CHARACTER ARCS IN FICTION

Character Arcs Make Readers Care About our Characters. We Want to See Our Hero Change.

In fiction, a character’s arc is the journey or transformation a character experiences as they go from the beginning of a novel until the end of the novel. Over this journey, our hero faces conflict in the form of hurdles, and her arc is how our character “changes” over the course of that journey. If you’ve ever read (I have to think you have, or at least have seen one of the many, many reproductions of Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol), the transformation of Ebenezer Scrooge is monumental. At the beginning of the novel, we see Scrooge at his worst—yelling at people, hoarding his money, not giving to charity, and denying Bob Cratchitt the pay he deserves. He does it all with a vitriol unparallelled by many of the antagonists we’ve come to know in fiction. But then, after the ghost of Jacob Marley, his now deceased partner, warns Scrooge he will be visited by three spirits—the Ghost of Christmas Past, the Ghost of Christmas Present, and the Ghost of Christmas Future, things change for Scrooge.

In fiction, a character’s arc is the journey or transformation a character experiences as they go from the beginning of a novel until the end of the novel

With each subsequent journey to what was, what is, and what will be, Scrooge realizes that he has lived his life the wrong way (as a miser and miserable), and he sees firsthand the damage he has caused to so many people in his life. He has devastated the Cratchitts, who can’t afford to pay for their crippled son Tiny Tim’s surgery, the fiancée he watched walk away from him and failed to chase after in his youth, his nephew Fred and his family, whose invitation to Christmas dinner is declined by Scrooge, and, later, how devastated Scrooge is that no one cared to even show up for his funeral. These things affect scrooge deeply, and, so, Scrooge changes. He wakes up after his night with the ghosts, and his outlook on life has completely changed. He’s done a 180 and now, having seen the error of his ways and where it would inevitably lead, he surprises everyone by becoming the exact opposite of the man he’s been all his life. No more “bah! Humbugs!;” just a lot more “Merry Christmases!”

Charles Dickens's Ebenezer Scrooge in A Christmas Carol is One of The Most Brilliant Character Arcs Ever

Now that’s a character arc, and one of the most interesting ones I’ve ever seen. It’s called a morally ascending character arc. Because Scrooge has “changed” from the beginning to the end in a positive way, he has a clearly-defined character arc. He’s become a good guy after being a bad guy for the entirety of his life. If he would have remained a miserly old bad guy, he’d still have an arc, it would just be a flat character arc.

Character arcs make readers care about the characters. Readers can relate in some way to what a character is going through, and so they understand why and how a character acts the way they do throughout the story. No, characters don’t need to change. Anything is possible in fiction. But characters who don’t change, who have no arcs, will probably not be as interesting to your readers. These are known as flat character arcs.

Flat characters may already know who they are. It doesn’t mean that our hero won’t face the same hurdles: they will. It just won’t be our hero who changes. The world in which our hero lives may be what changes. Or something else. But the truth of our hero remains.  

There are other character arcs, and probably as many as there are stars in the sky. There will always be positive character arcs and negative ones, flat character arcs and character arcs that are ambiguous or perhaps more subtle than, say, the example of Scrooge discussed above. But here are the major ones:

• Change/Transformation character arc

• Growth character arc

• Moral Ascending character arc

• Moral Descending character arc

• Flat Character arc

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The Change/Transformation Character Arc is the one we probably think of when we think of character arc. It’s the character or protagonist, our “hero,” being changed by what they experience over the course of their story or journey. The transformation is likely that they go from their status quo (say, a normal person) to the hero of the novel, novella, short story, or work of prose. This applies to movies and television as well, as do all character arcs. The first one that comes to mind for me is Superman. While we know he’s exceptional from the moment he lands on earth, he doesn’t become Superman until he grows up and understands that he can use his powers for good. Once he does, the transformation has changed. In the movies, after he becomes Superman, he also turns into a character that, for the most part, has a flat character arc. This is because he knows who he is (a good guy), and he knows who he’s up against (the bad guys), and that doesn’t waver.

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The Growth Character Arc is when your protagonist faces external opposition, and in the process overcomes the internal issues or opposition they experienced at the beginning of your novel. The internal issues may be the fears they’ve developed since childhood such as abandonment issues and abuse, or that they’re afraid of cats or lizards, or of going broke, or of anything that affects them in some negative fashion. In this way, they “grow” due to their ability to conquer the issues that had historically damaged or kept back who they were prior to setting off on their journey.

When writing, it’s important to understand the different options available to you as the writer that exist when it comes to character arcs. If you’re a pantser, you may have a vague picture of what your hero’s character arc might be, but not always. If you’re a plotter or outliner, you should know what happens over the course of your protagonist’s journey, including their arc. Knowing what happens to your character by the end of your work will help you build the journey in a way that will makes sense to the reader. You’ll be able to give your hero the struggles and hurdles they require that lead them to a change in their status quo, and thus the type of character arc they’ll experience. Character arcs in fiction, when done well, entertain the reader. They keep them wanting to know more. To root for our hero, for we, as readers, want change. We want to see things happen. And characters arcs provide that. Whatever type of character arc you choose, just make sure the journey makes sense to the reader, because your reader will want to believe why your hero makes the decision she makes, and why her character changes the way it does.

Cully Perlman is author of a novel, THE LOSSES. He can be reached at Cully@novelmasterclass.com

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