Writing Tip of the Week
Character Arcs
I have attended several lectures on writing and one of the common “rules” I hear concerning writing novels is that the characters, or at least the main character, must experience a “character arc.” He must evolve from one thing into another. His growth or dissolution keeps the reader involved and, in most cases, in sympathy with the hero. It’s a sound technique.
For example, Grat O’Brien from my Western novel Trapp Canyon experiences the greatest character arc I’ve ever written. O’Brien at the beginning of the novel is an ignorant, dangerous, worthless brute of a man. He is illiterate and can hardly speak. He is a rapist and the reader doesn’t know it, but it’s easy to believe he is the kind of a man who wouldn’t hesitate to murder his fellow man. O’Brien is left in the Arizona desert by the wagon driver of a transport company operating throughout the state. He survives and sets out on a vengeance trail to destroy the company’s stations, sheds, corrals, and offices.
He meets a woman who changes his perspective. She convinces him that he should seek his revenge on the owners and managers of the company and not the facilities. He agrees, but to operate in that arena he must educate himself. He takes that course with total commitment and eventually becomes a literate thinking man who can pass himself off as a successful member of frontier society. That’s the character arc. The brute becomes a citizen. And that’s where the arc creates his biggest challenge. He’s become a thinking man and he has to face the brutality of his past. The question asked in the novel addresses which course he eventually decides to take – move on with his life in his new status or return to the life of a brute on a killing spree.
That’s quite an arc, even if I say so myself.
But is an arc necessary?
I don’t think so.
How much did Gus McCrae and Woodrow Call evolve in Lonesome Dove? They didn’t. Each character remained true to himself and his values as shown in the earliest pages of the novel and the first moments of the mini-series. Jack Ruby, based on the real Jack “Sparky from Chicago” Ruby, in my political thrillers Sparky and the King, Sparky and the Beard, and Sparky and the Twins never experiences a character arc. He remains the same throughout three novels; he is just as driven by a need for “class” and to survive the mob, the CIA, and the Klan in the third book as he is in the first. The lack of a character arc was unnecessary and, to my mind, would have weakened the books. Did breaking that “rule” hurt the books? They’re still selling and each has won a book award.
My point is that writing an arc for a character should be decided book-by-book and character-by-character. The arc, therefore, is not a rule; it is, I suggest, just a good suggestion.
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Quote of the Week: “Begin at once to live, and count each separate day as a separate life.” Seneca the Younger
Recommended Reading: ?Everyday Life in the 1800s by Marc McCutcheon
Recommended Online: ??YouTube - Patricia Monna Talks with Pendulum Dowser Dan Baldwin
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? Dan Baldwin 2023