greatest pleasures i find in writing is when other’s identify themselves in my writing.

you’re not just here to tell a story, you’re here to connect with others through the illustration of your characters. let the reader navigate your prose as a detective, to search for and identify the evidence provided by you. that is to say, show us how these things manifest in your character. don’t tell us.

happy writing! hopefully this post gave you some ways to start thinking about how to show the relatability of your character. if you have any questions about implementing these tools or about writing characters, our ask box is always open.

Characters Contradict Themselves (w/ examples!)

People contradict themselves—and so do characters. In fact, in the last alternative character creation I shared with you all, a prime step to creating your character is to come up with their contradiction. What could cause them to completely go back on their core characteristic?

This is an important step to creating any character because it’s a super easy way to create depth in characters. The fact is, people are never truly just what they seem on the surface, people contradict themselves. The super nice person gets touchy around mention of their family, the outgoing person never talks about their secret insecurity. It’s in-line with creating a secret for every character, but think of something that seems nothing like them—and yet still makes sense.

When contradictions come to me, they come as additional character traits. It’s an of course! Moment. Don’t try to force it. When I was younger I intentionally added lots of different contradictions, but all it did was create the sense of a wish-washy character that couldn’t really be known. So a contradiction—contradicts... but it still makes sense, you should feel it lines up with your character, it just adds a bit of layering.

Some examples:

1. A socially anxious character speaks up for their best friend.

2. A confident character breaks when people dislike them

3. A mean character is really kind and fun with their younger nieces and nephews

4. An isolated character loves thrills

5. Two characters directly contradict each other and yet get along perfectly

And always—if it’s not working, just change it! There’s no consequences to trying different things and seeing what works. Good luck!

Figuring out your OC's 'voice' and physicality/characterization

I often struggle with creating distinct characters, so I came up with some questions about your OCs that I haven't seen in any other lists.

I recommend answering these for each character once you've already spent some time with them on the page.

fifty ways to get to know your characters (and how to write them)

Character Development Writing Resources

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 ~Grand list of Writing Resources~

Writing Protagonists Without Strong Wants or Goals

Often in the writing world, we are told to make sure our protagonists have strong wants. After all, the protagonist’s want usually leads to a goal, and goals allow audiences to measure progress or setbacks in a story (which also helps with pacing). The protagonist’s pursuit of the goal often makes up most of the plot.

For change-arc protagonists, often what they want will be at odds with what they need. For most flat-arc protagonists, they often want the need, though sometimes they have to deal with a competing want or even lose sight of the need. (For more information on wants and needs, check out “Character’s Want vs. Need”) But if you aren’t familiar with the want vs. need approach, no worries. Suffice it to say that the protagonist’s want is almost always a key component of character arc, plot, and even theme.

So, must every protagonist absolutely have a powerful want driving them through the plot? Of course not. All “rules” are really more like guidelines. It’s just that if you break that rule, it will likely come at a steep cost, since it influences so many parts.

Because of the nature of story itself, it’s nearly impossible to have a protagonist who doesn’t want something significant by the end. Pretty much always the protagonist will have a want by the end of Act I. If not then, she will at least have a want or goal by the midpoint, at the latest–but that’s often pushing it. Rarely do protagonists make it through a whole story without having a clear significant want, though I won’t go so far as to say it’s impossible. And in some types of stories, you may be dealing with one significant want per section of the story.

Let’s talk about some situations where the protagonist doesn’t start with a driving want, goal, or hobby.

The Protagonist Already Has What He Wants

While in many stories the protagonist will start with a burning desire, in others, the protagonist already has everything he wants–or at least, is already on track for soon getting what he wants. There are a couple of ways this can play out.

1. His Lifestyle is Threatened

If the protagonist already has what he wants, one of the easiest ways to get the story rolling is to threaten what he already has. The threat may come as the inciting incident. In Shrek, Shrek already enjoys his life of solitude in the swamp, scaring off humans and bathing in mud. The inciting incident appears as a problem that threatens this: Other fairytale creatures are invading his home. For him, this stake is too high, and he must do something about it.

Alternatively, the lifestyle may not be threatened until near the end of Act I. For example, the inciting incident might be an opportunity that the protagonist declines–he already has everything he wants. However, something big threatens–or maybe even destroys–what he has, and he responds by taking the opportunity.

There are a few ways this can play out really, but the basic idea is that the protagonist loses, or is at risk of losing, what he already has. Often the goal is to get it back somehow–which means stopping or thwarting whatever the threat is. (However, with that said, it’s not impossible to give the character a new goal either.)

2. She Discovers a New Want

It might be that the protagonist already has everything she wants, but soon discovers something new she wants as well. Maybe she didn’t even know the wanted thing existed or was possible, until the inciting incident, or even a later point in the story. She thought her life was complete, but now realizes what she has isn’t enough.

I feel like this is something we see more with villains and anti-heroes–especially those depicted as spoiled, selfish, or entitled. But it doesn’t have to be. It could just be that the character is satisfied with life, but now yearns for more.

In The Hobbit, Bilbo is largely satisfied with his life–he has his creature comforts in his hobbit hole, and that’s all fine and well. But it isn’t until Gandalf arrives with the opportunity for adventure (and strives to persuade Bilbo into it) that Bilbo eventually embraces the fact that, in reality, he wants adventure (which, in some sense, is also what he needs).

The Protagonist is Wanting, but Lacks Vision (a Goal)

Sometimes a protagonist isn’t driven by a strong passion or goal, because he lacks vision. His life may be dissatisfying, but he can’t imagine any way to change that. It’s just the life he’s been dealt. It feels like something is lacking, but he doesn’t know what. Eventually, the character encounters something new that broadens his vision and leads to a concrete goal. The goal promises (at least to the protagonist) to fulfill what is lacking.

In Luca, Luca appears dissatisfied with his daily life, which seems to be made up of boring and repetitious chores, but he doesn’t really know of any other lifestyle. He later meets Alberto, who shows him an entirely new way of living. Soon Luca is filled with the same passions as Alberto and adopts the same goals.

Helpful Techniques

Having a story where the protagonist isn’t driven by a strong want, goal, or passion can have steep costs. There often isn’t a lot of tension, conflict, or driving force prior to the character gaining a want or goal. This is, again, in part because the goal helps give the plot context–if there is no goal, then what happens doesn’t really matter that much. The protagonist isn’t trying to get anywhere specific, and isn’t having to struggle to get there. This threatens to kill pacing and lose the audience.

Luckily, there are a few workarounds to help.

Linked to this post is a free google slides document I’ve designed for the purposes of character and plot development. You can use this in several ways, including:

This document includes technical instructions and guides to the planning models I integrated. The included pages are:

[watermark is only present in these screenshots]

romantic relationship hc q’s: 

emily’s big character sheet (fillable document)

hello friends! about a month ago I posted a giant character sheet (link here) and I wanted to make a document where you can copy and fill in yourself.

here is the link, the instructions to use it are in the document;

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1xuu1XmpmUMc1xiXVB9DSiWbaxTY_34GJYVC38RTidd4/edit?usp=sharing

If you have any trouble viewing, copying or accessing the document, please let me know so I can fix it!

Happy character creating 💙

-emily (creativestalkerrs)

that whole "make your characters want things" does so much work for you in a story, even if what your characters want is stupid and irrelevant, because how people go about pursuing their desires tells you about them as a person.

do they actually move toward what they desire? how far are they willing to go for it? do they pursue their desires directly or indirectly? do they acquire what they desire through force, trickery, or negotiation? do they tell themselves they aren't supposed to feel desire and suppress it? does the suppressed desire wither away and die, or does it mutate and grow even stronger? is the initially expressed desire actually an inadequate and poorly translated different desire that they lack language for? does the desire change once the language has been updated, or when new experiences outline the desire more clearly? do they want something else once they have better words for it, or once they know that they definitely don't want something they thought they wanted before?

how does the world accommodate those desires? what does the world present to your character and in what order to update and clarify their desires? how does your magic system or sci-fi device correspond to those desires and the pursuit of them?

there's so much good story meat on those bones; you just have to be brave and decisive enough to let characters want specific things instead of letting them float in the current of the plot.

and I loved the responses of “Well, my character is very passive and doesn’t know how to want things, the story is about their process of learning to do that exactly”, because that’s fine, that’s all well and good, but passive people still want things. passive human beings who have been so thoroughly neglected that the articulation of a single desire is beyond them want what their internal sphere of control tells them they are allowed to want. they desire constancy and a lack of conflict. they desire nostalgic artifacts that remind them of prior constancy and lack of conflict. the desire to float is an engineered desire that runs in conflict with the development of a happy healthy human being. Who engineered it? How do you begin to chip away at something like that? How do small, passive desires lead up to that?

"Everyone has motive" needs to be at the forefront of your thoughts. If a passive character wants something and yet does not act to achieve it, the crux of the story is WHY they are inactive. Therein lies your conflict and complications.

THE REAL IMPORTANT CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT QUESTIONS